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Leaders of the Rich World Are Enacting a Giant Fraud
Every delegate to the Copenhagen summit is being greeted by the sight of a vast fake planet dominating the city's central square. This swirling globe is covered with corporate logos - the Coke brand is stamped over Africa, while Carlsberg appears to own Asia, and McDonald's announces "I'm loving it!" in great red letters above. "Welcome to Hopenhagen!" it cries. It is kept in the sky by endless blasts of hot air.
This plastic planet is the perfect symbol for this summit. The world is being told that this is an emergency meeting to solve the climate crisis - but here inside the Bela Centre where our leaders are gathering, you can find only a corrupt shuffling of words, designed to allow countries to wriggle out of the bare minimum necessary to prevent the unravelling of the biosphere.
Staggering across the fringes of the summit are the people who will see their countries live or die on the basis of its deliberations. Leah Wickham, a young woman from Fiji, broke down as she told the conference she will see her homeland disappear beneath the waves if we do not act now. "All the hopes of my generation rest on Copenhagen," she pleaded. Dazed Chinese and Indian NGOs explain how the Himalayan ice is rapidly vanishing and will be gone by 2035 - so the great rivers of Asia that are born there will shrivel and cease. They provide water for a quarter of humanity.
Mohamed Nasheed, the President of the drowning Maldives, said simply: "The last generation of humans went to the moon. This generation of humans needs to decide if it wants to stay alive on planet Earth."
We know what has to happen to give us a fighting chance of avoiding catastrophe. We need carbon emissions in rich countries to be 40 per cent lower than they were in 1990 - by 2020. We can haggle with each other over how to get there but we can't haggle with atmospheric physics over the end-goal: the Earth's atmosphere has put this limit on what it can absorb, and we can respect it, or suffer.
Yet the first week of this summit is being dominated by the representatives of the rich countries trying to lace the deal with Enron-style accounting tricks that will give the impression of cuts, without the reality. It's essential to understand these shenanigans this week, so we can understand the reality of the deal that will be announced with great razzmatazz next week.
Most of the tricks centre around a quirk in the system: a rich country can "cut" its emissions without actually releasing fewer greenhouse gases. How? It can simply pay a poor country to emit less than it otherwise would have. In theory it sounds okay: we all have the same atmosphere, so who cares where the cuts come from?
But a system where emissions cuts can be sold among countries introduces extreme complexity into the system. It quickly (and deliberately) becomes so technical that nobody can follow it - no concerned citizen, no journalist, and barely even full-time environmental groups. You can see if your government is building more coal power stations, or airports, or motorways. You can't see if the cuts they have "bought" halfway round the world are happening - especially when they are based on projections of increases that would have happened, in theory, if your government hadn't stumped up the cash.
A study by the University of Stanford found that most of the projects that are being funded as "cuts" either don't exist, don't work, or would have happened anyway. Yet this isn't a small side-dish to the deal: it's the main course. For example, under proposals from the US, the country with by far the highest per capita emissions in the world wouldn't need to cut its own gas by a single exhaust pipe until 2026, insisting it'll simply pay for these shadow-projects instead.
It gets worse still. A highly complex system operating in the dark is a gift to corporate lobbyists, who can pressure or bribe governments into rigging the system in their favour, rather than the atmosphere's. It's worth going through some of the scams that are bleeding the system of any meaning. They may sound dull or technical, but they are life or death to countries like Leah's.
Trick one: hot air. The nations of the world were allocated permits to release greenhouse gases back in 1990, when the Soviet Union was still a vast industrial power - so it was given a huge allocation. But the following year, it collapsed, and its industrial base went into freefall - along with its carbon emissions. It was never going to release those gases after all. But Russia and the eastern European countries have held on to them in all negotiations as "theirs". Now, they are selling them to rich countries who want to purchase "cuts". Under the current system, the US can buy them from Romania and say they have cut emissions - even though they are nothing but a legal fiction.
We aren't talking about climatic small change. This hot air represents 10 gigatonnes of CO2. By comparison, if the entire developed world cuts its emissions by 40 per cent by 2020, that will only take six gigatonnes out of the atmosphere.
