It’s all over and not a single one-world government in sight.
What a lot of fuss about nothing.
It makes one thing pretty clear. The threat of Climate Change really can’t be as bad as the pollies have made out. I mean, if doing nothing really will lead to catastrophic flooding and the near-end to the world then you’d think they’d come to some sort of agreement.
Anyway, aside from that, the outcome of the Copenhagen Conference at least proves that if Climate Change does exist then it most certainly won’t be ‘cured’ by politicians at conferences.
In fact, the Copenhagen Conference provides a perfect example of how consensus politics will always lead to failure, and how the only solution to Climate Change – if one is required – is to leave it to a free and un-manipulated-by-government market.
How so? Well, let’s look at a comparison of a market place and consensus politics.
If you think about it logically, in theory they are both similar.
Consensus politics involves a bunch of people getting together and thrashing out ideas. You get people from the right, the left, the middle and all others from right across and beyond the political spectrum.
They each put forward their ideas – no government involvement, maximum government involvement, no taxes, high taxes, no subsidies, high subsidies, etc.
Then they negotiate on it for several days and weeks until they come out with a statement such as the following that was released at Copenhagen:
“1. Decides to extend the mandate of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action to enable it to continue its work with a view to presenting the outcome of its work to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its sixteenth session;
2. Requests the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action to continue its work drawing on the report of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action presented to the Conference of the Parties at its fifteenth session,1 as well as work undertaken by the Conference of the Parties on the basis of that report;
3. Mandates the host country of the next session of the Conference of the Parties to make the necessary arrangements in order to facilitate the work towards the success of that session.”
In other words, “Since nothing has been decided on at the fifteenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP15), we’ll all meet again at another conference, how about we call it the sixteenth session of the Conference of the Parties!”
And on it goes. All the time the world is warming and cooling and doing whatever else it does.
So, apart from the fact that bureaucrats get to go to another fancy location, the result of any political conference built on consensus, is that everyone – yes, everyone – walks away disappointed.
Those that wanted less will be disappointed the whole sorry affair is still going. Those that wanted more will be disappointed they haven’t got what they came for.
I mean, no-one will have gone to Copenhagen looking to achieve this exact outcome – apart from the pen pushers.
Is there anything that’s been achieved? From what we can make of the Copenhagen Accord, the one thing it has done is to put Western nations on the hook for USD$100 billion each year by 2020.
And that “A significant portion of such funding should flow through the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund.”
In other words, the United Nations has managed to get funding for another useless body that will receive billions of dollars, be accountable to no one, and will be rife with corruption, mismanagement and fraud.
The UN oil for food programme is a perfect example of fraud, corruption, theft and any other criminal activity you can think of.
All in a day’s work for any publicly funded organisation really.
Anyway, back to our comparison. If that’s the best the pollies at a conference can come up with when everyone is sat down trying to knock together a deal, what chance does an uncoordinated ad hoc free market have?
After all, a free market is just a bunch of people doing their own thing and just intermittently interacting with others. Surely nothing could be achieved using that method.
That’s the difference though isn’t it? Because where as no one walks away happy from a deal made through consensus politics, in a deal hatched out under a free market almost everyone walks away satisfied.
But before I take the comparison any further, let’s make one thing clear. We’re talking about a proper free market without the interference of governments and bureaucrats. We’re not talking about the manipulated and distorted un-free market of Wall Street bankers and central banks setting interest rates where they feel like it.
No, I’m talking about a proper free market where no one is compelled to get involved. Where people only get involved when they believe they can get an acceptable deal.
In a free market buyers and sellers can meet and negotiate a deal on their own terms that are satisfactory to the buyer and seller.
If the buyer isn’t happy then they can try and negotiate with another seller.
We can use the stock market as a reasonable example. I’ll agree it’s not completely free of manipulation, but in terms of being able to see buyers and sellers meet in a market place it’s as close as we’ll get.
Below is a summary of the market depth on BHP Billiton this morning:
In one way you can say the market has reached a consensus that BHP is fairly priced around $41.135. It’s a price at which many buyers and sellers are prepared to transact.
However, the difference in a free market compared to a political consensus is that no-one is forced to agree to the price. In a free market if you believe $41.20 is a better price to sell at then you can wait for someone to pay up.
The problem at Copenhagen is that the desire to get something which everyone could agree to means that nothing was done. Nothing has been transacted because no one is prepared to pay the “price” on offer.
You can see from the market depth of BHP above that all sorts of investors have a different idea about what is a fair and reasonable price. Imagine if shares could only be bought and sold if every single buyer and seller had to agree on one price with no exceptions.
