The Commerce Secretary of the United States, Gary Locke, says that America needs to pay for carbon emissions from China and other countries that it imports goods from. Locke made the comments to the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai.
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke
Gary Locke met with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabo and others to talk about ways the two countries could curb global warming. Evidently all that emerged from his meetings was for the U.S. to bear most of the burden. From Reuters:
“It’s important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America — and it’s our own consumption activity that’s causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai
Commerce Secretary Locke’s comments are deeply troubling not to mention very irresponsible. I don’t remember the last time an American citizen was asked if he or she wanted their goods imported from China. We don’t really have a choice in most cases. Why then should we have to “pay” more?
China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, so the Obama Administration needs a way to cover for the Chinese. Commerce Secretary Locke seems to be hinting toward how they might do that.
With the Cap and Trade bill already through the House, the Chinese are not happy about provisions in the bill that would allow the U.S. government to put “carbon tariffs” on carbon intensive materials from countries that haven’t taken steps to curb their carbon output; like the Chinese.
Trying to assure the Chinese about Obama’s position on the bill, Locke said:
“The president has not taken a position on any particular element of the legislation,” Locke said.
“It’s simply premature to talk about individual pieces of the legislation without seeing it in it’s totality,” Locke said, noting the Senate still has to pass its version of the bill.
You know, one of our best allies in defeating Cap and Trade may just be the communist Chinese.
So basically it went this way in China; Commerce Secretary Locke told the Chinese that we both need to curb carbon emissions, but we buy a lot of goods from you so we should pay more. And even though you haven’t done anything to curb your emissions, don’t worry, we’ll cover that too.
Gary Locke Video
July 19th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
[...] Right Pundits and Gateway [...]
July 19th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Everything everywhere is our problem to fix, pay for and fault. Its apparent this administration thinks that the United States is the source of all evil in the world when just the opposite is the truth.
July 20th, 2009 at 5:10 am
Is this all this administration cares about. I mean really it’s like they find it more important to support Al Gores hoax than get us out of a recession. I mean China wants us to have a carbon emissions tax will bankrupt America and cause millions of factory jobs to be lost to which country you guessed it China. I mean when it comes to trade no wonder there kicking our asses here in the US we have to many regulation,the unions are killers, and we tax out of control. I mean if I were a factory owner and when obama says were going to raising taxes with cap and trade or more regulation I would say OK now I’m going to give you the finger and be on my way to China or Mexico. Are government has become an overfeed oversized monster that designed to destroy are freedoms and business. Let’s face it we have a massive trade debt with China and many other countries. So were done if the the next president in 2012 is not a knight with the mission to kill this monster called government. And the way to kill him is through balancing the the budget through cutting spending and going to a Fair Tax.
July 20th, 2009 at 5:16 am
[...] is the United States. But heck, we have geniuses in our government who say the USA should pay for the carbon-emission-sins of other countries we import goods [...]
July 20th, 2009 at 7:06 am
[...] no interest in doing the same thing to their own countries, and who could blame them. This story dovetails with another report that our own Commerce Secretary wants the US to pay for the carbon emissions from China because we [...]