Expanding and Updating the G8

The G8 group of wealthy industrial nations will consider and adopt for a reduction of CO2 greenhouse gas emissions of 50% by the year 2050. It is not clear what it means to consider the reduction if one is also saying one will adopt it. Well, leave it to politicians to utter such nonsense, both in the language and in the possible attempt to make such a devastating and unfounded reduction in perfectly good plant food.

The present members of the G8 are the United States, Japan, Germany, the UK, Russia, France, Italy, and Canada. The 15 countries with the largest GDPs are listed below with the GDP in trillions of dollars in 2007 according to the CIA Factbook:

The United States $13.84
The People's Republic of China $6.991
Japan $4.29
India $2.809
Germany $2.808
The United Kingdom $2.137
Russia $2.088
France $2.047
Brazil $1.836
Italy $1.786
Spain $1.352
Mexico $1.346
Canada $1.266
South Korea $1.201
Turkey $0.888

Examining this list, one might kick Italy and Canada out of the G8 and add China and India, both of whom have a considerable disdain for the advocates of catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming. Or assuming one thinks it too heartless to throw them out, one could change the G8 into the G14 and add China, India, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, and South Korea on the basis that there is a big gap in GDP between South Korea and Turkey, while South Korea is right on the heels of Canada, a present member. This would have the advantage of adding Brazil and Mexico, neither of which is likely to push CO2 reductions to the point of greatly hurting their economies.

Of course, while the countries of Western Europe have a habit of talking about CO2 emission reductions, as we have noted in an earlier post, they keep growing their emissions at a faster rate than has the U.S. Since there has been no warming for a decade now, perhaps everyone will come to their senses before they actually pick up sledgehammers and use them on our economies. Let us hope sanity will prevail then, though insanity prevails now.