Trick two: double-counting. This is best understood through an example. If Britain pays China to abandon a coal power station and construct a hydro-electric dam instead, Britain pockets the reduction in carbon emissions as part of our overall national cuts. In return, we are allowed to keep a coal power station open at home. But at the same time, China also counts this change as part of its overall cuts. So one tonne of carbon cuts is counted twice. This means the whole system is riddled with exaggeration - and the figure for overall global cuts is a con.
Trick three: the fake forests - or what the process opaquely dubs "LULUCF". Forests soak up warming gases and store them away from the atmosphere - so, perfectly sensibly, countries get credit under the new system for preserving them. It is an essential measure to stop global warming. But the Canadian, Swedish and Finnish logging companies have successfully pressured their governments into inserting an absurd clause into the rules. The new rules say you can, in the name of "sustainable forest management", cut down almost all the trees - without losing credits. It's Kafkaesque: a felled forest doesn't increase your official emissions... even though it increases your actual emissions.
There are dozens more examples like this, but you and I would lapse into a coma if I listed them. This is deliberate. This system has been made incomprehensible because if we understood, ordinary citizens would be outraged. If these were good faith negotiations, such loopholes would be dismissed in seconds. And the rich countries are flatly refusing to make even these enfeebled, leaky cuts legally binding. You can toss them in the bin the moment you leave the conference centre, and nobody will have any comeback. On the most important issue in the world - the stability of our biosphere - we are being scammed.
Our leaders are aren't giving us Hopenhagen - they're giving us Cokenhagen, a sugary feelgood hit filled with sickly additives and no nutrition. Their behaviour here - where the bare minimum described as safe by scientists isn't even being considered - indicates they are more scared of the corporate lobbyists that fund their campaigns, or the denialist streak in their own country, than of rising seas and falling civilisations.
But there is one reason why I am still - despite everything - defiantly hopeful. Converging on this city now are thousands of ordinary citizens who aren't going to take it any more. They aren't going to watch passively while our ecosystems are vandalised. They are demanding only what the cold, hard science demands - real and rapid cuts, enforced by a global environmental court that will punish any nation that endangers us all. This movement will not go away. Copenhagen has soured into a con - but from the wreckage, there could arise a stronger demand for a true solution.
If we don't raise the political temperature very fast, the physical temperature will rise - and we can say goodbye to Leah, and to the only safe climate we have ever known.
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Show All"This is deliberate. This system has been made incomprehensible because if we understood, ordinary citizens would be outraged. If these were good faith negotiations, such loopholes would be dismissed in seconds."
Good article.
q
Wonder what the fraud-in-chief is going to do about it? I know we all misunderstood Obama's brilliant, bloody Afghanisnam approach. Does Barack care a whit for the environment, if not for people?
Sorry to be cynical, but I'm expecting Rahm Emmauel-engineered crumbs dressed up like birthday cakes. Check out Tiabbi's latest round-up of Obama's 'Big Sellout' of the financial/trade sector. Obama so far has to be an historically fairly sizable, betrayal and disappointment for America.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/31234647/obamas_big_sellout
FUBARack cares only about FUBARack.
"FUBARack." Nice one. May I use it?
A good little piece on cap & trade by Annie Leonard:
http://storyofstuff.com/capandtrade/
Thanks for the link, I watched it, this was a good breakdown.
Fantastic article. How any halfway intelligent person with a conscience (i'm talking to YOU Paul Krugman!) can advocate in favor of cap-n-trade over a carbon tax is shameful.
When we wanted railroads, we subsidized them with large land grants. When we wanted to encourage airplane development, we subsidized it with payments for airmail deliveries. Why not subsidize green technologies directly? We could even make that part of an economic "stimulus" plan.
A "carbon tax" still assumes that the free market will solve the problem efficiently given financial incentives, while raising costs for energy consumers, ordinary people who are already struggling and are likely to rebel at the ballot box next election.
Isn't Al Gore a partner in an investment firm that is poised to make billions in the cap and trade business? Maybe Krugman also invests in this.
I may have this wrong and can't verify. no time today to do that. just heard about it recently. rumor?
I can't believe Obama passed up his chance to be a martyr for peace. How many people get such an opportunity? And before you say I'm old and tired and would love to go out in a way that has some meaning, let me point out that I didn't take an oath preserve, protect, and defend the constitution of the USA.
