Climate Sanctions Sought Against US
German Party Launches Effort
BERLIN - The Social Democrats are calling for sanctions on energy-intensive US export products if the Bush administration continues to obstruct international agreements on climate protection, the party’s leading environmental specialist said yesterday.
The move, after the United Nations climate conference last week in Bali, Indonesia, has won strong support from the Greens and other leftist groupings in the European Parliament. Those factions will renew their bid to impose such levies when the Parliament reconvenes next month.
It also signals a big effort by the Social Democrats to take the initiative on the environment and perhaps reshape it as a foreign policy issue that could affect relations between Berlin and Washington.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken the lead on climate change, both domestically and internationally, leaving her junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats, frustrated. The opposition Greens have also lost ground on an issue they had long dominated.
But with three important state elections next year, the Social Democrats, still floundering in the opinion polls, are revamping their program to stem the decline of public support, party officials say.
“Merkel has made climate change a big issue and has tried to bring the Bush administration on board, so far without success,” said Ulrich Kelber, deputy parliamentary leader of the Social Democrats and an environmental specialist who is leading the campaign to impose levies on energy-intensive US products.
“We cannot let the US continue to block multilateral agreements, as it tried with Kyoto, or weaken them, as it did in Bali,” he said, referring to a compromise agreement on reducing greenhouse gases during the UN climate conference last week.
“The US is a major part of the problem. Levying special taxes or sanctions on energy-intensive US products, such as steel and aluminum, which are exported to Europe, could be the first step,” Kelber said.
US officials and the American Chamber of Commerce in Brussels said that it was too early to react to the proposals.
Environmentalists inside the Social Democratic Party and in the European Parliament said the idea behind levying taxes went beyond pressuring the Bush administration to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gases.
They also want to widen the European carbon emissions system, which at the moment excludes steel and other intensive energy products imported by EU member states.
Unless such products are included, they said, it was unrealistic to believe that the trading system could reduce climate change significantly.
The EU’s emission trading program was launched in January 2005, becoming the first international trading system for carbon dioxide emissions.
It covers more than 11,500 energy-intensive installations across the EU, which represent nearly half of Europe’s carbon dioxide emissions, according to the European Commission.
The installations include oil refineries, coke ovens, iron and steel plants and factories making cement, glass, lime, brick, ceramics, pulp and paper.
Earlier attempts by Germany’s Social Democrats and the European Parliament to widen such levies were met with opposition from Gunter Verheugen, the EU’s commissioner for industry and enterprise, who is German and a Social Democrat.
Turmes said Verheugen wanted to protect industry and Germany’s car sector rather than support moves to either impose levies on steel and other imports or expand the European emissions trading system.
“What we don’t want is a situation where the US, between now and the next climate accord, which is supposed to be concluded in 2009, will do everything they can to block it,” Kelber said.
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company
The African National Congress asked the world to boycott their own country (South Africa) to apply pressure to an illegitimate government which was oppressing its own people. As a US citizen, I hereby ask the world to impose a series of increasingly harsh sanctions upon the Bush administration, its eventual successor, and their corporate masters, until such time as the USA endorses meaningful and mandatory limits on emissions of the greenhouse gases which threaten all inhabitants of this planet.
As another US citizen who agrees with the previous writer, may I suggest a particular sanction against this administration and any future one that stonewalls global cooperation:
…Every NATO member country who wants an all-out effort against global warming should propose to WITHDRAW THEIR TROOPS from any/every theatre where they are fighting with the US.
rjmart01, I think you may have hit on the only answer to the problem of U.S. obstruction to any curtailment of corporate greed and environmental degradation. I suppose it is possible that there might be a landslide Democratic win of Congress and the White House that might get the U.S. on-board with a world effort to save our asses but that is one hell of a big “if”. No, I think hitting the corporate wallet is the only thing that will get their attention and that effort has to come from outside the U.S. as most people in the U.S. see no problem with the way they live and consume.
So who is our African National Congress equivalent that would have the ear of the rest of the world?
We also need sanctions against the livestock industry and we all need to boycott meat!
Meat Eating and Global Warming
www.ivu.org/members/globalwarming.html
Stay cool!
Good. Maybe if the American people can’t save our country from our leaders on our own, the rest of the world can get together and help us out. Hopefully before the global warming problem reaches the point of no return.