Not surprisingly there would be a deadlock. There would never be any trades.
That’s the problem with Copenhagen. The participants would have had similarly different ideas about what makes a fair and reasonable outcome.
The trouble is, under a manipulated system such as that at Copenhagen there isn’t a free market where the parties are free to strike deals among themselves. It’s an all or nothing deal.
Unless a “price” can be agreed upon by everyone then nothing gets done. Compare that to the price of BHP where it only takes two people at any one time to come to an agreement and a transaction can be made.
And that’s exactly the point we’ve made all along. Your editor is clueless about whether Climate Change is genuine or not. But there is one thing we know as a fact, and that’s if the pen pushers, pollies and Stable Climate Deniers really do want a solution to Climate Change the only way to achieve it is to allow a free market to determine the price of everything.
Once that happens, the market (that is, individuals) will determine how serious a threat Climate Change is.
If, as opinion polls tell us that the majority believe Climate Change is genuine then the majority will make free and informed decisions on how they resolve it.
And even the non Climate Change believers will benefit as well. Even if you don’t believe in Climate Change, odds are you’d start to use ‘green’ fuels if they became cheaper than fossil fuels.
Everyone would be able to make a free decision to use non fossil fuels. Businesses involved with ‘green’ energy would receive more private funding rather than having to suffer the whim of politicians who one minute provide a government subsidy then the next take it away and give the subsidy to the coal and gas industry.
It’s no wonder ‘green’ fuels make such a pathetic contribution to energy. Why would anyone invest in the industry when you know the entire future of ‘green’ energy can be destroyed at the stroke of a bureaucrats’ pen?
As we’ve mentioned before, very few people intentionally choose to pollute the environment. Given a free market choice between polluting your own air and not polluting it, only a mentalist would choose the latter.
It’s because of the involvement of government, high taxes and the lobbying of big businesses with vested interests that individuals are forced to consider the cost to their wallet first and the cost to the environment second.
Push the government aside and reduce the tax burden, suddenly the power of the lobbyists is destroyed and the individual can make a true free market decision.
What are the odds on that happening? Somewhere north of 1,000 to 1 at the moment.
That’s why you can look forward to the same hullaballoo as COP16, COP17… COP42, etc,. waste more time, effort and taxpayer money and end up achieving absolutely nothing.
Cheers.
Kris.
60-Second Market Round Up
by Shae Smith
The S&P/ASX200 closed down by 0.42% to 4,650.50. A positive lead from the US has seen the Aussie market open 20 points up this morning. Being the time of year it is, volumes will be pretty thin for this week.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished higher on Friday night, up by 20 points to 10,328.89. Technology stocks were the main leaders with Microsoft [NYSE: MSFT] and Hewlett-Packard Co [NYSE: HPQ] adding about 2.9% each. Find out else was up in the US here.
In UK on Friday, the major banks dragged the FTSE down, closing at 5,196.86, lower by 20 points.
The Nikkei finished the day down to 10,142.05 lower by 21 points.
Gold is higher this morning, but it is still experiencing choppy trading sessions.
The price of spot gold in Australian dollars is trading at $1,249.56 while in US Dollars it is trading at $1,112.50. The price of silver in Aussie dollars is $19.43 and in US Dollars it is $17.30.
The Aussie dollar versus the US dollar is trading at USD$0.8890, and against the Japanese Yen JPY80.48
Crude oil has been slowly sneaking up higher, closing at USD$73.36. Tension between Iran and Iraq has increased since Iranian troops have crossed into Iraqi oilfields.
For the biggest movers on the market yesterday click here…
{ 20 comments }
Next Comments →
You FINALLY managed to get something right on the climate. Unlike your other rubbish, which borders on gibberish and right wing do-nothing garbage (all points able to be debunked, mind).
AND you managed to stick it to that oaf Monckton.
Stick to free market economics, because when you do, you are almost always spot on.
On climate, you sound like that dolt Bolt, and you don’t want that
tim
Well, it has been a long time coming, but finally the heat being turned up on the warmists: See this one:
Scam of the century
by Bob Carter
December 14, 2009
The bell tolls for the IPCC
https://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/12/scam-of-the-century
And this one:
Why Barry Jones is wrong
by Bob Carter
December 20, 2009
Professor Bob Carter replies to Mr. Barry Jones
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2009/12/why-barry-jones-is-wrong
PF – I am not sure if you have had the time to read up on this subject to your satisfaction as yet, but if you have enough time to read these two articles by Carter, I would be most interested to know whether you have changed your mind at all about giving Rudd and Wong and other world leaders the benefit of the doubt and allow them to implement their proposed climate control programs. Thanks.
cb – even if I read every article ever written I would still be wanting.