Empires don't hire anyone with a desire to be a "martyr for peace." They scout, groom, and thoroughly vet candidates long before we're aware of it. Once they have their useful shills - and think how alluring the job would be to a young, ambitious black man or a woman who has had his/her eyes on that prize for decades - at last, the show begins! The MSM begins to rake in the money with their "really big shooo," theatrical entertainment for mind-numbed Americans. The "audience" chooses sides and right on cue they cheer, cry, shout, jump up and down as cheerleaders, depending on the particular scene. The entire thing is a fraud. We seem to know it on a gut level yet we buy into it. Then comes the disappointment and the cries, "We were tricked!"
It's pathetic how humans can be so controlled by these evil forces. It's no wonder people seek out saviors.
And do so by a CRASH PROGRAM of producing electric cars and the solar film roof panels to generate the electricity to power them AND our homes, as well as the good manufacturing JOBS to save our Houses, HOMES AND HOMELAND. Then, we can leave the Iraqiranistanians alone in THEIRS!
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country. "-- Thomas Jefferson --
We've learned nothing in 200+ years.
We have sown mayhem, murder and torture for decades and now we will begin to reap the harvest from an angry planet Goddess , Gaia!
And once again, MONEY is the real problem. Those who have it demand more, and the rest of us just want enough to have a life. WE don't get a say, those with money get to call ALL the shots. Only problem is that just because you have money doesn't mean that you have any brains. Our senate is a PERFECT example of that. Ever seen a more brain dead bunch of millionaires in your life?
And all they want is more money. They don't care if it kills off the planet, they are OLD people, mostly white men. They have spend their whole lives chasing the almighty buck, and they don't care about the damages, they have theirs and that is all that matters.
So money has GOT to stop being the only reason we do anything. I told people 25 years ago that the path Reagan put us on was stupid, senseless and suicidal, but no one wanted to believe me. Now look at where we are and tell me who had their head on straight and who had theirs up Reagan's butt.
Until money is stopped from being the only reason for anything to happen, we will continue to go down this path, most likely to the point of Easter Islanding the whole planet. But those with the money won't be bothered by that. And that is why the must all be dealt with. How about rounding them all up and putting them on one of those islands that is disappearing in the rising ocean? I can't think of anything more fitting.
I'm pretty sure they all own their own private islands anyway. They could care less about the rest of the world's troubles because as you said, they have theirs, complete with impenetrable bunkers and 200 years worth of supplies. And when all the poor people have been swept off the planet they'll come out of hiding like munchkins when the witch is gone, and the world will be new.
Cap and trade is just another name for nothin' left to lose. It is a commodities scam that will do nothing to improve our carbon footprint, but will put billions of dollars into the pockets of traders. Chicago is all set up, ready to rake in the money.
If they took even baby steps toward actual change, it would cost far less over all than what this scam represents.
Only a capitalist could come up with something as stupid as this. Let me get this straight. I'll by credits so I can keep polluting and fucking up the environment. Wall Street can sell the credits and continue exploting the public. In the old days they used to call this extortion. The mob has done very well with this system.
The Mob is a piker compared to Gall Street.
Human nature seems to require a rock bottom before we will attempt change. By the time we see real evidence of climate change that even the deniers can't deny, it will be too late. Maybe Gaia is shaking us fleas loose.
I see the deniers, like the Monty Python Knight refusing to give up the fight in spite of losing limb after limb, insisting to the bitter end that Global Warming is not caused by Man.
Like our utterly dysfunctional 'justice', 'legal', and 'defense' systems, inscrutable complexity is the core essence of our unholy wholly rigged market. Thus, our 6,000-plus-page, lobbyist-authored tax code will now balloon with even more hot air and CO2. Observe how well the priesthood behind the revered "invisible hand" has served humanity with its hyper-leveraged derivatives, SPEs, MBSs, CDSs, CDOs, SIVs and you'll see a stark vision of how this even more exponentially tangled shell game will carbonize our planetary ecology.
Something must yield; this too shall pass. Will it be the corrupted system or the Earth itself?
Can humanity pull it out? Cameron's new film brings up the unsettling question of whether we will repeat the same horrors of careless destruction and mayhem on other planets, if we get that far. Interestingly, he doesn't disguise the fact that, just like in Aliens, it is the US Marines in the service of corporations doing the dirty deed.
