Todd Stern, the chief American negotiator heading to Paris, has tried to justify the disconnect. Mr. Stern recently told the Senate that developing countries need to be allowed to keep emitting so that their economies can continue to grow by 8%-9% a year. “If you’re an economy which is growing at eight or nine percent a year because that’s the stage of development you’re in,” he testified, “it’s pretty hard to say you’re supposed to slam on the brakes and go negative overnight.”


this sounds like a great deal for a country like usa, our economy is growing less than 2% :/ and all the while china uses almost as much coal as the rest of the world. http://science.time.com/...mental-fact-in-the-world/

http://www.principia-scientific.org/Current-News/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...tional/2015/11/28/oceans/ flying boulders really?

haha - and all this from a trace gas which is 0.45% of the atmosphere

I really fail to see how going green is bad for the economy? if other countries can do it successfully why cant the US? Dont you guys claim to be the best country in the world etc etc?


F L U F F

O we can do it, all we have to do it buy all of our good from China or India or some place where there are no environmental regulations. and all the while destroying the coal industry in this country while china burns almost as much as the rest of the world

Tragedy of the commons. China does it, so we shouldn't bother to change either....

or you can replace the coal industy with clean green tech industri which most countries will actually want to buy in the near future! lets see which products you can export more of in 10 years time

Even china is starting to turn around on this matter, wouldnt suprise me if the bloody communists gets it done before the republicans!

I would certainly hope this is not something the Republicans would 'get done'. The US government has no authority to build a new industry or replace an old industry. The US free market, however, will get it done quickly when market conditions are right.

And as long as polluting has no economic value associated with it, those conditions won't be right.

The average price people in the U.S. pay for electricity is about 12 cents per kilowatt-hour. (Context: A typical U.S. household uses about 908 kWh a month of electricity.)Oct 28, 2011

http://www.theenergycollective.com/...y-prices-around-world-kwh

this explains who pays the most to least. the countries that have went green are paying way more and are using less, i for one do not want to sit around and sweat and read by a 25 watt bulb to have enough money left over to buy spam..

Ivan what makes you think china is turning around on this.

i have electric bills of 2-3 thousand a month, if i have to pay what it is in Germany it will be 6-9 thousand. i can't wait to go green.

as long as these third world or developing countries are held to different standers no one will care goods will be cheep and everyone is happy. One of the biggest polluters plastic bottles, sacks...... does not even get talked about,i know it is not air but what is here today will be here 100 of years later and is much worse that glass or paper bags or reusable bags

China has been putting pressure on the rest of asian and oceania countries to implement changes and those countries are at least talking about implementing changes (now whether they actually do or are just blowing smoke is another matter). Do you really think these other countries would even be considering listening to China if China was not making recent efforts to turn this around?

Wow, you have a big house. ;)

China's also fortunately become the biggest investor in renewable energy and will hopefully start phasing out all their coal soon..

"China saw by far the biggest renewable energy investments in 2014 — a record $83.3 billion, up 39% from 2013. The US was second at $38.3 billion, up 7% on the year but well below its all-time high reached in 2011. Third came Japan, at $35.7 billion, 10% higher than in 2013 and its biggest total ever."
http://fs-unep-centre.org/...le-energy-investment-2015

Other interesting ways to look at those amounts:

Per capita - China, $61 - USA, $119 - Japan, $281

% of GDP - China, 0.80% - USA, 0.22% - Japan, 0.77%

[quote poste r=Atryn; 38184; 697759]

Wow, you have a big house. ;)
[/quote]


o that is not my house it only runs around 190-250 per mo. the other was for my turkey farm.if it was only my house i would not worry so much about it. I am not against green energy just not at a pace that will hurt the economy, and in our area there are several coal mines that have laid off several hundred people.

burn baby burn

African deserts are growing because of deforestation. This is a real, undeniable climate change fact that Obama and company aren't talking about. Maybe because talking about African deforestation would force them to confront the question of how to stop and reverse the problem. Civil wars and other assorted conflicts aren't generally very good for forestry resources of the area.

