Dakota Beacon

Behold the thinking of a know-it-all zealot:

Trade can be green, and world trade rules can be tools to make it so.

Here we have the quintessential progressive, James Bacchus, former member of Congress from Florida and former chairman of the Appellate Body of the World Trade Organization (WTO). Bacchus also chairs his law firm's "global practice."

Bacchus has a vision, and like all radical environmentalists with a vision, he is prepared to force "trade rules" on the entire world to bring the vision to fruition. And also like radical environmentalists, he argues from the fundamentally flawed assumption that "climate change" is human-caused and that humans can do something to stop the climate from changing. Bacchus wants to "hasten the spread of green technologies worldwide." How to achieve the hastening? With "the rules of the World Trade Organization."

Clear thinkers find it impossible to get inside the head of someone with a God complex who believes that humans can change the fluctuations of a global climate that have been occurring naturally for millions of years.

Witness the muddled rationale of the global warming dogmatist.

To date, most of the all-too-little attention paid thus far to the connection between trade and climate change has focused on how trade rules constrain proposed national actions that would restrict international trade in products based on the excessive carbon emissions from their production.

To reduce the concentration of an atmospheric gas which, at levels achievable through industrial emissions, has no effect on climate, Bacchus would restrict world trade and likely destroy the world economy. The intellectual dishonesty and arrogance demonstrated by ignoring the evidence against human-caused climate change and brushing aside the entire Climategate scandal are simply staggering.

Bacchus's real agenda--the agenda of the Church of Global Warming--leaks through.

In particular, it is vital to increase energy efficiency in developing countries, which are only one-third as energy efficient as developed countries.

Wealth redistribution. How?

New green technologies are everywhere subject to mandatory technical regulations and to voluntary standards of all kinds. They are submitted to "conformity assessment procedures" used to determine whether technical requirements have been fulfilled. They can be affected by labeling schemes, by bans and by other prohibitions.

All this falls under WTO rules. Those rules encourage the international harmonization of standards and technical regulations. Such harmonization would spur the distribution of green technologies worldwide and would enhance energy efficiency. Harmonization should not be merely encouraged by WTO rules; it should be a specific goal of the WTO agenda.

Expect anything different from a progressive "globalist?" Subject all countries, including the U.S., to global rules that restrict "non-green" trade and encourage "green" trade. Suppose maybe Mr. Bacchus, in his position as chair of the "global practice" of a law firm, holds financial interest in proliferating "green" technologies globally?

Bacchus offers some pseudo-specifics.

WTO rules protect patents and other intellectual property rights worldwide and rightly so. Those rules also aspire to an appropriate balance between encouraging innovation and allowing reasonable access to innovation through the transfer and dissemination of new technologies.

The "transfer and dissemination of new technologies" is code for what all global wealth redistributionists envision: forcible handover of technology from wealthy countries to poor countries.

Sure, as Bacchus claims, "Trade can indeed be green--if we use the tools of our rule-based trading system wisely." Wonder who will make the rules. 

© 2010 Chuck Rogér