Watching Matt Taibbi's videoblog on the Obama Economy and seeing the US incarceration rate reach an all time high fills me dread. We have massive corporate cock-ups that are being institutionalized -- Wall Street bailouts, "free market" climate solutions, the emergence of private military contractors, etc. ad nauseam, at the precise time when the intertwind planet-wide crises require the very best in human ingenuity and compassion to meet.
The poor will again suffer the worst consequences, and probably end up holding the bag for the wealthy, which is why you have so many climate change deniers running around in the West, oil-producing countries, and the new elites of the Third World. We have Fear, Ignorance, Greed, and Hate ruling the most powerful country in the world.
ceti 11:43am, "...whether we will repeat the same horrors of careless destruction and mayhem on other planets,..." ceti, no society operating on the basis of testosterone, e.g. Authoritarian Patriarchy, (White) Male Supremacy, Gender Slavery, & Constant War with feral blood drinking Oligarchy as the glue that binds the shit-cake together, will ever becoming a space faring people. Too violent. They eat each other first. Pls refer to your standard edition, "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy". I checked with Zaphod just to be polite, but Marvin gave me the real skinny, though it took him three million four hundred eighty thousand five hundred eighty two minutes to get to the point. First he had to tell me about the recent upgrades at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. And yes, the mice are doing fine and the porpoises are waiting to be beamed out. There are a few million of us hoping to hitch a ride with them. It operates on the same level as hoping that BHO would be "a progressive", all evidence to the contrary. Keep your towel close at hand, you never know when you might need it. This land is not and shall not be untouched in the coming Apocalypse. It's all in the Guide (see the section on Future History under the Heading: NONE that you'd want to ever talk to your mother about)
“Sustainability ....requires a fundamental shift in attitude, in the way people think and feel. We must address the root causes of our unsustainable practices, which lie deeply in our assumptions about the relationship of humans to the natural world, and in our relative ignorance of the functioning of living systems.
We must include all the costs of production--including the ecological and human costs--in our business accounting and responsibility. Externalizing these costs, as we have been doing, wreaks havoc on our economy, our social fabric, and our life support system."
Source: http://www.joannamacy.net/html/living.html
Johann Hari has done an excellent job in exposing the hypocrisy of "Hopenhagen" but the bigger picture is still missing:
The real and fundamental problem is not the emission of greenhouse gases (or their reduction) but the basic rules and goals of our economic policies which have become the organizing principle of society: market rule, competition and infinite "growth".
As E.F. Schumacher ("Small is Beautiful") already observed in the late 1970s, "the problem of production has not been solved". The central question is: Who decides what is being produced? Can we afford an economy for “gain”? The "market" as it exists today, knows neither morality nor responsibility let alone "systemic" thinking.
Industrial production (driven by capital interests) is embedded in a natural system but its architects refuse to respect the laws which govern the overriding system. The goals of corporations are increasing profit and endless growth, the goal of nature is survival of the system (zero growth) with the most efficient use of energy, materials and avoidance of any waste. Obviously, the two goals are incompatible.
Our economic goals are not the result of adaption and learning, but the result of quasi religious indoctrination i.e. "free market ideology" and outdated economic theories from the 18, 19th centuries; “management” (control) concepts are rooted in military hierarchies, etc.]
“Information flow is of paramount importance, therefore, to the health of any living system--or enterprise. Feedback from its component parts, and from the larger systems in which it operates, is essential to its long-term survival.
When feedback is blocked or discounted, the system cannot meet its own changing needs or respond to a changing environment.
Feedback from the biosphere--climatic disruptions and loss of forests, fisheries, and topsoil--is revealing that our present economy is unsustainable.
Self-governance requires the free circulation of information necessary to public decision-making. In the present hypertrophied stage of the Industrial Growth Society, however, even governments that call themselves democracies suppress information unwelcome to corporate interests.
We learn daily of high-level cover-ups, a scientific panel's findings officially rejected, a report censored. We have become accustomed to misinformation and deception about an enormous array of dangers, such as the relationship of cancer and other diseases to radioactivity, food additives, or household products.
... This institutionalized secrecy is understandable in terms of protecting vested interests, but it comes at a high price.
For any system that consistently suppresses feedback--closing its perceptions to the results of its behavior--is suicidal.
