CONSENSUS ECONOMICS

The global warmers have effectively spread the falsehood that a consensus of scientists agrees that global warming is a fact and menace. The nations of the world, however, continue to act in accordance with their own economic self-interests.

When the dust settled in Kyoto, 39 nations with a total population of 1.136 billion had agreed to limits on their carbon dioxide production, while 152 nations with a total population of 4.614 billion had not agreed to such limits.. Therefore, only 20.4% of the world's nations with 19.8% of the world's population have agreed to the limits.

Notice the nature of the debate. The enviros are the strongest proponents of the treaty, since they want to stop and roll back economic and technological progress. Europeans are the next strongest promoters of the treaty, since their economies are mired in socialism and not making much progress anyway. (Europeans would benefit temporarily from the controls which would preferentially hurt their competitors - who are racing forward with higher productivity and, therefore, higher energy needs.) Americans are, at best, neutral to the treaty, but are being dragged in by socialists and socialist propaganda. The developing world - which is engaged in the great undertaking of lifting 4 billion people from poverty and providing them with the benefits of the technological revolution - will not agree to CO 2 limits at all, except in so far as they are imposed only on their competitors and thereby provide themselves with an economic advantage.

Support for the treaty is inversely proportional to interest in increasing productivity. The governments of rapidly developing peoples need more hydrocarbons. The governments of nations that are stagnating prefer to limit hydrocarbons, so that the distance between themselves and the increasingly productive will not widen so rapidly. Americans are in the middle. If the Senate agrees to this treaty, however, they will join the ranks of the less productive.