Economics/Business Indonesia Outflanking the Bush Administration | Outflanking the Bush Administration |
| Written by Our Correspondent | |
| Monday, 24 November 2008 | |
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California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and six governors from Brazil and Indonesia signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to attempt to slow tropical deforestation and land degradation in the world’s so-called tropical green lungs. About a third of the world’s remaining rainforest lies in Brazil. Another 20-odd percent is in the Congo Basin in Africa and in Indonesia, the world’s third-biggest producer of greenhouse gas, resulting from fires and clearing of peat forest. Agriculture, land use and forestry account for 81 percent of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions. Tropical deforestation accounts for more than 20 percent of all human-caused carbon emissions in the world, Schwarzenegger said at an announcement of the memorandum. It is unclear what the action by the governors, who included Indonesia’s Aceh governor Yusof Irwandi and Barnamas Suebu of Papua, means in practical terms. About all the MOU does is express the officials “willingness to cooperate, in the search of joint actions that improve environmental quality and optimize the quality of life” in the respective states. Certainly, Indonesia shows little sign of cutting back on breakneck clearing of land for expansion of palm oil plantations, particularly in Kalimantan, on the Indonesian side of the island of Borneo. Nonetheless, the MOU appears to represent an advance from actions by the Bush administration, caught in the coils of the oil industry, which have in essence cost the entire planet eight years of progress on combating global warming. One of President Bush’s first acts on taking office in 2001 was to disown the United Nations-sponsored Kyoto Protocol which mandated curbs on greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, charging that the treaty would have cost US industry nearly US$400 billion and almost five million jobs, a statement disputed by environmentalists. At the time of the signing in 1997 by then-Vice President Al Gore, the United States accounted for 36 percent of industrialized nations’ CO2 emissions.
And, while the memo’s effect on Indonesia and Brazil may be uncertain, it is the latest example of the devolution of power away from the government in Washington and into the hands of local governments. With the administration’s refusal to act on a wide variety of issues, not just the environment, it has been the individual states, which had steadily been losing power to the US federal government for decades, that have taken the initiative to act, particularly on standards for green buildings, renewable energy, energy efficiency and global warming, developing initiatives to serve as models for federal action with the advent of a new administration. It has also been pointed out that California’s emissions alone exceed Brazil’s and Texas’s levels of greenhouse gases exceed those of France.
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I would just like to comment on the article when it mentions the uncertain nature of the agreements. Below is a link to the text of one of the agreements: California and Amazonas. In Article 2, part B, there is a clear call for initiating discussions to include the valuing carbon from tropical forests in emissions trading schemes in California and the world. Aside from the economic might of California that can make a big difference, there is also the political statement as a new US administration takes over. There is much to be hopeful for the globe's forests.
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I would just like to comment on the article when it mentions the uncertain nature of the agreements.
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he valuing carbon from tropical forests in emissions trading schemes in California and the world. Aside from the economic might of California that can make a big difference, there is also the political statement as a new US administration takes over. There is much to be hopeful for the globe's forests. http://www.wowpowerleveling.me/
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I would just like to comment on the article when it mentions the uncertain nature of the agreements. Below is a link to the text of one of the agreements: California and Amazonas. In Article 2, part B, there is a clear call for initiating discussions to include the valuing carbon from tropical forests in emissions trading schemes in California and the world. Aside from the economic might of California that can make a big difference, there is also the political statement as a new US administration takes over. There is much to be hopeful for the globe's forests.
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I would just like to comment on the article when it mentions the uncertain nature of the agreements. Below is a link to the text of one of the agreements: California and Amazonas. In Article 2, part B, there is a clear call for initiating discussions to include the valuing carbon from tropical forests in emissions trading schemes in California and the world. Aside from the economic might of California that can make a big difference, there is also the political statement as a new US administration takes over. There is much to be hopeful for the globe's forests.
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http://www.dminev.com/2008/11/california-and-amazonia-partnership-to.html report abuse
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Individual governors, Brazil and Indonesia seek to protect the rainforest
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