Weather, Water, Energy 11-13-06

The Kenya conference on international response to global warming is hitting the predictable brick walls. One concern is whether the rich nations contributing money to help the developing ones will control the funds or the receiving nations will--both can make good cases, neither seem willing to bend yet. Another concern is the feasibility in a world in which power and politics exist of actually enacting meaningful carbon trading limits. (The author is a little too strident for me, but his critique of "cost-benefit" is right on, and you've got to love these quotes--"In the current neo-liberal economic environment, trading rules inevitably succumb to the pressures of corporate lobbying and deregulation in order to ensure that governments do not 'interfere' with the smooth running of the market" and "There is, unfortunately, no 'win-win solution' when it comes to tackling climate change and maintaining an economic growth based on the ever increasing extraction and consumption of fossil fuels. Market-based mechanisms such as carbon trading are an elaborate shell-game of global creative accountancy that distracts us from the fact that there is no viable "business as usual" scenario.") Recognizing the problems, France at least has come up with a "market" solution with more teeth--carbon taxes. What a concept--let the market enforce competitive solutions through conservation by increasing the cost of something to get its use curtailed and more economical options developed. Which should have been done here 30 years ago, but maybe someday before OK has a real seaport, now that Inhofe's microphone has been turned off . . . . When politicians don't listen ("it's not feasible"), sometimes voters take matters into their own hands. Good luck to the KC policy types who want to tell residents that they can't get this done now that it's passed (h/t Governing's "13th Floor") . . . . So, in the meantime, you smell something burning? Oh, that's just Rome. No, wait, it's