The symptoms of "climate change" (among others) indicate an urgent need to change the goals our system pursues and the values by which it measures its success. ...the maximization of corporate profits as our economy's highest priority is progressively destroying the interwoven fabric on which all life depends. When we block this feedback, our corporate economy, being geared to a dysfunctional goal, spins out of control. In systems terms, it is on "runaway." Lacking vital information about the effects of its behavior, it is caught in a vicious self-amplifying cycle, causing "overshoot" in one area after another ..."
I wonder, do powerful CEOs and politicians really lack information or do they simply not care about the monumental injustice and misery they have created for millions of people?
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7932485454526581006#
Well, the PR-industry and our political leaders at the service of the "economy" have ensured that this "feedback" is continously being obfuscated by trying to keep us ignorant or by feeding us disinformation (see the latest furor about "climategate" (hacked e-mails & George Monbiot's response here on CD) .
Thanks to the internet, they could not block all information but our natural disposition for denying unwelcome facts did not help either:
All these doom & gloom scenarios (climate-wise) "arouse feelings of fear, anger, grief, and a sense of helplessness. These emotions are actually healthy: they inform us that something is amiss and changes are needed. Denial of anomalous information and uncomfortable feelings blocks our ability to think clearly and responsibly. Instead of responding to issues and dangers in a timely fashion, we seek reassurance that everything is really okay and we can continue with business as usual. We fall into apathy." [apathy means literally avoidance of pain ...)
Indigenous peoples (used to) have a knowledge we lost: they experienced themselves as part of nature, as a tiny thread in a complex network of life that needs to be protected.
Our "superior" place in the natural system rests on the assumption that we are the pride of creation, the only living being endowed with reason,intellect, and a soul. Therefore it is considered "normal" that we conquer and subdue nature for profit, (including immense cruelty to animals) - no longer "Mother Earth" but "untapped resources" waiting to be exploited, no matter what the social or environmental cost for future generations... Terms like "development" actually mean destruction of ecosystems and local cultures for short term financial gain ...
We must make our political leaders realize that this attitude is suicidal and stupid, that all living beings have an intrinsic value (as parts of ecosystems)and that this value is what really counts, NOT the "market" which puts a (commodity) price on everything but knows the value of nothing ....
http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/2002/G/2002038.html
AND we (the people) must also take back control over monetary policy (including "money as debt" creation - see the videos (Pt 1 and 2) for details) to end the rule of the financial mafia ....
I can't trust all these climate change talks like I sort of used to. The way I see it, they're no different from these useless economic summits where "free trade" is off the table as far as the talks are concerned. Same thing here with climate change talks but the discussion of jobs is off the table and that's a bad move. Don't get me wrong. I'm not some kind of a fossil fuel hack who argues against reforming climate change by ranting about losing those coal mining jobs. Those jobs deserve to be lost. The jobs I am talking about that should be included are truly green jobs.
For example, wouldn't it be nice if green jobs such as manufacturing solar panels from hemp were created? I'm still baffled as to why the nations that don't outlaw hemp unlike the US haven't thought of this. I mean here we are still buying solar panals manufactured from coal when hemp could be the green and durable replacing ingredient.
Another example I can think of is making jobs available in more places so that we can cut down our commute time to work and making more jobs remote. This discussion was brought up when gas prices hit $4 a gallon but nowadays it's mute.
Climate change talks are useless unless the discussion of jobs is put on the table and strategies for tying jobs to going green are worked out.
Their greed is so great. Of course they are going to play games. In the end, the result will be that they will rich, dead and gone. The result will be that future generations will inherit horrors and suffering beyond imagination. The result will be a stinking, sweltering earth, beyond any hope of repair (at least until the human race has gone extinct).
The only hope exists today, by violent protest and revolution. The current systems must be overthrown. Do we sacrifice our lives now with bloodshed and violence to protect our earth and our future generations? Or do we stay home and play with shiny toys, ignoring the approaching apocalpyse?
We can't heal what's been caused by violence with more violence. Why do you insist on violence?
As much pollution that is being pumped into the environment and ecosystems there is unfortunately nothing that can stop the slow inexorable move from this interglacial period that WILL move on into the next glacial period but the good news is that that next glacial build up is many centuries away and unless something very catastrophic as the remaining ice on greenland and/or antarctica 'crashing' into the oceans there is still time to move and that is what will happen, certain segments of people will have to move.