How does the WTO fit into all of this?
“The move, after the United Nations climate conference last week in Bali, Indonesia, has won strong support from the Greens and other leftist groupings in the European Parliament.”
Since when are Greens leftists? Doesn’t ecology apply to both the left and the right? Some communist countries have as bad or worse pollution and other environmental problems than capitalist countries do.
Environmentalists are not only reviled by the capitalist ruling class (number one on Bush’s terrorist watch list), but by communist rulers (for going against the giant dam in China).
EVERYONE benefits from a healthy environment. Calling Greens leftists implies that the right is against a healthy environment. Too often true, but it’s important to show that on both sides, it is centralized power and concentrated wealth that is against nature.
International sanctions against the US have been needed for decades, but almost every other government is run by people of similar politicaleconomic ideology, which is why no sanctions have ever been levied, no matter how great the need. That the US is enemy #1 in a variety of categories–most clearly the current Iraqi Holocaust and the coming Holocaust caused by Climat Change–has seen little in the way of any countervailing force other than al-Qaeda (which itself might be a CIA black-op).
The writer of this piece spins the actions of the SDs and Greens as a part of domestic German politics, “Chancellor Angela Merkel has taken the lead on climate change, both domestically and internationally, leaving her junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats, frustrated. The opposition Greens have also lost ground on an issue they had long dominated.
“But with three important state elections next year, the Social Democrats, still floundering in the opinion polls, are revamping their program to stem the decline of public support, party officials say.”
I would say the SDs are part of the problem: “What we don’t want is a situation where the US, between now and the next climate accord, which is supposed to be concluded in 2009, will do everything they can to block it,” which assumes–very wrongly, IMO–that the next US admin. will be accomodative to the very aggressive pact needed for serious mitigation of Climate Change, which is totally naive–just read the many accounts of how the US from Gore to Bush has worked very hard to enusre that NOTHING happens to keep the rich from getting richer.
The time for nicities has long passed. The world MUST treat the US as an existential threat of an order greater than the Nazis or Soviets. But even when those treats existed, there were large cracks in the containment regime. The reality is currently the US could be brought to its knees financially at the cost of some economic pain for the developed world–the same sort of economic pain expected as a result of any concerted attempt to mitigate cliamte change–Business As Usual MUST come to a screeching halt. BAU means supporting the US. Ending BAU is the fundamental first step to combat climate change.
ezeflyer–excellent observation. I also noted that spin, but omitted it from my post. Thanks.
The U.S. has only 0.3 billion people in a world with 6.6 billion people. (1/22)
The U.S. economy is $13 trillion out of a world economy of $66 trillion. (1/5)
Clearly, Americans are wealthier than the average, but they are still only 1/5 of the world economy, and a tiny fraction of the world population. If the world unites to fight Climate Chaos, they could easily force the U.S. to comply, or perish. Just dropping the U.S. dollar from the world oil markets would put incredible pressure on the rogue nation.
Of course, it is hard to pressure a country when they have military bases and 10’s of thousands of soldiers in your country… that is why Germany, Japan, Great Britain, South Korea and Italy have trouble ‘disagreeing’ with their Master. I guess Iraq is trying to fight that fate, too…
But once the bandwagon is rolling, those military bases and soldiers will be harder and harder for the rogue nation to pay for. Divide and conquer, vs. global destiny… hard to predict how it will play out.
Sanctions against the United States are quite long overdue. This country seems to only two languages: money and power. Take away degrees of both and you suddenly have a country that will listen to what the rest of the world has to say. After all, you can’t bomb the world in economic cooperation for the betterment of the US at the expense of the rest! For markets to survive there must be willing buyers who create the demand. Bombing them is not a smart way to develop more buyers. Point is: the US at this late stage in the game has very little to do to combat other countries who make a concerted effort to hold the US accountable for its environmental and otherwise actions.
I, for one, welcome the discipline!
We are now ruled by a criminal minority, peopled by a herd of sheeple, and informed by a self-serving media punditocracy. Any change will now either have to come from a mass rising from within, or international pressure (united and prolonged) to awaken the mass of Americans to what we have become, and how the rest of the world truly perceives us.
It is truly sad. It did not have to be this way.
