http://www.canada.com/national/nati....html?id=c3ddbc1d-e317-45f6-bce9-8855b3ba1b76
Kyoto and OPEC policy hypocrisy
Peter Foster
Financial Post
May 26, 2004
European politicians have brought us an arresting example of Orwellian doublethink in the past week. As part of horse trading over Russia's desire to join the World Trade Organization, the European Union has secured a commitment from President Vladimir Putin to speed his country's ratification of the Kyoto treaty.
Kyoto favours much higher oil prices and slower economic growth. Last weekend, finance ministers of the G7 --which includes the four biggest European nations, Britain, Germany, France and Italy -- appealed to OPEC to pump more oil and lower prices because they're, er, slowing economic growth.
Such behaviour brings to mind other references to mental bifurcation. "A foolish consistency," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "is the hobgoblin of little minds." Scott Fitzgerald famously declared that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
No foolish consistency among the first-rate intelligences of European policymakers. As for Mr. Putin, his commitment is all the more disappointing because his chief economic advisor, Andrei Illarionov, had previously castigated Kyoto, not least because it embraces the kind of centrally controlled policy visions that the old Soviet Union suffered under for 70 years.
Russia's ratification would lead to the treaty's "activation," although what that means in practical terms isn't clear. Signatories -- including, and perhaps especially, Canada -- have already installed rafts of bureaucratic make-work that have not the slightest hope of achieving emission-reduction targets.
That Mr. Putin's promise came after discussions related to joining the WTO is even more bizarre. The EU seems to be saying: "We're not going to let you join this free trade-oriented organization unless you promise to ratify an agreement that was hatched by environmental alarmists and their bureaucratic handmaidens, who all think that free markets are a bad idea (but endless UN conferences are a good one)."
One other significant concession that the EU was seeking from Russia was that the country would stop subsidizing domestic industry via artificially low natural gas prices, which are less than a quarter of the export price. Mr. Putin has promised to move domestic prices up -- to still less than half the current export price -- by 2010. Now there's free market reform for you.
Meanwhile, underpriced hydrocarbons put lots more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If you support Kyoto, isn't that a bad thing? Only, it seems, if you have a little mind.
At the G7 meeting at Manhattan's Waldorf Astoria last weekend, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown called on "all oil producers to take action to ensure that world oil prices return to levels that are consistent with lasting economic prosperity and stability -- especially for the poorest nations."
Mustn't forget the poor and dispossessed. They're always such useful human shields when you're trying to protect your big guns of policy hypocrisy. But at least this acknowledges -- for anybody who can retain a single train of thought -- that Kyoto will hurt the poor most.
And while we're talking policy hypocrisy, we shouldn't forget Canada's own Finance Minister, Ralph Goodale, who wasn't able to be in New York because he had to wait around for his boss to drop the writ.
Mr. Goodale weasled out from under the suggestion that the Liberals were enjoying a tax windfall from high oil prices by committing all the extra money to Canada's world-class example of socialized health care (another policy from the old Soviet playbook). Come on, Ralph, you should have said healthcare for poor children. Where's your imagination?
For the big European nations -- all of whom tax oil products to the hilt -- to be calling on OPEC to open the spigots to ease the crude price is cheeky, to say the least. They are declaring, in effect, "It's wrong for you to reap too much from oil prices, but it's OK for us. When you're doing it, you're damaging the economy. When we do it, we're saving the environment. Can't you guys get two opposing notions in your head and still chew gum?"
In the past, OPEC has rightly castigated the Europeans for this double standard, but current OPEC president Purnomo Yusgiantoro knows where to lay the blame for present problems: It's all due to those ****ed, red-suspender Wall Street speculators and U.S. refining bottlenecks.
In fact, refining bottlenecks do have a great deal to do with the present tightness of North American gasoline markets, but that problem can be laid, yet again, at the door of lousy government policies. Environmental Protection Agency regulations have led to the Balkanization of the U.S. gasoline market, with some 18 different "boutique" blends mandated for different markets. This has inevitably reduced flexibility and added to costs, and prices.
Many environmentalists love those high prices at the pump and the prospect of an economic crash. But at least you can say one thing for them: they're consistent.
