Kaine, British ambassador sign global-warming pact
Bob Brown / Times-Dispatch
Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, right, and Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the United States, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, right, adress a press conference at the State Capitol.
Virginia and England’s first partnership was founded on the lucrative cash crop of tobacco.
Today, 400 years later, the commonwealth and the United Kingdom came together under a different kind of green.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Sir Nigel Sheinwald, the British ambassador to the United States, signed an agreement to work together to reduce greenhouse gases, research low-carbon, renewable energy technologies and raise public awareness on the global issues of climate change.
“Virginia and the UK recognize that climate change is a global phenomenon and combating it requires global partnerships,“ said Kaine, speaking at a signing ceremony with Sheinwald at his office in the Capitol in Richmond.
“This agreement will bring together Virginia and UK researchers, entrepreneurs, and environmental educators to achieve greenhouse gas reductions, promote energy efficiency and independence, and promote the development of a green economy.“
The U.K. has signed similar agreements with California, Florida, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Kaine and Sheinwald said there was good reason for the latest partnership.
Virginia provides more than $1 billion in defense industry related goods and services to the UK. And the 10,000 jobs created by British commerce in the state make England the largest foreign investor in terms of manpower to Virginia’s economy.
Sheinwald marked the day - the 200th anniversary of Chalres Darwin’s birth - by saying the agreement represented “the need to follow science and adopt in our politics a type of approach” to global climate and related economic issues that is based on science and reason.
“We’re entering a new era as far as climate and energy is concerned,“ the ambassador said.
The UK has become a leader in the European Union on the green energy front. Once a mainstay of its energy generation, coal accounts for only 10 percent of its current energy supply, with 20 percent coming from nuclear power, 60 percent from gas and 5 percent generated through renewable energy.
The island nation produces more energy from offshore wind generation than any other country. Selling a green economy in the U.S. and Virginia may be tougher than in the UK, however.
While Kaine said he favors a national framework to place caps and trade carbon emissions, the Southern Governor’s association, which he chairs, is lukewarm to the idea. Virginia also relies heavily on coal to generate its power.
In response to a question, the governor said yesterday said he had “not seen enough to make me believe” that a proposed new coal-fired plant in Surry County is necessary.
A handful of Kaine’s “green bills” promoting tax credits and the use of alternative fuels have passed the state Senate, but face an uphill battle in the House of Delegates.
Still both the governor of Virginia and the British ambassador said yesterday’s agreement was another step toward bringing the commonwealth and the U.S. around on the issues of climate change and renewable energy.
“You can change the atmosphere from the outside as well as from within,“ the ambassador said, referring to the importance of public awareness to bring change to the corridors of Washington, D.C.
Kaine said that none of the 10 largest solar energy companies are in the U.S.
“The energy path the nation has been on is not a sustainable one,“ he said.
Contact Jim Nolan at (804) 649-6061 or .
Reader Reactions
The basic problem with the global warming/climate change/ and the latest Al Gore “climate crisis” theories is that the basic science is bogus.
The rise in CO2 levels ALWAYS FOLLOWS the warming.
This puts the fine point on the fact that there has been no rise in global temperatures in eleven 11 years despite the fact that CO2 levels continue to rise.
There is no doubt that the global citizens need to address the subject of pollution, which is rampant. But the idea that there is a “crisis” created solely by anthropological CO2 is a scam of the first order.
Folks might want to check out the relationship between Al Gore and the guru of global warming James Hansen and a cabal of ex-Goldman Sachs honchos who have an up and running firm in London called GIM Generation Investment Management. Up to their necks in the new “carbon market.“
Gore and Clinton’s position on climate change was to make sure that the Ktoto Protocol agreement didn’t call for more than a 5% reduction in fossil fuel.
Al Gore was the one that opened up the Artic National Petroleum Reserve, 2000 miles off the Alaskan coastline, and parts of the California coastline, selling off the Elk Hills Petroleum reserve to occidental Oil, his family’s patron Company.It was the largest privatization in American Government history.
It was Clinton/Gore that gave the full efficiency exemption to the SUV’s.
Clinton gave a billion dollars to GM, Ford and Chrysler for a clean energy project that never produced a single prototype.
And remember Tennessee is a “coal state.“
There were all sorts of scandals attached to the land surrounding Mr. Gore’s ancestral land and holdings in Tennessee.
So much has been forgotten over the years. I remember and have kept notes because my husband and got involved in water pollution and environmentalism in the early 60’s.
A lot has changed in the field in that time but the hypocrisy and greed stayed for the duration.
fedup - I would say that both sides have told their share of lies. However, the tipping point, as I see it, was the fact that Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore has been pushing a global warming hoax that is demonstrably false. How many more years of declining temperatures is it going to take to convince you otherwise?
