And now for a bit of good news

By Aussiegirl

Here's some good news on the president from Australia's Herald Sun. We are nothing if not fair and balanced in our presentation of the daily news here on UT.

US PRESIDENT George W. Bush has brilliantly nailed the feel-good politically correct worthlessness of both the Kyoto global 'warming' treaty and Live 8's make poverty 'history' in a stunning double play.

He has done so not by attacking them directly, easy enough as that would be to do. Like a relative asked to comment on kindergarten artwork, he's too polite to so embarrass British PM Tony Blair, who's embraced them both.

But by offering alternatives that would actually work. And especially in helping Africa work, immediately and dramatically.

That finger-clicking stunt of the various celebrities -- every three-second click, a child dies -- captures the contrast with exquisite inadvertence.

They want to embrace continued global finger-clicking as the policy solution. Bush in contrast has demanded the one thing that has worked for everyone else: trade and economic growth.

The key to why the developed Western world is not still mired in the Middle Ages; why most of Asia is now following fast. Why China is no Congo and Malaysia no Mali.

Further and most exquisitely, Bush has done so by striking at the very heart of European hypocrisy and failure.

You want to help? You really want to help? Open your markets to African agricultural exports, and stop destroying their chances of selling into the global market. We -- the US -- will do the same.

He could have borrowed from Ronald Reagan:
Mr Chirac. Tear down your trade wall!

Even assuming that debt forgiveness and increased aid can help -- as they can, properly governed and managed -- the benefit of lower trade barriers is immeasurably greater. And can both leverage that sort of 'conventional' help and be leveraged off it.
Crucially, those trade benefits would flow far quicker. And perhaps most importantly of all -- again with some hard-nosed governance, imposed from the outside -- with the best chance of not being soaked up in corruption and waste and practical failure.

As against the near certainty that much of debt forgiveness and aid would flow to Chanel, Mercedes Benz and Swiss, as against Swazi, banks.

Estimates of the fairly immediate benefit that could flow to Africa range up to $US300 billion or more -- although it's impossible to make any sensible calculation.

With the really big pay-off following subsequently, just as it did in the West when we grew out of, but also off, our agricultural base.

The key difference between the journey out of poverty that we took and the path that can be mapped out for Africa, is that we didn't have anybody else to help us.

In contrast we can help Africa. But not by doing, and only doing, the equivalent of praising kindergarten artwork as if it were a Dutch Master.

Bush has just as devastatingly skewered European failure and hypocrisy on Kyoto. He's also done so in a way consistent with how to best help Africa, and by suggesting something that would actually work.

That's work, in Kyoto's own terms.

Let's put aside the basic issue. Is the globe warming and are 'we' doing it? To just look at Kyoto in its own -- European -- terms.

First point: if the US did sign on to Kyoto, it would make almost no difference to the global warming outcome. At 'best' postponing whatever temperature the world was going to reach in 2100, until 2110 when we reached it anyway.

And arguably, make global warming worse. Because in practice all Kyoto would achieve is to accelerate the transfer of carbon-emitting production to places like China and India which are not constrained by the treaty.

In the process we could get more carbon dioxide: an exquisite Kyoto own-goal.

Oh, I nearly forgot, and that's the second point: that's even assuming the West met its carbon targets.

It's now all but certain that Europe is going to blow its carbon target, just as embarrassingly as some key countries in the Euro area blew their supposedly iron-clad budget deficit limits.

True they were only marginalised insignificant countries like France and Italy.

Now Bush could have joined in playing Kyoto charades. Instead, he's pointed to investment that will deliver technological solutions to global warming.

Embrace the Bush double-header, and we have a much better chance of making African poverty history.

While at the same time avoiding the West and Asia returning to their respective poverty histories -- what global warming cultists would deliver if their dreams (and our nightmares) were realised.

Which of course would also take Africa back to a 2000 poverty future. We could all be poor together; celebrities could click their fingers, announcing three children dying every three seconds.

Consider, two very major further benefits of the Bush technological approach, which would of course be eye-glazingly incomprehensible to global warming cultists.

The first is obvious: what if the globe isn't warming? We spend hundreds of billions attacking a problem that turns out not to exist.

Further, in that situation, if Kyoto and its follow-ons were to work -- an unlikely prospect I'll grant you -- we would likely deliver global cooling.

Man-made ice age anyone?

Secondly, what if the globe is warming but not because of carbon dioxide. At best, we'd have the antidote to the wrong disease.

Go the technology route, and we'd be better placed to find the real antidote to the real problem.