Nice summit. Personally I think it has more to do with oil strategies then environment whatsoever.

Actually, we need another approach.  We need to look at it entirely differently.  It shouldn't be about carbon.  It should be about energy. 

Everything made, every product, every service provided requires energy to produce and distribute it.  There should be a way to implement a sales tax on that product or service according to the amount of energy required to produce and distribute that product or service to the consumer.  The sales tax should be added according to the amount of energy used from non-renewable sources and NOT from renewable sources.

@xeno:
The past has shown that it leaves room for a lot of corruption. Better go to the energy source directly then instead of doing it indirect.

Basically, all I am calling for is making all products and services that use non-renewable energies more expensive, and thus allow those products and services that use renewable sources of energy to be more competitive.  This way, we can let market forces pass on the culpability for global climate change (as well as punish those responsible for wastefully energy use practices) onto the producers and consumers of such 'unsustainable' products and services.

If Obama told me that we need to find alternative energy sources because we need to stop sending money to terrorists I'd pretend that global warming existed too.

lol@simon

@xeno:
I agree with your second post except for the solution. Better to limit oil resources directly. It is far easier to control and will achieve its goal better. But if you choose a tax system to limit it, other taxes in Europe should go down first.

If you limit it indirectly there are a lot of problems in calculating the energy cost. You need to oversee the entire chain from start to costumer and that is very very difficult if not impossible. Another problem: Most renewable energy installations use conventional energy when they are build. Some to the extend that they are consuming more then they use. Not all of course but all care should be taken not to promote these. The producers of these not-so-renewable energy sources often have a lot of influence on leaders and institutions. A lot of money will be wasted then while it could have been used for good renewable energy sources.

"problems in calculating the energy cost"

Yes.  A method of calculating the amount of non-renewable / renewable energy used in prodicing a given product or providing a given service would require significant analysis.  I'm not saying it would be easy, but it would be a fair measure.

> If Obama told me that we need to find alternative energy sources because we need
> to stop sending money to terrorists I'd pretend that global warming existed too.

Bam! An excuse for global-warming-nuts that i can live with.

> I'm not saying it would be easy, but it would be a fair measure.

How could it possibly be fair? It would be far too circumstantial to be anywhere near
practical to implement. And that's on a national level, it literally couldn't work on
an international level.

Little Paul

What do I have against limiting the resources directly?  Well, for a start, it requires states with the centralized power to enforce such a limitation.  States which possess the power to limit their resource production will have other excessive powers as well, which will lead to abuse of power in other ways, never mind corruption.  Also, it cannot be implemented internationally, as some states will simply not control their resources as others might, resulting in a rather messy politically-charged world economy.  But, most importantly, it subverts the freedom of the consumer to drive the market.  A sales tax charged at the end product purchasing level will maintain the free-market system.

This whole Copenhagen summit is a continuance of the age old attempt of the so called elite to reign in the free-market system for their continued benefit.

We need to strangle the bitch Gaia! Kali Ma! Shakti de!

Wow.  I can't even find out about it, as it seems as if Google news is blocked.

@ Zeno

i like your idea of taxation on non-renewable resources.  i just have a couple questions.

i live in Buffalo, NY. we are still in recession and many resident are currently leaving the state as it is. how would western NY benefit from this if we no longer have the tax revenue to fund renewable energy programs? can we get tax relief from the fed because we have Niagara Falls?

Niagara Fall doesn't produce electricity for western NY.  The immedieate surge of energy is too much for buffalo to handle(our light bulbs would explode). instead the power harvested from the hydro plant is rerouted south as far as PA. Would WNY get tax insentives because we supply alot of energy into the national grid, but dont actually use it?