If they want to get serious about helping local climates, then they need to start dealing with forestry problems. Wholesale deforestation needs to stop. Reforestation needs to occur in many areas. Most importantly, those areas with healthy forests need to see the implementation of conservation based harvesting methods. Healthy forests need to be treated like agricultural products; healthy forests should be harvested in a way that they can continue to be harvested generation after generation.

On a non-African forestry note: In US National Forests/Parks, dead trees should be auctioned off to lumber companies for harvesting and replanting. There is no reason to let good wood go to waste when there are companies that would happily pay for the right to harvest dead trees and the obligation to replant trees to create a healthy forest. If all the US parks/forestry service got was $1000 and the new trees planted, it would be well worth it.

i agree Angel1 - there are many areas man is destroying natural resources with deforestation and pollution. We should be focusing on these instead of mythical greenhouse effects based on unicorn science.

No no no, you guys are looking at the wrong numbers. Investment has absolutely nothing to do with how big an industry is, rather it's the weight of the industry. According to the latest study done, American green energy equipment weighs (in lbs) more than the next 13 leading countries combined. Therefore, American green energy is the biggest.

As long as we distinguish between a "park" and a "nature preserve". The former may be something used for recreation, etc. but the latter is really meant to be free of human interaction to let nature progress. Coming in an removing deadwood does have an impact on that natural course of action.

http://www.independent.co.uk/...ese-capital-a6763286.html

YA GUISE LETS B JUST LIKE CHINA!~~~ FORGET REGULATIONS, MUH CAPITIALISM ABOVE ALL

The circumstances of the deadwood should be considered in any situation. If a disease/parasite comes in and wipes out a part of a nature preserve, then the trees may need to be removed for the sake of preserving the remainder. A nature preserve is a resource of its own kind. As a resource, nature preserves should be managed under the idea of doing the least while preserving/restoring the most.

i agree with most of your post, planting trees is a good way to start. the usa gov. used to encourage clearing of woods for farm land. and there are still not any incentives to leave woods that you have on your farm. if you can clear it and farm it and make 500-800 an acre, why not clear it? the government subsidize every thing else so why not do it to keep people from clearing land. Look at history deforestation has been one of the major reasons island nations and other countries have collapsed

does not matter what we do if china an other third world countries are left to do what they want.

Deforestation is not the big an issue in the US. Globally, sure, but the US has more or less figured out the whole sustainable forestry issue. Besides, everyone knows algae are the real air purifiers, not rainforests. Although rainforests are incredibly important for biodiversity...

While energy production is absolutely an important consideration, we really need to look at agriculture as an area we should really strive to make a substantial change in. Quite literally, our obsession with beef is killing us and the environment, and is only getting worse as more countries become more affluent.

Also, one nice thing about totalitarian regimes is that when they decide to do something, they damn well do it! China will embarrass the US when they really kick it into high gear....

SO LETS STOOP DOWN TO THEIR LEVEL AND fluff THE WORLD AND OURSELVES FASTER! GREAT IDEA! YES!

In a real nature preserve, if the area was affected by a natural cause, you wouldn't stop it. There are nature preserves in the U.S. where huge numbers of trees have been wiped out by disease. That is a part of nature and nature will rebuild itself. It isn't for us to come in and decide what "nature should be" in that preserve.

most of therse diseases were spreed by humans,so in a way it is up to us to try and stop it. The American chestnut tree is on that comes to mind or the Ash tree from the emerald ash borer

Trife we are at their level, because with out the usa and other countries that want to pretend they are being so great to the environment by cutting emissions and and carbon output and at the same time buy all of there products from countries that have little or no controls in place.

If the disease or parasite is invasive, then it's in the interests of the whole preserve and other surrounding natural areas to make other decisions. We have to be open to this, even in nature preserves. Very little in the world is truly natural. I think we need to manage even nature preserves. When unnaturalness creeps into nature preserves, we have to make a decision as what will do the least damage to the nature preserve (be it intervention, monitoring, or leaving it alone). It's not about deciding what nature should be in nature preserves, it's about deciding what it shouldn't be. The question is really whether human intervention was necessary to start what nature is progressing. An Asian tree disease in the US has clearly come in from human intervention, even if no human intervention progressed it into the nature preserve (when the human intervention has already occurred, then intervening isn't doing anything that hasn't already been done).