My consideration comes from the knowledge that our oil supplies will start to run dry in this century (probably earlier than we think) and we need to choose better options for our energy.
What I’m really saying is that I just don’t know, and I believe that the writers here along with the posters, although holding strong views, don’t really know either. So I’ll go with the safe option and support less emissions of all gases and pollutants inluding CO2.
But thanks for the links and you efforts to educate me.
Thanks, PF, you are kind, and a gentleman. I certainly would concur with the good sense in looking at alternative energy sources from the point of view of energy production sustainability and national self-sufficiency. What I object to is the lies and the misinformation being fed to the people, the attempt to scare them with horror scenarios into certain politically motivated choices, and of course the corruption and surpression of knowledge and science, the attempt to even falsify the historical data about our climate, the outright teaching of known falsehoods to children, and so on.
Action based on falsehoods and ignorance may indeed have some good outcomes, but it is also one of the best prescriptions for causing disaster.
Thanks cb – The people have always been fed lies and misinformation, it’s our staple diet.
We love it.
Our civilization lurches from one disaster to the next, don’t spoil a system that has worked beautifully since the egyptians first perfected the pyramid scheme.
lol, PF. What you say is as true. But, the wry humour aside, we must remember that our greatest heros have always been the spoilers of their day, such as Socrates, Gallileo, Copernicus, Darwin, etc., and the list goes on.
Incidentally, there is a fairly good, 6 part series on Climatechange and Climategate, covering the pros and cons of an ETS, the history and exposure of the infamous hockey stick, the twisting of the science (especially parts 2 and 3), here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnCLQIYNYgo&feature=related
Well said, PF.
When it is all said and done, oil, coal and gas are all finite resources. And they are the foundation of the world economy. While people might argue the toss about when peak oil may actually occur, no one is seriously saying we won’t be having supply side issues by 2050 at the latest. And I don’t think supply and demand can actually conjure up new oil that took millions of years to develop just because the price signal is higher.
There is a lot of coal left, yes, but my understanding is that peak gas will be an issue as well not too long after we hit peak oil. So in essence, the 3 most significant resources on the planet are not renewable and we’re devouring them as quickly as we possibly can. And what’s more, that seems to be the dominant economic strategy, both for Australia and others – extract now and worry about the future later. That’s a major issue to deal with.
So while I agree that there is plenty of doubt around the science of climate change and the best way to tackle it, resource sustainability is something that we must deal with. The world seems unable to confront the fact that we’re facing real supply bottlenecks with respect to our vital energy resources. So we have debates about vaccuous and nebulous concepts like climate change instead. I think it makes the world feel good because we’re talking about acting on something that no one can grasp because it avoids the uncomfortable situation that we’re using up oil fast and there’s no easy solution in sight.
So, in summary, I think we should be taking ‘climate change’ action. But not because it will do anything about climate change. I’m for it because it might actually start us heading in the right direction to switch from non renewable fossil fuels and towards a more sustainable model of energy consumption.
Ralph, I think it might have been Nick who mentioned here water and hydrogen. I have read accounts of a New Zealand retiree who modified his car and ran it on water, splitting it and burning the hydrogen in the cylinders, instead of petrol. He lived on the South Island, possibly Christchurch, or thereabouts, and according to newspaper reports, his car kept up with the traffic without problems and all it produced at the end of his exhaust pipe was water. There were claims that much of the technology was bought up by oil companies and then never developed properly, etc., etc.
Anyhow, burning hydrogen, apparently, releases an incredible amount of energy, and the main challenge for it is to split it efficiently enough from water, so that you carry around water in the fuel tank, instead of a hydrogen filled cylinder that will speed you straight to paradise if something goes amiss with it.
Anyhow, my half-baked idea is this: If running your car, or a truck, or a power station on water requires some extra input of electricity to help split the water, then we might be able to obtain enough of this from solar and wind and wave technology, while the bulk of our energy need could be perhaps met from water through said hydrogen technology. If this could be done, one of its major advantages would be that it might meet our need to maintain steady base load generation capacity day and night, and regardless of the weather.
It would be great to find out more about this topic and whether it is a realistic possibility, because water is both non-polluting and globally abundant.
Tim – what are you on about?
You some sort of left wing luny?
Next Comments →
Comments on this entry are closed.