Kyoto, as well intentioned as it might have seemed to the environmental crowd, disproportionately penalized the United States giving India and China a pass relatively speaking. It was horribly crafted, in my opinion, as, if global warming is such a horrible thing, a moral and religious thing as Al Gore submits, nobody should be getting waivers and passes. It is what it is or, in this case, it isn’t what you think it is.
Spew. nice debate term, used by the desperate when rational argument eludes. A touch of defensiveness when trying to defend disastrous policies is good, it shows that healing can begin.
“Critics point to the Bush administration’s close ties to the oil and gas industries. In June 2005, State Department papers showed the administration thanking Exxon executives for the company’s “active involvement” in helping to determine climate change policy, including the U.S. stance on Kyoto. Input from the business lobby group Global Climate Coalition was also a factor.“-Wiki
“Tax experts and environmentalists say the plan would provide incentives for businesses to choose the biggest gas-guzzling trucks because it takes several years to depreciate the cost of passenger cars and smaller sport utility vehicles. The ramifications of the Bush plan on S.U.V. buyers were reported today in The Detroit News.
The potential lift for sales of big S.U.V.‘s comes amid rising tension in the Middle East and increasing criticism of S.U.V.‘s from environmentalists and regulators.“ “NYTimes business 1-21-2003
The secret energy policy meetings that the office of VP and oil company executives lied about:
“The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.“ Post, 11-16-2005
Spare me the legacy revisionism from the Bush43 library.
Posted by ( fedup )
Good job Governor. Ever since the previous administration calculatedly thumbed their noses at Kyoto in the beginning of the century we have been making our cars bigger
If you are going to post statements at least make them accurate. Manufacturers made big cars, SUV’s and Trucks because that is what the American buyers wanted. Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, Nissan and the others were in lockstep. Look at the Toyota Tundra that Toyota recently built a multi-billion dollar plant in Texas to produce.
You crybabies always can spew this stuff out and expect reasonable people to believe it. Not likely as most people understand how complex the issues are.
I’m not going to live in a cave, freeze to death in winter, burn up in summer, drive a death trap tin can with wheels. You do what suits you but don’t expect everybody else to do it.
fedup-It was the Clinton administration that scuttled our participation in the Kyoto Protocol
Al Gore represented the US and issued our refusal to participate.
And it has been an abysmal failure on all fronts.
It is not only prohibitively expensive it is totally unworkable according to the attendees at the latest convention in Poland.
The Europeans are sinking in a quagmire of half baked technology that they jumped into with no thought to the possible unintended consequences.
That is why they are having internal wars about new coal plants and rolling blackouts.
I don’t think democrats, particularly environmentalist, liberal democrats pay enough taxes and use enough alternative energy to insist that everyone else do it.
Good job Governor. Ever since the previous administration calculatedly thumbed their noses at Kyoto in the beginning of the century we have been making our cars bigger and our foreign blunders more deadly. This is an important milestone in the reemergence of science as a basic reasoning tool in the formulation of public policy. Turn back the anti-evidence bent of the neoconservatives and their suicidal PNAC. I support Virginia’s new pioneering spirit of sustainability and public responsibility.
Why is lame-duck Kaine still in the headlines? He knows and WE KNOW he will never be elected again for any public office! He is hoping Barack Hussein hooks him up with a judgeship somewhere, so why does he keep pandering to the leftist loons? Oh, my bad - the DNC chair job is to raise money for other candidates. Again - putting Virginia last at the worst time in history to do so!!!
Misery sure does love company.
The Brits just like all the EU countries have plans to build brand spankin’ new coal fired plants.
With the exception of France which is almost all nuclear they are all scrambling to supply their citizens with the energy that is needed.
They would like nothing better than to entangle the US in all their pie in the sky expensive schemes. And eventually guilt the gulliable American citizenry into paying the bill.
Even president Obama’s new energy secretery says it will take new technology of Nobel Prize caliber to get any viable new programs off the ground.
He says that solar technology would have to get five 5 times better and new types of plants will need to be engineered in order to feed and fuel the planet.
Slow and steady wins the day here. Not throwing in our lot with the Brits or anybody else who are bankrupting their citizenry and shopping for somebody else to help foot the bill.
VADem2009, please re-read the article. It says that Kaine and Sheinwald executed an agreement, not a memorandum of understanding. Marion-Webster’s includes the following in the definition of an agreement” “Compact, Treaty, a contract duly executed and legally binding.“ The governor of Virginia cannot, under our foundational law, legally enter into such “binding contracts” with the representative of a foreign government.
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