…for the most part, China has behaved responsibly in the World Trade Organization, G20 and climate-change negotiations…
…China tells Europe to take its carbon tax and blow it out a jet engine
China, which lectured everyone else about their responsibility to curb greenhouse gas emissions at the latest UN climate conference, says there’s no damn way its planes are paying the carbon tax that will be collected on all international flights in and out of European Union next year…
Before anyone starts screaming I not attacking the Chinese for being soft on global warming. I’m just pointing out how deluded many of our great and good are about the Dragon.
The EU may be populated with twits but the Chinese are a bunch of slave-driving polluters with an undeserved sense of entitlement.
I think they deserve each other.
China . . . just another member of the UN.
They just told the Euros to Go Blow some Carbon and earlier this week they told Obama to go pound sand over Syria.
Just going along to get along, all hopey changey makey nicey facey, eh?
No need to maintain a capable Armed Forces with the Chinese being so polite & cooperative.
Si vis Pacem, para Bellum.
Whatever China’s shortcomings, I think we can all agree that the Chinese Dragon is one of the coolest national symbols. Beats the heck out of the Puerto Rican Frog.
Man! Are those China guys ever in trouble. Wait ’til our Durban heroes hear about this.
I mean, they’ll be standing outside the Chinese embassy in protest. Probably even holding a ‘Stop Hu Jintao ‘ sign.
Sadistic Eristic…but the Dragons Den is on the CBC, which is anything BUT cool.
The only confusion, Mark, is in your own mind. China follows its own self-interest, just as do we. What you mercantilists can’t seem to fathom is that we trade with China because it’s in our interest to do so.
cgh – “we trade with China because it’s in our interest to do so.”
Besides where else would we get all the $hitty stuff to put in our landfills.
Scar, and mountains of stacked cargo containers left behind by the Chinese.
India, China, the US have all taken a stance against it. The main issue is that it taxes airlines by distance flown, not by how long it is in European airspace. This raises issues of sovereignty.
China has been the most outspoken, but similar things are being said behind the scenes in India etc.
Canada’s airlines have also voiced their disagreement, but don’t expect this government to stand up to Her Majesty’s govt and co. And don’t expect our nation’s only international carrier, AIr Canada, to make too much noise. It relies on govt protection to stay afloat, what with its inability to turn in a profit more than once in 10 years. It requires govt support on labor issues and is unlikely to upset them on an issue that is so dear to the nation that our nation’s monarchists are smitten with.
Ironically, Emirates, Etihad etc which overfly Europe on their way to Canada, don’t have to pay taxes.
Just goes to show what a sordid mess the whole thing is. Kudos to China for calling the EU out on it.
cgh, exactly and when foreign governments, private wealthy foundations and other foreign special interest groups donate money to Canadian lobby groups and special interest groups it is to influence domestic policy and economic activity for their self-interest, not ours.
After Deng became Premier of China, pragmatic communism won out over ideological communism. In the case of the environmental groups, it is my opinion that a new ideology or religion is the self-interest and economic self-interest is a bad thing.
In the case of the anti-oil lobbying efforts, it is a combination of both foreign government self-interest and green ideology at work. The use each other.
What is self-interest?
http://pagerankstudio.com/Blog/2011/03/what-is-self-interest/
You mean that unilaterally increasing the costs to the cleaner industry in Europe while allowing the higher polluting Chinese industry an even bigger competitive advantage won’t reduce pollution and CO2 emissions?
Who knew?
CGH, I see no reason why we should be selling off our resources to a place such as China.
Yes, Sadistic Erstic, the dragon IS cool.
Whatever the Europeans are doing to cool off the climate is working. They should maybe back off a little now.
Remember how quickly Dr Fruitfly and Lizard May backed Chinas stand at Durban?
And now? Crickets? We are waiting Lizard for your repudiation of the Chinese
I disagree with you mark on your dragon comment.
China has leverage and it is using it. God knows the euros back in the day did the same or much worse to the Chinese and others many years ago.
Mark has a point. He’s juxtaposing Chinese words vs their actions. And while the idiotic Euros and greenies of the world have hailed China’s cooperation in their global warming fraud, they have been blind to the truth, shown by the Chinese actions. China has absolutely zero intention of reducing emissions or participating in any global warming scam such as carbon taxes or cap and trade.
scf: Thanks.