© National Post 2004
Kyoto and OPEC policy hypocrisy
Peter Foster
Financial Post
May 26, 2004
European politicians have brought us an arresting example of Orwellian doublethink in the past week. As part of horse trading over Russia's desire to join the World Trade Organization, the European Union has secured a commitment from President Vladimir Putin to speed his country's ratification of the Kyoto treaty.
Kyoto favours much higher oil prices and slower economic growth. Last weekend, finance ministers of the G7 --which includes the four biggest European nations, Britain, Germany, France and Italy -- appealed to OPEC to pump more oil and lower prices because they're, er, slowing economic growth.
Such behaviour brings to mind other references to mental bifurcation. "A foolish consistency," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, "is the hobgoblin of little minds." Scott Fitzgerald famously declared that "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."
No foolish consistency among the first-rate intelligences of European policymakers. As for Mr. Putin, his commitment is all the more disappointing because his chief economic advisor, Andrei Illarionov, had previously castigated Kyoto, not least because it embraces the kind of centrally controlled policy visions that the old Soviet Union suffered under for 70 years.
Russia's ratification would lead to the treaty's "activation," although what that means in practical terms isn't clear. Signatories -- including, and perhaps especially, Canada -- have already installed rafts of bureaucratic make-work that have not the slightest hope of achieving emission-reduction targets.
That Mr. Putin's promise came after discussions related to joining the WTO is even more bizarre. The EU seems to be saying: "We're not going to let you join this free trade-oriented organization unless you promise to ratify an agreement that was hatched by environmental alarmists and their bureaucratic handmaidens, who all think that free markets are a bad idea (but endless UN conferences are a good one)."
One other significant concession that the EU was seeking from Russia was that the country would stop subsidizing domestic industry via artificially low natural gas prices, which are less than a quarter of the export price. Mr. Putin has promised to move domestic prices up -- to still less than half the current export price -- by 2010. Now there's free market reform for you.
Meanwhile, underpriced hydrocarbons put lots more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. If you support Kyoto, isn't that a bad thing? Only, it seems, if you have a little mind.
At the G7 meeting at Manhattan's Waldorf Astoria last weekend, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown called on "all oil producers to take action to ensure that world oil prices return to levels that are consistent with lasting economic prosperity and stability -- especially for the poorest nations."
Mustn't forget the poor and dispossessed. They're always such useful human shields when you're trying to protect your big guns of policy hypocrisy. But at least this acknowledges -- for anybody who can retain a single train of thought -- that Kyoto will hurt the poor most.
And while we're talking policy hypocrisy, we shouldn't forget Canada's own Finance Minister, Ralph Goodale, who wasn't able to be in New York because he had to wait around for his boss to drop the writ.
Mr. Goodale weasled out from under the suggestion that the Liberals were enjoying a tax windfall from high oil prices by committing all the extra money to Canada's world-class example of socialized health care (another policy from the old Soviet playbook). Come on, Ralph, you should have said healthcare for poor children. Where's your imagination?
For the big European nations -- all of whom tax oil products to the hilt -- to be calling on OPEC to open the spigots to ease the crude price is cheeky, to say the least. They are declaring, in effect, "It's wrong for you to reap too much from oil prices, but it's OK for us. When you're doing it, you're damaging the economy. When we do it, we're saving the environment. Can't you guys get two opposing notions in your head and still chew gum?"
In the past, OPEC has rightly castigated the Europeans for this double standard, but current OPEC president Purnomo Yusgiantoro knows where to lay the blame for present problems: It's all due to those ****ed, red-suspender Wall Street speculators and U.S. refining bottlenecks.
In fact, refining bottlenecks do have a great deal to do with the present tightness of North American gasoline markets, but that problem can be laid, yet again, at the door of lousy government policies. Environmental Protection Agency regulations have led to the Balkanization of the U.S. gasoline market, with some 18 different "boutique" blends mandated for different markets. This has inevitably reduced flexibility and added to costs, and prices.
Many environmentalists love those high prices at the pump and the prospect of an economic crash. But at least you can say one thing for them: they're consistent.
© National Post 2004
