Karl Rove, also known as “George Bush’s Brain”, is someone we can thank for all the achievements of that storied administration.
Displaying here the height of ignorance and arrogance, after doing everything possible to make binding agreements politically impossible, and causing the entire world to have to ignore science in order to dance around the US Congress, climate deniers like Rove decry an agreement that is morally, but not legally binding.
He does confirm that climate deniers cannot conceive of any time frame beyond the next election, and don’t give a damn about your grandchildren, or even their own.
Re his argument that poorer developing nations are clamoring for more coal power, see here.
An Africa-wide mega-scale initiative backed by all African heads of state should see the continent greatly increase its renewable energy over the next 15 years.
The African Renewable Energy Initiative (Arei) plans to develop at least 10 GW of new renewable energy generation capacity by 2020, and at least 300 GW by 2030, potentially making the continent the cleanest in the world.
The International Energy Agency, which has said that Africa is at the “epicentre of the global challenge to overcome energy poverty”, estimates that annual electricity consumption per capita in Africa for 2012 was around 600 kWh, compared with the world average of 3,064 kWh.
The plan to accelerate solar, hydro, wind and geothermal energy could see Africa leapfrogging other continents by developing thousands of small-scale “virtual power stations” that distribute electricity via mini-grids and would not require transmission lines, which involve a loss of up to a quarter of power during the process.
The initiative, which is tentatively estimated to cost at least $500bn over 20 years, is billed as “by Africa, for Africa”, and is intended to reduce Africa’s present reliance on coal. As well as reducing emissions, it will help at least 600 million people switch from lighting homes and cooking with diesel, kerosene and wood, and reduce air pollution in homes and cities.
Solar is expected to play a leading role. “We are ready to engage in massive solar and wind energy production to attain 100% electricity reach for our people,” said Judi Wakhungu, Kenya’s environment cabinet secretary.
Speaking at the launch of the initiative at the COP 21 talks in Paris, the president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, said the continentcurrently loses 4% of its GDP due to a lack of clean energy.
“Africa is the continent suffering the most from the scorching heat from rising temperatures, and droughts have become more frequent and with greater intensity than ever before. Africa needs more money for adaptation.
“The continent has been short-changed by climate change. But we must ensure that it is not short-changed by climate finance. AfDB will triple its climate finance to $5bn a year by 2020,” he said.
Pretty brain-dead analysis by Rove:
– The U.S. is already reducing our emissions, so we’re good already.
– The agreement asks developing countries to limit their emissions, which is terrible, because that keeps them in poverty (let’s assume for the moment that we care about this).
– Therefore the deal is bad because it would destroy the U.S. economy.
– Who cares anyway, because Fox viewers will all be dead by 2050.
Fox viewers are already dead — from the neck up!
We already knew that. They prove it every time they believe what they see and hear on Fox News.
What I’m hoping to hear is news that they’re dead from the waist down. Removing their genes from the human gene pool would be good for the country and the planet in so many ways.
So this U.S. American Karl something has severe concerns about the plight of African nations’ people and their future. There’s 2 possible reasons for this concern:
1) This U.S. American Karl is a humanist type with excessive concern for all humans, not just his socio-political group.
2) The other reason and me being in the group they call “Canadians” I likely know more about that than most humans except in countries that have oil under the ground.
Hmmmm why’s U.S. of Americans so concerned about African country’s people ?Hmmmm beats me.
after every energy-related article made up of should and could, the journalist should and could be sent to North Korea to report on the local opposition to the regime. Or any other should-and-could asinine idea.
If the world actually warms by around 2 or 3 degrees C, Africa would be better off as this study of humid (warm) periods of the past shows. http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/green-sahara-african-humid-periods-paced-by-82884405
Do you live in an area that would be affected by sea level rise? Several countries (like Bangladesh) would be under water with a 2 or 3 degrees C rise in world temperature. Maybe you need someone to show you. Come to Connecticut and I’ll show you what a 6 inch sea rise would do here. And bring your shorts. We’re having a long term (mythical) warming trend. The birds in my backyard are building nests and moths are flying around in mid December.
Changes caused by increased CO2 and the Milankovitch cycles are not directly comparable due to both speed and scope.
I think the hypothesis was that it was the increased length of summer sunshine when the Earth’s tilt was about a degree more than today, that caused the West African monsoon to intensify, resulting in North Africa greening.
But even if CO2-induced warming turned out to be good for Libyans and Sudanese, what about Marshall Islanders, Bangladeshis, and Mississippians? (Floridians are already soggy, salty toast)
Some of what Rove said is true, and that’s important in maintaining a misleading narrative.
It is true that the US market economy has made progress reducing GHG emissions. But “we’ve done it” should have been “we’ve started, but it’s far from enough”.
It’s also true that without technological progress and investment, developing countries trying to reduce GHGs could hurt their income growth and economic growth. But it’s also possible that developing countries may, because don’t yet have a huge investment in energy infrastructure, benefit tremendously from new technology that allows them to race directly to the renewable energy age, bypassing the fossil fuel industrial age completely. That would be great news for us and them.
The developed world should contribute to their renewable energy development because we’ve enjoyed many decades of elevated living standards on the back of fossil fuel energy, and have been responsible for most of the increases in GHGs until the early 00s. If they follow in our footsteps, it isn’t only they who will be in trouble. All of us will.
We should consider our contribution to renewables in the developing world as a delayed carbon tax for what we’ve already contributed to the planet’s atmospheric carbon load.
Sir, I like the way you think! Hope this idea is as contagious as measles used to be.
Groundupbrain, Omno, and Tom Bates are the leadoff batters here? And “Ohio Meltdown Karl” is the subject of the piece? That’s four strikes. Even though RR makes some good points, and NG backs us into some truth, it’s not enough to overcome the others’ craziness. Another thread trashed and game over for me.