What is happening now as has happened before is that this transitional period will be fraught with unpredictable and violent weather and the eventual or possibility of the ocean currents, in particularly the gulf stream shutting down will depend how much fresh water is dumped into the ocean but as before the ocean currents will stop again.
If some doubt me about what I say, I can only say you need to go to NOAA's web site
http://www.noaa.gov/
and key in the search window 'ice age cycles' and you will find ample information about what real climate change is and how the carbon cycles are effecting climate and all sorts of other details about what has happened, is happening and will happen and none of it is on any kind of strict time table.
It is high crimes and treason the way the educational system has been taken over just like how the information system(the msm) has been taken over by the 4 conservative owners that do their best to spread disinformation, empty, worthless or NO information to the main segment of the people here in america for those 'special interests' that want it that way.
Human caused climate change is predicted to occur over ecological time scales, not over geological time scales. Important distinction. Effects will be seen much sooner than from the long time scales of geologic climate change over which human populations would have time to adapt.
"Leaders of the Rich World Are Enacting a Giant Fraud" - that should be the headline of almost every front page news story every day. You can change the text, but the headline could stay the same and it'd fit every day the lead story isn't, say, your local team winning a sports championship...
Compare these stories..thirty bankers, two countries...this is so clear
*****Venezuela issues arrest warrants for 30 bankers
Tue, 08 Dec 2009 02:59:10 GMT
A court in Venezuela has issued arrest warrants for 30 bank executives over their alleged mismanagement of the country's financial affairs.
The court order comes days after the government of President Hugo Chavez nationalized seven banks due to their 'unregulated' transactions.
“A group of irresponsible bankers, of citizens crazed by ambition, started to use the public's money, private and public money in their banks, to commit crimes,” Chavez said on Monday before the arrest orders were issued.
However, the Venezuelan leader has always maintained that he only seeks to regulate banks and to bring a group of con men to justice and does not want to take over the entire banking sector.
-------------------------------------------------------------
*****Goldman Sachs scraps cash bonuses for 30 top executives
The Wall Street firm instead will give them stock and bar them from selling it for five years. Critics call the move window dressing instead of real reform.
By Walter Hamilton and Martin Zimmerman
December 11, 2009
Reporting from Los Angeles and New York
Facing persistent criticism of its huge pay packages, investment banking powerhouse Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Thursday that it would buck long-standing Wall Street tradition and pay no year-end cash bonuses to 30 top executives.
Instead, the firm will give those employees bonuses made up entirely of Goldman Sachs stock and will bar them from selling the shares for five years. The company also said it would give shareholders a formal voice regarding executive pay.
By implementing a number of compensation reforms that Wall Street critics have long championed, Goldman is acting to discourage its employees from taking excessive financial risks. Incentives for Wall Street bankers and traders to place dicey bets with the large sums at their disposal have been widely blamed for contributing to the mortgage meltdown and the global financial crisis.
But Goldman stopped short of the most dramatic step that critics have called for -- actually reducing compensation -- leaving outsiders to ask whether the latest move was little more than window dressing to tamp down the appearance of unbridled greed.
"This is as much a PR move as it is a move to change their pay structure," said Dan Pedrotty, the AFL-CIO's director of investments and a critic of corporate pay practices. "You still have this bottom-line issue that a firm that was just recently bailed out by the American taxpayer is paying out enormous sums of money."
Still, Wall Street has been loath to cede any ground in a years-long tussle over compensation. Goldman's action demonstrates the pressure on the New York company at a time of high unemployment and general suffering that many Americans blame on the country's big banks.
"I'm not surprised they're making this move in light of the scrutiny they're getting over their payouts this year," said Aaron Boyd, research manager at Equilar Inc., a Redwood Shores, Calif., firm that tracks executive pay.
Goldman spokesman Samuel Robinson called the reforms "perhaps the strongest in the industry."
"What we have announced today for the 30 most senior people at Goldman Sachs represents a closer alignment than there has ever been of incentives and compensation with the interests of shareholders and the public," he said.
Bonuses represent a vast majority of the compensation for Goldman senior managers.
The company, however, didn't commit to paying all-stock bonuses beyond this year, although Robinson didn't rule out the possibility.
Long admired on Wall Street for a seeming ability to mint money, Goldman is now reviled by much of the public for the same reason.
