Sunday, December 02, 2007
COUNTRIES VULNERABLE
The UN warns:
Some of the most vulnerable countries of the world have contributed the least to climate change, but are bearing the brunt of it.
This is exactly right. New Zealand, for example, contributes just 0.2 to 0.3 per cent of total global emissions, yet is bearing the brunt of climate change cash-grabbery:
The New Zealand Treasury estimates New Zealand’s Kyoto liability currently stands at NZ$708 million …
At that rate of increase, at the end of the first Kyoto commitment period in 2012, New Zealanders will owe about NZ$4.2 billion - or about NZ$1000 per person.
Australia, too, contributes only a tiny amount (1.2 to 1.4 per cent) to global warming, but is similarly vulnerable to protocol penalties:
Australia faces high penalties for exceeding its greenhouse-gas emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol, Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd says …
"We are currently likely to ... overshoot our Kyoto target by one per cent,” Mr Rudd told ABC Radio today.
(Via 1.618)
UPDATE. James Lileks in comments:
I was in a church basement last week for Pizza Night with 23 adults and 942345 children, most of whom were watching the television with glazed immobile faces. A commercial for an animated-penguin movie came on. The child next to me (not my own) said “all the penguins and the polar bears are going to drown to death."
"Where did you learn that?” I asked.
"The TV said so,” she said. She shrugged and took another bite of her pizza. She had already incorporated the inevitable extinction into her worldview, along with any number of eco-clusterfraks.
Life will be a constant source of delightful surprises for these kids, I think.