China and India Say No On the Environment

2009 November, 28th Phil Butler

The upcoming Copenhagen Climate Summit has already been declared a failure, and the countries scheduled to attend have not even met yet. China and India have broadcast their poignant refusal to abide by any Internationally agreed-upon treaty no matter what. But China has kindly agreed to further reduce their greenhouse gas emissions if someone else pays for it – what a bunch of great guys Chinese leaders are. Well, the solutions to many of the world’s problems may not be as complicated as they seem. Here are some suggestions that would quickly shift at least the thinking of the world.

It all started with NAFTA, remember that issue? After NAFTA came China’s acceptance into the WTO (World Trade Organization), after that? We won’t go into the pros and cons of NAFTA here, but many experts agree that the only people who benefited from NAFTA were and are business owners and elites (a no brainer there huh). As for China and the WTO? Well China is currently in violation of some many WTO rules the organization should probably resend them all. As for India – they haven’t gotten warmed up quite yet – but they are working on it.

(graph of U.S. share of jobs displaced) Some of the effects of shipping industry overseas

Head of the Snake, the Problem
Since the NAFTA agreement came into force in 1994, American industry has given up almost 4 million jobs (some claim as many as 6 million). Only 4 million you say? This figure does not include the numbers of jobs by which the American economy would have, by now, increased. Does anyone ever quote that figure? No, they stopped counting increase projections when the bottom fell out. Forget about the 5 million people who left the production line, think about where those people ended up.

At the time, maybe you are old enough to remember, the “propagandaâ€