This is how to change the earth.
Many of the earth’s governments should agree to put across-the-board tariffs on purchasing products from every country that stands out in its killing of ice sheets and millions of species (and people), with the total tariff equaling the extent of the noncompliance.
No, you can’t ship half-finished goods to a country of convenience and finish them there.
This won’t make the noncompliant countries happy, but it will get them to comply.
This is the start of a world government. I can see the wingnuts screaming in the streets right now, but the tariff does inhibit global warming.
Since the US economy is near-completely hollowed out, isn’t the US now a net importer?
The only ‘energy-intensive’ exports I can think of are those obscene 4×4s and hummer-a-likes that have taken the world by storm. The effect of sanctions on such a narrow range of products would be minimal unless other countries were on board too.
ThadStone made a good point about the military bases making it difficult and unwise for others to join the sanctions.I would recommend reading ‘Blowback’ by Chalmers Johnson for further info regarding US foreign policy vis-a-vis miltary and it’s effect on the economy.
Having said that, GO GERMANY GO!
Countries should also be sanctioned for importing products well-known to be unnecessarily carbon intensive and do not include justifiable working conditions.
ezeflyer,
I think you may be confusing Chinese-style communism with leftism. The Chinese are not leftists at all. They are a capitalist, totalitarian society. I think a simple way of difining left versus right is social equality versus social individualism. In this respect, I think, the Greens are indeed leftists. In extension to environmental policy, I would say ecology applies to the left in that it benefits everyone. I would say that it doesn’t necessarily apply to the right becuase it doesn’t necessaily benefit the individual. For example, if I can cheaply dump toxic waste in another country I benefit financially at the expense of another individual, with no repurcussions for myself. This is rightist philosophy.
It’s about time these governments take public stands against the evil empire in defense of the biosphere. Germany should next re-think its security arrangement with the evil empire. After that, Germany can re-think it’s very own production that feeds the evil empire gluttonly.
bidelo:
The right/left definitions should not be confused with conservative/liberal definitions that apply to both the right and the left:
Stalin—conservative left, Jesus—liberal left, Hitler and Bush—conservative right, ???—liberal right (Unless it’s Huckabee or Paul, may not exist).
Environmentalists live in both right and left wing societies. They (we) are mostly liberals and progressives.
The closest ecologists come to being conservatives is when we react against left or right wing conservative’s trashing of our environment instead of turning the other cheek. Also, when ecologists come under corporate pay, they become conservatives.
“if I can cheaply dump toxic waste in another country I benefit financially at the expense of another individual, with no repurcussions for myself. This is rightist philosophy”
It is rightist philosophy but it doesn’t benefit the individual unless he lives on Mars and doesn’t care about fouling his own nest.
ezflyer, some good points. But I see the rightist as perfectly willing to foul his own nest, as long as it’s expedient at the time. If being on the right is generally defined as being selfish, one could argue that it may come back to bite you, and therefore you will always be fouling your own nest. That would be true, say, of destroying social security, not having healthcare for all, blowing up other countries, etc. All of these are essentially fouling your own nest and are all right-wing policy. As Lenin said, “A capitalist would sell us the rope with which we hang him.”
Meat Eating and Global Warming
Moving down the food chain eliminates a lot of toxic waste and reduces our carbon footprint. Win-win
Wasn’t it conservative Teddy Roosevelt who started environmentalism as a political issue? And Nixon created the clean air act, right?
As I see it, environmentalism began as a conservative issue. Finally, the liberals got around to saying, “Yeah, you guys are right about that.”
Even Bush the first was at least a little bit environmentally concerned. But when junior got to be prez, he tossed out environmentalism wholesale. Now all this seems to have gone down the “memory hole” and now environmentalists and liberals are one and the same.
Doll–I would say T. Roosevelt was a Liberal Imperialist, along the British line; a Social Darwinist, a la Spencer; and a Conservationist, in the manner of a Christian preserving God’s creation. Most of today’s politicos in the US and UK are the above sans Conservationist.
I’ve been waiting for a long time for a politician with guts somewhere else in the world to bring this up. Its long overdue.
Another problem is that the world continues to allow Bush to harp on about a manufactured threat, namely Iran every time the UN convenes. Isn’t it time somebody told bush to STFU and start discussing what he’s going to do to help solve a real and very immediate threat of global warming?
