Putin's numbers man criticises Kyoto sign-up
The chief economic adviser to the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has broken ranks with his own government, criticising the Russian cabinet's decision to approve the Kyoto treaty on global warming.
In the old days, he'd disappear for doing that. Hmmmm.
Andrei Illarionov called the treaty a "broad-based assault" on economic growth, the environment and on "human civilisation itself".
HE gets it, even if the Western Euro wankers don't.
Politics rather than economic or environmental considerations motivated the cabinet's decision last week to approve the Kyoto treaty, he said. The 1997 treaty allows the sale of surplus carbon credits, a surplus Russia expects to gain, and he suggested that well-connected Russians would seek to profit from credit sales. Companies with "very good, special and personal relations with particular government officials" had lobbied the Putin Government to ratify the treaty, Mr Illarionov said.
But, but, but, that's so French! Guess the Russians are more Western than we thought.
The treaty would create an "Orwellian nightmare" of "bureaucratic monsters" who would decide carbon limits country-by-country, and determine each country's economic potential.
In other words, French with teeth. ANOTHER reason to tell the Kyoto klowns to stuff it.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-10-05 |