The Outliers

Saudi Arabia's presentation was pretty hilarious. Their delegate, whose name I didn't catch, starts off by saying all the usual stuff about the need for urgent action and the need to be guided by a principle of division of responsibility, wherein we understand that the poorer countries have done very little to contribute to this problem and shouldn't be expected to bear the burden of fixing it. Saudi Arabia "looks forward to beginning negotiations" on these topics.

But then comes the pivot!

We need to also abide by "the principle of non-bias against specific goods in addressing climate change" and Saudi Arabia must object to the "selective nature of some policies and measures." Specifically, "market interventions are being made with a view to impacting the relative costs of energy sources" which is outrageous. He actually managed to keep talking in this vein without saying the word "oil." I'm told that at the same time Evo Morales was saying that "capitalism is the greatest enemy of humanity."

Comments

You're assuming that Saudi Arabia counts itself as not-poor.

Posted by MattF | September 24, 2007 1:19 PM

he may have been (non) alluding to coal. also, what's a guy to do? they have sand, they have oil, and the sand business is same as it ever was. all these speeches are based in rational self-interest, it's just that in more sophisticated economies the nature of the rational self-interest is more complex.

Posted by lucretius | September 24, 2007 2:30 PM

I don't know. Do we really care what Saudia Arabia thinks about all this? They don't have a real economy so we don't have to worry about their energy consumption long term. They sell oil, but there is nothing they can do to prevent everyone else from taxing the hell out of it. Actually, they should be praying we take the carbon tax path, because it will ultimately cost them less than the 'massively subsidize green energy' path. The only ticket they can play is economic brinksmanship by threatening to massively disrupt the world oil market by witholding supply. But they don't need to be involved in the negotations where China and India talk to the West about who will curb energy emissions by how much.

Posted by mpowell | September 24, 2007 3:07 PM

They just need to sell the world on building every last damn thing out of plastic. Then they'll do fine. Concrete production emits loads of CO2, so build parking garages out of plastic!

Posted by Njorl | September 24, 2007 3:18 PM

Evo's right.

Posted by Ben Cronin | September 24, 2007 8:49 PM