Sanctions against the American government are well deserved but the poor will be the ones who will get the kick in the shorts. The same government will see to it.
The US is teetering economically, and one good push could throw us over the edge. If our numerous offenses–refusal to respond to global warming and reform our #1 polluting ways, sabotaging the Bali conference, invading Iraq and causing the deaths of a million people, most of them noncombatants, torturing and disappearing people, interfering in other people’s domestic affairs, supporting corrupt and brutal governments, being the world’s #1 arms merchant, our multinationals bullying and exploiting the developing world–would certainly give ample reason for it. If foreigners stopped buying our stuff, stopped financing our massive deficit spending, stopped dancing to our tunes, we’d be in big, big trouble very quickly.
Obviously the American people aren’t motivated by ethical or legal concerns, but perhaps out of economic self interest they would finally act by forcing the administration and Congress, partners in crime, to change their ways.
“Obviously the American people aren’t motivated by ethical or legal concerns, but perhaps out of economic self interest they would finally act by forcing the administration and Congress, partners in crime, to change their ways.”
Isn’t this self evident? The American people have only cared about their wallets since the very beginning.
As the saying goes, Americans will do the right thing only after everything else has failed.
Hey, as a American I would like to impose sanctions on the american corporations. Remember, us citizens don’t need to be sanctioned as people, just as corporations. I try to do the right thing first as a person and second as a company. The problem is in the clientèle, should we be sanctioned against the use of non environmental products? Like a Mr. Yuck sticker tax?
It might help Ms. Merkel win an election or help the Germans feel good about their own greenhouse gas reductions by benchmarking their progress against the US doing almost nothing.
What have the Germans really done to reduce GHGs? Closing ridiculously inefficient Soviet era factories in the east was easy. They build VWs in Mexico and Mercedes SUVs in North Carolina. They are into being the priviliged nation trading carbon credits with …who? The autobahn is still gleaming with 100+ mph gas guzzlers. (mph, not mpg!) Sounds a lot like the US to me.
To make a case with the WTO court, they might have to prove an “energy intensive” good would have been produced with substantially less GHG in the EU. Coal is coal on both sides of the Atlantic. Bush’s attitude should be irrelevant.
If global warming is as serious as recent developments indicate, none of us really gets it. Not the Greens, the Germans, Al Gore, the carbon traders… The EU and China should not worry about the US getting a free ride or who does more or less. They should simply cut back GHG production as much as possible towards being carbon neutral and lead by example.
They will just move corporations/money around in response to attempts to regulate/punish. They have already figured out how to beat this type of attack.
If you want sanctions I’ll give you sanctions:
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/unsanam2
get me enough signatures and I will hand deliver it to the UN.
stop procrastinating and whining and DO SOMETHING!
Boycott & blame this these dreadful policies on this administrations—Never:
Instead blame the apathetic morans who helped them steal the elections, who are responsible for their not only this administrations unconsciencable environmental policies but scores of other detremential sell outs.
Levying special taxes or sanctions on energy-intensive US products, such as steel and aluminum, which are exported to Europe, could be the first step
The US is burning fossil fuel to maintain economic growth. Only 40% of aluminum consumed in the US is recycled. The other 60% is processed from bauxite costing up to twenty times the energy as recycling. See US EPA: “How does recycling save energy?”
Furthermore, most of this energy is electricity produced by coal-fired power plants that waste 75% of the energy consumed. So virgin aluminum uses a total of 60 times the energy as recycling. This implies 60 times the carbon emissions too of course, and also puts a huge strain on the ecosystems that have to sink all that waste heat.
The bauxite, with two to three times the mass of the finished aluminum, has to be shipped from Australia to the eastern United States where the cheap coal electric plants are. This further increases the colossal energy plunder by “free market capitalism”.
Obviously, the percent of recycled aluminum should increase to 90% and the virgin aluminum should be produced in Australia using solar-thermal electric plants given the abundant sunshine there. These loonitary capitalist should be sent to early retirement behind bars. Let the kindergarten children design the industrial processes.
rtdrury:
I thought we were doing a lot better job recycling aluminum than 40%! That sucks. We do a lot better with steel. As our manufacturing base continues to move to China, it will be Chinese bauxite in Chinese aluminum plants powered by Chinese coal fired electric generation. Net effect on GHG production? 0. China is starting to invest some of its trade surplus in nuclear power, so maybe that expensive aluminum process some day will be powered by GHG free nuclear.