Deforestation is still not a big issue in the US...

Deforestation is still a big issue in much of the world...

Yes, yes it is. But talking about forestry rights and nature preserves in the US is pretty much a non-issue...

and we've got rough ridin' teddy to thank for that!

Hey, I wasn't talking about forestry issues mainly for the US. I want some small modifications to US forestry policy in parks and forest lands, but I was mainly talking about the importance of strengthening forestry practices in other parts of the world, especially in Africa where deforestation is driving the expansion of deserts.

good book

https://www.google.com/...NzRsmELf15jbGNt7OszO4rPM=

LOL... yeah, we should never talk about these things until they have become a critical issue.

Let's just give all the corporations all the rights they want and not talk about it because it isn't an issue now. Then, when it is a major issue, we can then talk about maybe clawing those open deforestation rights back from the corporations.

uhm farmer here electricity prices are actually going down as we go more "green" since we produce more electricity then we did before with solarpower, windpower etc going green doesnt necesarily mean that you'll get to pay a higher price as its a demand and supply market just like oil

regarding people being laid of coal mines thats unfortunate but its going to happend sooner or later its the same in all industries if no one wants it the prices go down and its not worth doing it

electricty prices have roughly halfed in sweden during the last 5 years btw

In the long term, with or without government intervention, the scale is tipped for clean, renewable energy. There is simply too much unaided investment occurring in wind, solar, and hydro electric products. The short term benefits of immediate adoption are mixed. Technology always needs the investor to spend money in the hopes of future profit and the early adopter to give the investor a shot of return energy which pushes the technology forward. Early adopters in technology are frequently talked about. Whom is less talked about are those people that have economic justification for early adoption; they begin the push to scale production and sales.

I think it's great that Sweden is cutting energy prices and pushing renewable technologies to scale production and sales. The short term benefit in other parts of the world, however, is less clear. In these parts of the world (including the US), we can't push for the total abandonment of fossil energy and should instead try to move away from dirtier fossil fuels (or in parts of the world, skip them entirely) and move to cleaner fossil energies (natural gas over coal). Wherever we have gasses being burned off as waste, we should be trying to capture that energy for electricity; if we could find technologies to do this efficiently even on small scales, it would be very valuable technology indeed.

When it comes to reducing pollution, I think we should have an all-in mindset. Any technology that will efficiently aid in the reduction of pollution should be used (even if it pollutes itself).

The United States is the world's largest supplier of commercial nuclear power, and in 2013 generated 33% of the world's nuclear electricity.

132,100,000 mw are used in Sweden the us uses 4,686,400,000 it is a much larger land area and we did not start as soon as Sweden. there were so many restrictions put on nuclear power it was not feasible to build more. There were several company that went broke in the 70s.More than 100 orders for nuclear power reactors, many already under construction, were canceled in the 1970s and 1980s. fear for the most part was the cause

You guys are missing the point... if we cause enough global warming we can finally get rid of New Jersey!

i would rather get rid of Washington DC

Now you are talking

Which than in turn impacts South America. It is a vicious circle.

Was thinking the same lol

Which is why I think everyone here agrees with the need to turn this into a virtuous circle. The developed world should support Africa (South America too) in going into their forests, marking trees that will not be harvested and requiring that logging companies not damage those trees. We should also support logging requirements for replanting trees and city development plans that require the incorporation of native plant life.

Lumber needs to reflect its true cost. Some lumber is beginning to reflect its true cost (for endangered species) and some is still reflecting exploitation prices (for general forest trees).

The long term effects of better world-wide forestry practices would be to plateau and then reduce the cost of lumber. The way these prices come down is the ability to harvest trees in places that are now deserts. I use the word harvesting because trees need to be treated like grapes; we don't cut the grape vines down to harvest the grapes and we shouldn't shouldn't cut the forests down to harvest trees.

hey Vic that was for my business not the house. i grow turkeys most of that is for ventilation and lights