The closing thought in the earlier post Discontinuity lamented the degeneration of climate related concerns into low politics.

The political epidemics that have repeatedly hammered Europe could spread to America. There are pools of infection on both coasts and some institutions are crippled. The media and academia are all but destroyed at this point. Lunatics roam the halls babbling nonsense. Things may get worse before they get better. The medicine we need now doesn't target any specific pathogen, it is a broad spectrum anti-politic.

For example:

The United States and the European Union remain at odds on many major points, including whether an agreement signed here should include numerical targets, a move that the United States and a few other countries, including Russia, oppose.

The emerging economic powers, most notably China and India, also refuse to accept limits on their emissions, despite projections that they will soon become the dominant sources of the gases.

The United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, Russia, China and India against the EU, NGOs, the media and brain dead academics. It seems to me that the EU is the uncooperative trouble maker here.

If the media wasn't so degraded we might get a very different view of these proceedings, and we might make much better progress. But, for them, Bali is just a campaign stop for the US presidential race.

Bear this in mind: No matter what the outcome of the elections no progress will be made on climate change issues. Kyoto hasn't accomplished anything, and neither will any future agreements. A classic case of this is in the news.

Deiter Helm of Oxford finds that the UK's greenhouse gas emissions have actually risen 19% above 1990 levels, not fallen 15% as officially reported to the UN. The discrepancy comes from the official figures' neglect of emissions from aviation, shipping, overseas trade and tourism, and undermines Britain's image as a world leader in greening its economy. . .

if British consumers are effectively outsourcing their greenhouse gas production by buying iPods made in China, where 'production' emissions have been rising, it does the planet no good.

Kyoto is a hoax, the EU is a bad joke. The media support for such jokes and hoaxes is one of the reasons they are in steep decline.

Faster please.