For what it’s worth, outgoing Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has some ideas: Embrace free trade, not protectionism, if global environmental progress is the goal.
Speaking at an event organized by Washington, D.C. think tank Resources for the Future, Sec. Paulson offered a defense of the Bush administration’s—and his own—approach to climate policy, with a special nod for the $2 billion clean-tech transfer fund he helped create under the umbrella of the World Bank.
In that line, Secretary Paulson reserved his harshest language for punitive trade policies he says impede environmental cooperation between rich and poor countries.
Slapping “carbon tariffs” on imports coming from countries that don’t tackle greenhouse-gas emissions—an idea repeatedly floated in Washington—“would be a dangerous path to go down,” Sec. Paulson said. “I strongly oppose that,” he said, since it would fly in the face of one his favorite causes, greater economic and environmental engagement with China. “There’s no hope” of curbing global greenhouse-gas emissions unless China and other developing economies play ball, he said.
World Trade Organization rules might make so-called carbon tariffs illegal anyway. But existing rules provide for plenty of other perfectly legal tariffs that also hamstring green goals, he said, such as stiff tariffs on the export of environmental technologies.
“Those are morally and economically wrong,” Sec. Paulson said, adding for good measure that they are “extraordinarily stupid and counterproductive.” link to full
From the Comments
I love your title “Use Free Trade to Fight Climate Change”.
It perfectly illustrates the lack of science and understanding in the whole global warming hysteria.
One cannot stop climate change. There is absolutely nothing that human beings can do to stop the climate from changing.
One can stop human pollution and carbon emissions (in theory), but the climate is constantly changing, one way or another.
More than 10,000 years ago, all of Canada and the northern 1/3 of the US was covered in a giant glacier, this melted due to global warming, more than 9,900 years before the industrial revolution.
Hope this helps.
Comment by get real - January 13, 2009 at 11:55 am
I love your title “Use Free Trade to Fight Climate Change”.
It perfectly illustrates the lack of science and understanding in the whole global warming hysteria.
One cannot stop climate change. There is absolutely nothing that human beings can do to stop the climate from changing.
One can stop human pollution and carbon emissions (in theory), but the climate is constantly changing, one way or another.
More than 10,000 years ago, all of Canada and the northern 1/3 of the US was covered in a giant glacier, this melted due to global warming, more than 9,900 years before the industrial revolution.
Hope this helps.
Comment by get real - January 13, 2009 at 11:55 am