Port Talbot and the Paris Agreement.

On March 30th (30/3/16) the Indian manufacturing giant Tata announced that they were putting the Port Talbot steelworks in South Wales, UK up for sale. With no apparent buyer this places 4,000 jobs at risk in an already impoverished area. As such it has been one of the main stories within UK politics over the past month.

I've avoided commenting on it up until now because it is a complex issue and I am rather busy. Plus I don't have much to bring in the way of good news.

During the debate much has been made of Britain's proud history of steel making which stretches back almost 200 years. However during the steel industry's heyday the UK also had a vibrant mining industry producing not only the raw materials such as Iron ore needed to make steel but also the coal to power the furnaces.

With that now all gone the UK is in a position where it has to import all the raw materials and then try to sell the finished steel back to the nations the raw materials came from at a lower price than it costs them to make the steel themselves. To me that doesn't sound like a particularly sustainable business model. It also discredits the claim that the UK governments needs to protect the steel industry as a strategic asset. After all in a war or in the face of an economic collapse it would still be easier for the UK to just import the finished steel rather than all the raw materials.

With the Paris Agreement on climate change being opened for signing and ratification last Friday (22/4/16) there is one element of the Port Talbot debate that I do need to comment on. The increased costs of energy that have been brought about by so-called "Green Taxes" as part of the Kyoto Protocol - the forerunner of the Paris Agreement.

I should start by pointing out that this element has been somewhat overstated. Energy costs including the costs of raw materials only account for around 6% of the Port Talbot plants total expenditure. That works out at around £60,000 of the £1million the plant is losing every week. As such I don't think it is the decisive factor.

Also the UK participates in the Kyoto Protocol as part of the European Union (EU). Therefore if the German steel industry or the Italian steel industry aren't also in crisis then the problem isn't with the Kyoto Protocol. Instead it is with the way the UK government has chosen to implement the Kyoto Protocol.

That said these green taxes - Carbon Pricing as its known in the jargon - have never been a particularly effective tool in reducing Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. The problem is that they bear absolutely no relation to the cost of reducing GHG emissions or the costs of adapting to the effects of climate change. Instead they're completely arbitrary and therefore open to abuse by the governments that set them.

Carbon pricing was introduced in the UK by the New Labour government of Tony Blair. That government's entire election was based on the promise of increased public spending but no increases in taxes - particularly income tax. In order to deliver on the promise Blair's government introduced a vast array of what are termed "Stealth Taxes" such as green taxes on energy production. These tax revenues obviously boosted the amount of money the government had to spend whilst at the same time they were protecting the environment rather than breaking their tax pledge.

One of the main problems currently facing the global steel industry is China's subsidy of their own steel industry. Essentially the Chinese government is paying to produce steel at a loss so it can continue to create new jobs. Although China - the World's largest emitter of GHG's - is currently growing its emissions rather than taking steps to reduce them such as setting green taxes it should be easy to see how they would use carbon pricing to give a further boost to their steel industry. They simply make sure the carbon price they set is much lower than their competitors.

The solution to this would be to replace carbon pricing with a market based mechanism - sometimes known as Cap and Trade. This would mean that if you are in an industry such as steel making that produces a lot of GHG emissions you would have to pay a nation like Brazil to preserve their Rainforests in order to scrub those emissions out of the atmosphere.

This would obviously drive up the cost of production for energy intensive industries such as steel making. However it would do so globally with the cost being determined by supply and demand meaning that it would be impossible for one nation to gain a competitive advantage over another.

The main barrier to introducing a global market based mechanism has been the Kyoto Protocol itself.

It requires only 36 nations - 28 of them EU member states - to take action to reduce the GHG emissions. So although a prototype carbon market has developed within the EU this doesn't produce enough demand to sustain itself. Also the market doesn't include nations like Brazil that would provide the supply of what are termed Carbon sinks.

The hope then was that not only would the Paris Agreement replace the Kyoto Protocol but it would go further obligating more nations to participate in a market based mechanism strengthening that market in order to make it self-sustaining.

The problem arose in the form of US President Barack Obama.

The US of course did not sign up to the Kyoto Protocol and Obama has made it a key part of his legacy that he wants to be the first US President to sign up to a global climate change agreement. Obviously that would be a hard task for him. Not only would he have to win over the climate change deniers in Congress who will block anything that will harm the profits of the fossil fuel companies that pay for their campaigns Obama would also have to make sure the new agreement removed the problems that gave the US legitimate grounds not to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol.

Unfortunately Obama doesn't like hard work so he went in a different direction.

In October 2015 - two months before negotiations closed - the US ripped up everything that everybody had been working on for the past five years. In its place they introduced a draft that kept the main problem with the Kyoto Protocol - known as; "Binary Differentiation" - but removed any legal obligation on any party to actually uphold the agreement. In short Obama introduced a version of the Kyoto Protocol that was so watered down he thinks he can bypass Congress and ratify it into law by executive order. He even managed to get that bit wrong.

Not only does the Paris Agreement fail to expand the obligation to reduce GHG emissions beyond the 36 nations of the Kyoto Protocol it actually removes the obligation on those 36 because there are no longer any consequences if they don't comply. This obviously permanently removes the demand needed for a market based mechanism killing the idea stone dead.

Due to this failure many governments have rushed to tout Carbon Pricing as a solution with some 90 nations including some sort of Green Tax plan. This newfound drive towards stealth taxes that do nothing to reduce GHG emissions has been led both by Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. When Obama first took up office everyone in the UK quickly realised that they'd seen it all before in the form of Tony Blair. Trudeau has been touted as "Canada's Obama" and is very much in that style over substance mould of politics.

