Flashback: Kyoto Quote a Pol

Climbing into the time machine, the way journalists used to, I found a Time article from 2002 quoting Christine Todd Whitman, another criminal ex-governor of New Jersey, when, as head of the EPA under the Bush Regime, she opined: "The Kyoto Protocol would put millions out of work and have a negligible effect" (on reducing emissions,  presumably).

At first I was struck by the absurd contradiction in her statement. Putting millions of people out of work would have a very positive effect, to whit (man): they wouldn't be driving around spewing their auto exhaust into the atmosphere. That effect alone is not negligible.

But more to the point, by following the very policies she protested for: full no-holds-barred development and growth, the Bush Administration brought about the very consequences Whitman was claiming would result from any attempt to cut down emissions, namely, millions of people out of work, and not only in the US, but around the globe. For the first time in modern history, the growth in US oil imports and energy use have not just stagnated, but reversed, losing 1.5% /yr, whereas all the hand-wringing in the world couldn't stop them from growing by 1.5% /yr before the calamity known as the Bush Debacle occurred.

So, first, Peak oil production, then, Inevitable Inflation from the debasement of the currency that funding 2 Wars with debt while simultaneously cutting the income taxes on the very war profiteers who would rake in the most from the profligate spending that would result from a government at War, and thirdly, Global Warming, all required, as the cicitzens in the most energy-intensive country in the world refused to even acknowledge these problems existed, a worldwide global economic depression to rein them in.

And that's what, totally coincidentally of course, we got.

Petroleum use plummeted in exactly the country it needed to the most: The USA;
Inflation was tamed by the contractionary influence of a deflationary depression;
CO2 emissions, as a result, are much closer to being in line with the Kyoto Protocols than would otherwise have been remotely possible.

So while we listen to the upcoming debate next month, let's listen to what they don't debate, because that's where the problems lurk and the true dangers lie. Since they are intractable, these issues need to be solved by stealth in a Demokracy that's been completely overtaken by the atavistic forces of a reactionary, squabbling rabble of rabid racists and beguiled bureaucrats.

And the Republicans are even worse.