The US could some day close its primary aluminum plants and even become an exporter of aluminum scrap. (Presuming voodoo economics really works and we can still afford to import finished goods containing aluminum by then.)
The Australian government is pretty shameless about Australia having just about the largerst GHG emissions per capita in the world. For people living on the world’s largest desert island, they don’t seem much interested in solar power.
Bottom line, it is a waste to recycle only 40% of something so energy intensive to make. I’ve also noticed it seems to be getting harder to find recycle trash bins in parks, shopping malls, etc.
China did bettr than impose a sanction, as of this morning, China owns 10% of Barnes Nobel. They had to sell it to them or they would have gone belly up. If any don’t believe we are on the verge of a depression, there is another ‘huge’ clue that indeed we are. The other nations won’t have to sanction us, we won’t be here next year.
I see the edit function is not working again, it says I didn’t write it. Hmmmmmmmm?
bidelo said:
As Lenin said, “A capitalist would sell us the rope with which we hang him.”
That’s right. Consciously or not, conservatives will foul their own nest perhaps believing that they can buy their way out when the disaster they brought upon themselves claims them first, or that their armies will protect them when their money is worthless.
Doll said:
“Wasn’t it conservative Teddy Roosevelt who started environmentalism as a political issue? And Nixon created the clean air act, right?”
Liberals like Muir, Thoreau, Ansel Adams, Chief Seattle and others before him raised environmental awareness and were among our first well-known environmentalists. Teddy R. loved hunting and fishing in wild country, much as redneck conservatives do who sponsor Ducks Unlimited and the NRA. They want to preserve the habitat to continue practicing their sport, but as a whole, they hate liberal environmentalists though both work for similar goals.
Nixon passed the Clean Air Act because conservatives also have to breathe though they’re happy to send our pollution overseas. Out of sight, out of mind.
“Climate Sanctions Sought…”
This has been suggested already in 1975. I lived in Germany and remember the total indifference to the so-called “green radicals” demanding cutting of pollution. [Implying to cut production]
It also became quickly clear that it is an ideological question about the merit and justification of our way of consumer capitalist existence with bio-cide all around us.
Now we see the real bind the world is in - if we stop the way we produce and consume, we will kill millions thru economic failure, and save little of the co2 emmissions otherwise, hardly much to make a difference in the total sum accumulated over the last 100 years of industrialization.
If we don’t change our ways, we will reach quickly the threatening 450 ppm of co2, scientists warn us about.
We are f**ed -
The turmoil on the money market reflects this inability to continue “BIZ AS USUAL”, as much as the fact that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan is coming home to the USA, Britain and Australia in insidious disguises as loss of workplaces, deterioriating living conditions with the inevitable social breakdown.
The way we create money - the way the world tries to live on DEBT finance - these are indicators of an ill global outlook for us all.
I’m stupid again, it isn’t Banes Nobel, it’s that major Wall Street brokerage firm.
Reaganite tax cut and spend voodoo economics + deregulation / non-enforcement + pouring money into the war of terror + “free” trade and off shoring our manufacturing base + peak oil + printing funny money to pay for it all = ??
I don’t know what the historians (if any survive) will call it, but its amazing everything has held together this long. A US economic collapse would slow down the entire world, and that should at least be a good thing for reduction of GHG emissions.
As for the recycling of aluminum, I recently visited P.E.I. and I was happy to find that they have an excellent way to deal with this. Soda is only sold in returnable glass bottles. I forget how much the deposit was, but I remember it being far higher than my native Massachusetts’ 5¢. Also, instead of being melted down and re-cast, the bottles are simply sanitized and reused until they become extremely scuffed. And guess what? Soda tastes better out of a glass bottle anyhow.
I’d also like to point out that many states refuse to recycle aluminum foil, which is found in just about every American kitchen. What’s the deal with that?
I think the burden here is partially on the people, to remember “the 3 R’s”: Reduce, reuse, recycle. It’s all well and fine to want the government to help with global warming, but the we ALL need to step up to the plate for this one.