The other advantage of a market based mechanism is that it would provide a ready stream of income to poor nations such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This would allow them to adapt to the effects of climate change and develop their economies in an environmentally sustainable manner. With that option being killed off by the Paris Agreement it has been suggested that the void could be filled by what are termed Private Finance Initiatives (PFI's). These are another one of Tony Blair's scams.

Essentially rather than having to pay for public infrastructure such as hospitals upfront private companies pay for them under PFI's with no initial cost to the taxpayer. The government then rents the infrastructure from the private company on a long term basis. As the recent closure of 17 schools in Edinburgh, Scotland demonstrates these PFI's very nearly destroyed the UK economy. The private companies do substandard work for a huge profit before the taxpayer has to pay again to actually provide the service.

As such forcing impoverished nations without strong political and anti-corruption systems to rely on PFI's to help them adapt to climate change is rather like sending lambs to the slaughter. The Bloomberg group however seem to really like the idea.

With last Friday's signing ceremony for the Paris Agreement owing nothing to efforts to combat climate change and everything to Obama's ego it is telling that Obama didn't attend. Instead he was on an official visit to the UK primarily to visit the Queen.

The day before Obama's visit the Queen celebrated her 90th birthday. Obviously being invited to a private audience with her so soon after such an important event would be considered both a huge honour and a mark of respect. On his visit Obama was also offered the chance to write an article for the Daily Telegraph newspaper and give an in depth interview for the BBC on the subject of the UK's upcoming referendum on remaining part of the EU. It is fitting with Obama's ego that he would think that he alone could alter the outcome of the vote.

Having appeared to have tricked Obama into boycotting the signing ceremony for the Paris Agreement the UK then seemed to turn the entire visit into a spirited protest against the Paris Agreement.

At around 17:15 on 25/4/16 (UK date) I will be back to expand on that after dinner.

Edited at around 18:35 on 25/4/16 (UK date) to add;

In the week proceeding Obama's visit the UK suddenly became rather noisy. For example it was announced that British police still believed they could find Madeline McCann alive.

For me at least global climate change negotiations have been heavily intertwined with the fate of my grandmother. I actually ended up spending three of the last five Conference of Parties (COP) Summits arguing the case in the Court of Protection (COP). On the final occasion the case was heard by the same Judge who ruled that Madeline McCann is still alive. Needless to say there are significant question marks over her integrity and competence.

At roughly the same time British popstar Lily Allen gave a series of media interviews after a man was convicted of harassing/stalking her. Although I've only actually met her a couple of times many of those occasions were on "Mayday" anti-capitalist protests which were covered by extensive police surveillance. As such Lily Allen and I are cross-referenced in each other MI5 files.

The big disruption for the 2013 COP19 Summit was Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour. This caused me to become utterly obsessed with Rihanna's every move constantly searching for secret messages she'd hidden in her songs, video and social media posts. I suspect the longterm objective was that this would lead to me getting into some sort of legal/medical trouble.

On the day of the ceremony the British theme park Alton Towers plead guilty to negligence charges over a crash on their "Smiler" ride on June 2nd 2015 (2/6/16). That was an attempt by the UK to disrupt the June SB42 meeting at which final climate change negotiations were taking place. If the UK hadn't been so disruptive maybe the Paris Agreement wouldn't have been so terrible.

Later in the day a sort of crime mystery emerged with the discovery of two bodies at an address on May Street in Hull, UK.

With the exception of the Alton Towers apology there didn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to all this noise. Instead the purpose was to disrupt the Paris Agreement signing ceremony by putting pressure on everybody to search for a meaning that didn't exist.

The best bit about this effort was that the US was forced to join in adding to the confusion.

On Thursday (21/4/16) in the US state of Delaware a 16 year old girl was beaten to death in a high school bathroom by a group of girls some of whom filmed the attack on their cell phones. This was a reference to my so-called lesbian wife. It almost goes without saying that the rest of Britain's lesbian community did not take news of the marriage in good grace.

The fact the killing occurred in the bathroom is a reference gender neutral bathrooms debate that is currently going on in the US. Obviously being able to use phrases like "lesbian wife" I have things that I could contribute to this debate. Not that I can be bothered.

On Friday (22/4/16) 8 people were found dead in a mass shooting in the US state of Ohio. Obviously when that news flashes up without any other detail people immediately start wondering what the cause could be with terrorism being very high up on the list.

Also Obama has made gun control a major part of his legacy. So there was some interest to see whether he would cancel his press conference with UK Prime Minister in order to exploit the tragedy to further his agenda as he has done with so many other mass shootings. The shooting occurred in an area known as "Union Hill." I suspect that name comes from the area supporting the Union forces against the Confederate forces during the US civil war. Through his constant race baiting Obama seems intent on starting the next US civil war.

After two days of mystery is was revealed yesterday (24/4/16) that the shootings had taken place at an illegal Marijuana farm hinting that the killings were linked to organised crime. Although I'm not sure how much detail I want to go into I am somewhat familiar with the fringes of that World. While it didn't involve me directly this became a bit of an issue during COP19 due to a much less dramatic shooting.

Since Friday the US has been trying to style out the situation by continuing the noise to give the impression that there was some urgent discussion going on rather than Obama being tricked into protesting his own legacy. For example on Saturday (23/4/16) night there was another evacuation on the Red Line of Washington D.C's Metro system. This was intended to look like a discussion about the terror threat facing Europe and an apology for the lack on communication.

Despite the noisy and spectacular protest the UK then went and contradicted itself by signing the Paris Agreement. As with any other signatory to the agreement this doesn't place any real obligation on the UK to do anything about climate change.

However it does make it more difficult should we decide we want to do something about climate change at some point in the future.

19:30 on 25/4/16 (UK date).