Both the American right and left believe neo-classical/neo-liberal economics. There is no real difference. They both are mesmerized by market forces and complex mathematical models which are easy to fool people into thinking they know what they are doing, spreading risk etc. Yet primary variables, like debt vs. GDP, and exponential growth rate of compound interest are completely ignored. General observations, like the largest asset inflation in history (houses) ignored by 98% of economists. Then, after 1% manage to obtain 95% of the wealth, it all crashes.
Why then, would you think they would not stoop to similar tactics and exaggerate our role in climate change? Seek to scare the hell out of honest environmentalists? When the only solution offered is a massive Wall Street give away and wealth extraction scheme?
People here will scream that 98% of scientists form a consensus. I'm also not an economist yet I could easily "observe" the largest asset inflation in history. Yes, lets invest in ending oil/coal for many reasons, but really we need to carefully consider the science for ourselves. The IPCC and NOAA with their massive funding (if you are compliant) are proving less than trust worthy.
For example, is there "observational" evidence that sea levels have risen or will rise? Or is it only mathematical modeling modified to support a preconceived set of assumptions? For ex: consider the opinion of one of the foremost scientists on sea level suggesting massive exaggeration on the subject.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200506/ldselect/ldeconaf/12/12we18.htm
These criminals are succeeding at fooling both right and left!
Incorrect Assum..., you talk about the 1% owning 95% of the wealth, but forget that continuing with the status quo will only benefit the already rich.
>>>When the only solution offered is a massive Wall Street give away and wealth extraction scheme?
This is a complete distortion and a cunning ploy by right wing media. First of all, if you are talking about cap and trade and carbon offsets, they are NOT the "only solution". In fact, they are acknowledged to be bad ideas by many serious people who follow the subject. It's a cunning ploy because, those who spread this lie - that cap & trade being the only solution being offered and it would benefit the bankers are pretending that they are somehow against the bankers. Talk is cheap. But check your sources.
>>>The IPCC and NOAA with their massive funding (if you are compliant) are proving less than trust worthy.
What a sweeping statement! First of all, IPCC does not employ scientists directly, though they make use of results and reports produced by thousands of scientist and researchers worldwide. There may be scientists who have differing viewpoints - especially in an area of study that is still evolving. That is true with so many fields - including quantum physics in its early days. And it's also possible that some of these dissenting scientists are so deeply attached to their pet theories, and they can easily try and convince others of their theories.
Oil companies stand to gain by a continuation of the status quo. They may lose some profits due to stricter limits on GHG emissions. And it's been shown that the oil industry has funded "denial" reports and papers. So who are you gonna believe?
Also, have you heard of something called the "precautionary principle"? Do you want to continue humanity's experiment while sitting inside the test tube, claiming that science is incomplete?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF_anaVcCXg
>>>Seek to scare the hell out of honest environmentalists?
Wow, wow! "Honest environmentalists" should have no problem with conservation, increasing efficiency, renewable energy, cleaner air and water, and so on - which are expected to be "side" benefits of any limits on GHG emissions. Forget cap & trade - in fact, go ahead and fight it. But don't throw the baby with the bath water.
Are enacting? Geez, I thought they had been for quite some time now
green = red and that is the bottom line. This is about leftwing one world government. The rich liberal elite live in 30,000 sq ft mansions and fly around in private jets and the envirnmental movement smiles with glee. This is all about communism and gov't control of everything (unless you can pay the "red" taxes like Al Gore III can.)
The first thing that must be done is excuse all those referring to the earth as Gaia or some nonsense. Theirs is a religion and Al Gore & Soros wants to be their high priest and that is fine, just go over to some little corner and play amongst yourselves.
Of course the climate is changing, duh, who didn't graduate from elementary school here? In the seventies we were warned of doom by ice age. I understand Al and GE has a lot invested on 'green' businesses so of course they are pimping for it. If we are going into a warm period think of the breadbasket in Siberia opening up for business. The doom and gloom people are just trying to scare people into doing as they wish. Conservation is good and it is good not to be wasteful but look at the lifestyles of those preaching to the average person, they are living on the fat of the land. Of course, it is fashionable to be dumb as a rock in today's politics, just look at Hollywood. Heck, they even praise child molesters now. Wake up, America, it is time for cleaning out the rubbish in Congress next year and the White House in three years.
