U.S. Envoy Rejects Climate Extortion

Somewhat surprisingly, given that this is the Obama administration we are talking about, the U.S. envoy at the climate talks in Copenhagen bluntly rejected the ridiculous notion that the U.S. somehow owes poor countries a debt because of global warming. Groups of third world countries have been attempting to extort money from industrialized nations as part of an agreement on climate change measures. It's about time the U.S. forcefully spoke out and slapped them down. Here's Todd Stern, the envoy in question.

“I actually completely reject the notion of a debt or reparations or anything of the like,” he said. “For most of the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, people were blissfully ignorant of the fact that emissions caused a greenhouse effect. It’s a relatively recent phenomenon.”

He even attacked the equally ludicrous idea that the U.S. should provide money to fast developing countries such as China.

“China has $2 trillion in reserves,” said Mr. Stern ... “We don’t think China would be the first candidate for public funding.”

That's an understatement. The idea that the U.S. might impose economy-crippling regulations on itself is bad enough. But doing that while simultaneously transferring billions in taxpayer money to countries like China, or various third world basket cases,  would be completely insane. There you have Obama's climate policies so far, bad but not completely insane.