The ultimate irony - George Bush slashes worldwide carbon emissions

It also took a small army of Wall Street and European bankers to load their balance sheets so high with debt that debt to credit ratios often reached about 40:1.

The results for the world economy are catastrophic

The latest data on Q4 2008 GDP growth (at an annual rate) around the world are even worse than the first estimate for the US (-6 per cent): -6.0 per cent for the Eurozone; -8 per cent for Germany; -12 per cent for Japan; -16 per cent for Singapore; -20 per cent for Korea.

As at February 2009 German exports dropped 7.3 per cent from the previous quarter and company investment in plant and machinery declined 4.9 per cent.

The European Automobile Manufacturers Association is reporting European truck sales plunged 35 per cent in January, more than double the drop in December.

Japan's exports plunged more than 45 per cent in January compared to a year ago to hit the lowest figure ever recorded. Toyota, Japan’s biggest automaker, slashed global production 43 per cent in January. Honda’s production dropped 33 per cent and Nissan’s slid 54 per cent.

Honda’s global production decline in January was its biggest since at least 1999; Mazda’s global production fell 63 per cent in January.

General Motors sales dropped 53 per cent in February 2009 and Ford’s dropped 48 per cent.

On February 11, Britain’s The Telegraph reported that European Commission officials have estimated that impaired assets may amount to 44 per cent of EU bank balance sheets - £16.3 trillion (18.1 trillion euros / US$25 trillion).

By December 2008, every country in Asia had contracting exports. Chinese exports contracted by 17.5 per cent year-on-year in January 2009, the steepest in 13 years. Imports contracted 43.1 per cent. China has suffered a decline in electricity demand caused by factory closures so large that already some 20 million workers have been laid off.

The price of oil has collapsed as demand is down. Coal prices are going the same way.

The global economy is now literally in free fall as the contraction of consumption, capital spending, residential investment, production, employment, exports and imports is accelerating rather than decelerating.

Summary

Simple demand-reduction steps obviously help the environment, but the fact is they will not reverse greenhouse gas emission growth so as to avoid runaway global warming. Pretending that they can is not only counter-productive, it is frankly dangerous.

Ironically, the only thing that looks like slowing, and maybe even reversing emissions, is the greed of bankers and the blindness of politicians like Bush; but it does so by causing misery and poverty world-wide.

The only thing which will lead to a permanent reduction in emissions which builds wealth, rather than destroying it, is the conversion to large-scale renewable energy supplies. It’s time we stopped resting on the laurels of our tokenistic demand-reduction efforts, stopped pretending that the emissions trading scheme will reduce anything other than our bank-balances, and demanded the immediate, total conversion to renewable energy.