Russia comments on Kyoto

Alex Singleton at the Adam Smith Institute writes about some comments that Andrei Illarionov, chief adviser to President Vladimir Putin made while addressing the Institute: bq. Andrei Illarionov, chief advisor to President Vladimir Putin, addressed an audience at the Adam Smith Institute today on key policy issues. Clarifying Russia's position on Kyoto, he said: "Kyoto would result in an economic holocaust for Russia. Kyoto-ism is another example of totalitarian ideology like Marxism, communism and socialism. Russia has imported those ideas from Europe and suffered badly in the twentieth century. Kyoto-ism would lead to the creation of bureaucratic monsters at national and supra-national levels that - through allocation of emissions quotas - would be a blow against basic human freedoms and human rights, and would decide the fate of nations, companies and people worldwide." bq. He went on to describe the science behind Kyoto as "deeply flawed". Viewed over the past 100 years, the increase in global temperatures may appear significant. However, over a longer period it becomes obvious that global temperatures vary a great deal - largely as a result of natural phenomena. The current global temperature is lower than has been observed at other times in the past 1000 years. Andrei also made note of something which Rob Smith at Gut Rumbles commented on earlier -- I blogged about it here bq. Illarionov pointed out that there is a strong link between wealth creation and environmental protection. "Kyoto harms economic growth, perpetuates poverty, and would undermine everyone's ability to achieve a cleaner, healthier environment. Therefore, the most important policy for environmental protection is creating the right conditions for economic growth. Kyoto has the opposite effect and is therefore environmentally harmful." The Enviros and leftys seem to think that there is a fixed pool of wealth and that it just needs to be redistributed more equitably. This is a false assumption -- the pool of wealth is not fixed, it can be created and expanded. If an economy is growing, it is in its' own economic interest to keep the environment clean.