Madam Miaow has had her comment removed from the CiF site on the Guardian. She was reponding to Mark Lynas’s article. His piece indulged in a hysterical “let’s demonise and blame China” for Copenhagen.
It seems that the Guardian can’t cope with robust debate, argument, points of view…obviously only if you agree with the line. Now where’s the debate in that? We will wait and see whether they explain themselves and/or restore the comment.
From Madam Miaow: UPDATE Wednedsay 23rd December : Comment is free but only if you agree. The Guardian removed my comment below from their thread, posted 22nd December 9.23pm. Not only mine, but I notice some other very good posts robustly rebutting Lynas’s assertions and errors have been removed.
Dear Mark,
So the cold war is alive and well.
Western spin is really pulling out all the stops, perhaps because we are onto you as the various blogs and forums show.
if anything, China got strong-armed into signing a weak deal when it should have held out as Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and others have said.
The US and the rich nations use up almost all the carbon allowance in the atmosphere over the past 160 years, the US dithers over ten years of Bush, they refuse to ratify Kyoto, the Danish summit chair has to resign when she’s caught fast-tracking the rich nations’ deal, the West fail in their Kyoto pledges, Canada rips up its Kyoto deal and proceeds with exploiting its huge reserves of dirty oil, the US will only reduce emissions by 4% against the 1990 base year and not the 17% you describe as “serious cuts”, while China makes real strides in green technology, and so on.
But it is all China’s fault.
Hilary Clinton bursts into the conference demanding China eat shit when the US didn’t even have anything to offer. They knew that the terms of the “verification” they demanded was an exercise in humiliation and China would not stand for it. The US can’t get anything meaningful past their senate, which includes some “wholly owned subsidiaries of the energy industry” (Monbiot) and resorts to sleight of hand.
But China is the villain.
As for Merkel, she is a massive hypocrite when you look at what her government’s been doing.
Even John Prescott pointed out that we’ve had our industrial revolution yet the poor countries have to halt in their tracks and people live on an average of $2 per day.
But according to you China twirls its moustache and strokes its cat as it eats the planet for breakfast.
What other country has an entire city using solar powered appliances? Who else has planted such huge tracts of forest while loggers tear down the rest? China aims for 15% of its energy from renewables, it has revolutionised wind-turbines, makes a key component of electric car batteries, and so on. We in the UK can’t even meet our Kyoto promise.
The world says it’ll pay $100 billion into the global kitty. Yet how much does the US spend each year on wars? Something like a million dollars a day on petrol alone.
This game of smoke and mirrors is shameful. Dividing the world into angel and devil does not help, neither does throwing a hissy-fit when China baulks at signing the rich nations’ deal which condemns the poor nations to a slumdog future. At an early stage in its industrial development China is moving onto the right track. By all means criticise them when they screw up but give them credit for what they’re getting right. The future of the planet is too important for these political football games.
Seasons greetings, although seasons may soon be a thing of the past if the rich nations get their own way,
Anna