You cheer and be self-absorbed thought controllers are just trying
to brain-wash the people into allowing the corporate rich to
continue destroying government, economy and our natural ecology.
Thom December 11th is an Enemy of Life on Earth. And should be treated as such. It is as simple as that. He thinks science, especially climate science, is just all about "gettin' his money". It is obvious his God is Moola. And he takes Moola over life itself.
And as far as his comment on Gaia being a religion and nonsense, Gaia is just a title for a concept of biospheric equilibrium proposed by the noted and brilliant British scientist James Lovelock, who in fact now thinks GW is too far gone already and the planet is catching a fever "that will last for a hundred thousand years"- and dooming almost all life on Earth by the end of this century. So Thom, do you think Lovelock is "in it for the money"?
The Gaia Theory is science. It is not a religion, as the wingnut right is trying to have ignorant people believe.
It is evident that what is happening in Copenhagen is not as Thom says, but the reverse. Like the article says, games are being played so that the capitalist, global-corporate structure remains the same... despite the warnings, despite the wishes of the people, despite the science. And it is obvious, Al Gore is not having much of an effect, see Thom and Copenhagen for confirmation of this. Right-winges and teabaggers hate Gore with a passion bordering insanity.
As far as Siberia warming and 'opening for business(?)'... as if nature must 'open for business', that is not good, as its melting permafrost will release gigatons of the greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, gravely accellerating global warming in a runaway feedback loop. See www.planetextinction.com.
And what cannot you understand about tipping points? Water at 33 degrees it is a liquid, at 31 degrees it is a solid. This is just an everyday example of a tipping point, where everything drastically changes at once, for better or worse. At 98.6 degrees body temperature you are normal, at 102.6 degrees you are very sick, at 94 degrees you are probably dead.
Thom is an example of the kind of people we must fight. Those who refuse to deal with natural reality, like the anti-science, mendacious, despicable, depraved Senator Inhofe (R- Evil Bastards). It is they who are the road blocks to progress and solutions. And they seem to always err on the side of Money, their real religion. It is they who must be swept away. For Life on Earth to survive.
The state of the world environment is the problem. Al Gore and George Soros and the worshipers of Gaea or Gaia are all small players in the drama that is playing out, as are you. But you and your ilk, with your pitiful and sanctimonious mocking of science and adulation of the might and power that will suck every last bit of non-renewable resources from the earth and in the process make the planet a living hell for humans and many other organisms living and dying on it are indeed a part of the problem. The Panglossian Eden you allude to is mythological horse shit. Take your pompous, condescending babble and please go elsewhere.
TO PROVE THE HARM IN IT
Blame it all on evolution, if you have faith in the religion of evolution,
for as the theory goes, after millions of years our instinct for self-
preservation has created an animal that feels it deserves more, and with a
guilt-free conscience takes all it can take. Actually feels guilty the moment
it fails to take all it can take.
So we have evolved into a creature with a reverse conscience, a never give to
feel-good conscience. And as our destruction of the climate will do man no
harm until after the next generation, nuts-crazy-insane would our conscience
be driven if ever we should give what it takes to save man from extinction.
Well I suppose there must be contradiction in every theory, and that is why
Darwin has to be a fiction teller of one whopper in a conspiracy theory.
For millions of years of “evolution from the lesser to the greater,” and now
with a conscience governed solely by pleasure we devolve from the most
perfect environment and existence to guess what --- nonexistence.
But if you could never quite understand how planet earth could come flying in
from outer space and without some gigantic retro-rocket slowing it down just
perfect to fall into an orbit around the sun most perfect, come let us part
company with the maddening crowd and run for daylight.
For in the beginning man had a most perfect conscience, one that felt it
deserved less and with such a grateful heart could not help but give all
it could give. Actually felt guilty whenever it missed an opportunity to
give all it could give.
For the purpose of this world is to prove the harm in being an ingrate,
so ingrate as to not see that one day of life is more then any man deserves.
Man has not yet mastered the universal scientific knowledge that to give is to receive.
There were so many "primitive" societies that realized how vital the Sun was for their existence. They somehow realized that without the Sun they wouldn't have their food, water (water cycle is driven by the Sun shining down), and trees to make their homes and tools. So they remembered to offer "thanks" to the Sun regularly. They didn't look for stored capital buried in the earth - they could make do with what was available on a yearly, renewable basis, because they were "primitive"...