Mark
Ottawa
Re: Canada’s airlines have also voiced their disagreement, but don’t expect this government to stand up to Her Majesty’s govt and co. And don’t expect our nation’s only international carrier, AIr Canada, to make too much noise.
Air Canada at present offers their customers (temporary inmates) the opportunity to pay carbon credits for their flights, or they did until recently. That’s why Westjet is the obvious airline of choice for me. That and the luggage ‘challenges’.
The more authoritarian a government is, the less accountable it is to the people. The less accountable the government, the more it is able to ignore the people’s concerns about things like … oh, I don’t know … letting strategic interests, both economic and military, outweigh environmental concerns. The former Soviet Union was horrible from an environmental standpoint and the current Chinese regime is just as bad. China is really pooping on its own dinner table. There are going to be a lot of people dying in China from environmental contamination, depletion of water reservoirs and poisoning of the food supply in the not too distant future. The steel-shod boot of the Dragon (I love mixed metaphors, don’t you?) is going to come down hard on the civil unrest that will occur when people get desperate enough about acquiring clean living conditions.
There will be no protest because most green organizations are paid off not to talk about Chinas.
Ken: “cgh, exactly and when foreign governments, private wealthy foundations and other foreign special interest groups donate money to Canadian lobby groups and special interest groups it is to influence domestic policy and economic activity for their self-interest, not ours.”
I couldn’t agree more. That’s why I’m never interested in what nations say. I’m only ever interested in what they do. When the post-Rio UNFCCC discussions started more than 15 years ago, China made it abundantly clear that it intended to do nothing about limiting CO2 emissions. And they’ve been utterly consistent in that ever since.
China was thoroughly consistent in its reasons for doing nothing. The line was “it’s all your gas up there which you got rich on, so it’s your problem. It will be ours when we’ve matched your standard of living.” And they’ve never wavered from this.
And they’re tough enough and big enough to tell the Euro watermelon regimes to, in Mark’s excellent phrase, “blow it out a jet engine.”
It’s also why I feel utterly no qualms about putting the squeeze on foreign government influences and ENGOs in Canada. China doesn’t tolerate it, and neither should we. If anything, China would see our failure to assert our sovereignty over our own soil as a sign of weakness. And indeed it is.
And by the same token, we do ourselves no favours by campaigning on behalf of various dissident groups within China either. The chance of altering China’s internal policy is zero. There are far too many Canadians, mostly lefties but some on the right, who think that morality has much to do with international affairs. It’s always, only about self interest, and so it has been throughout history.
There’s been a lot of squawking about China’s UN Security Council veto re. Syria. Here again, China is consistent. It prefers the OLD UN model where the UN was consistently prohibited from interfering with the internal affairs of ANY nation, no matter how reprehensible. And it’s been consistent with that. What good has it done us after the Axworthy watermelons of the world got their hands on and started changing the UN into some kind of proto world government? Endless, thankless foreign adventures in other countries. And creating just more people around the world who hate us.
And we can thank Brian Mulroney for starting us down that road with his adventures in former Yugoslavia.
See, here’s the thing about China. You always know who and what you’re dealing with. Policy doesn’t change; it’s consistent year after year. Nothing is ever arbitrary either. How many other nations can say that? Just look at the chaos in US policy from the change from 2007-9. Obama comes in and suddenly there’s a whole new set of court favourites.
Make no mistake. This is not an “I love China” piece. You always know what China wants and what its ambitions are. China is a dragon, but it doesn’t try to hide it by wearing butterfly wings.
Like sasquatch might say, paraphrased, “taint right, just is” and always has been and always will be even if the greenies do not think so.
Enviro-nut warmists consistantly say that China will be the world leader in the effort to save the planet from global warming.
I’m beginning to think following Chinas example might be a good idea.
CGH, I see no reason why we should be selling off our resources to a place such as China.
That’s simply not for you to decide. If I own a resource, I’m deciding who to sell it to. And there is no reason China isn’t a good bet.
LAS: “If I own a resource, I’m deciding who to sell it to.”
BINGO!!!
It’s astonishing the number of supposed conservatives who don’t understand this single, simple principle of property ownership. We saw the same Marxist reflexes among an astonishing number around here when potash was the issue of the day a year or so ago.
EhTu?, we might actually take you seriously around here if you actually learned some basic spelling and grammar. But then it was you pinkos that cut the first deal with China, was it not? And the next one? And the next one?