Transnational governance on climate change is such a bad idea that even Gordon wants it for heavens sake.

It is, frankly a bit rich for David Milliband to come prancing back from Copenhagen blaming the Chinese for torpeedoing everything and saying how unacceptable it is for them to scuttle the whole agreement.

Note to David Milliband – China represents nearly 20% of the global population – and emits 21.5% of the CO2. The UK is 0.91% of the population and emits fully 2% of the carbon (stats from Wikipedia so take them with a pinch of salt). So, in order for us not to be hypocrites, we’d need to be offering a 50% reduction in our carbon intensity pretty much immediately.

N.B. these statistics are still skewed because we import most of our raw materials these days whereas China’s output of CO2 is at least partly derived from aluminium smelting and other heavy industry for export.

If Britain was serious it would stop arguing about other country’s unwillingness to accept curbs on their emissions and concentrate on slashing ours. For example:

The Severn Barrage
Offshore wind farm in the Thames Estuary
New high speed rail routes across the UK
Cease all airport expansion
Ramp up nuclear power capacity
Funnel research money into the ITER and DEMO experimental fusion reactors
Architectural competitions to design commuting out of cities and towns
All civilian government vehicles to go hybrid or electric within 5 years
Challenge the tourist industry to persuade more of us to holiday in the UK
Build a network of electric charging/battery swap stations and work with EU and US to develop common charging standard.
And still more support for domestic insulation.

But the government prefers to whinge about the Chinese refusal to commit themselves to being second class citizens for another generation.

Within an Anarchy the ‘rich and powerful’ wouldn’t exist – at least as they exist within either capitalism or state socialism. Economic and political inequality is enforced by the State. That’s what the State is FOR.

What happened to arguing a smaller state rather than a global one?

http://www.liberalconspiracy.org/2009/04/17/why-the-left-should-argue-for-a-small-state/

It’s bad enough my vote is a drop in the ocean in a national election without diluting it by another six billion.

What you are suggesting is replacing democracy with homeopathy.

‘The problem of collective action means that people won’t agree to contribute to public goods, preferring that the cost of doing so falls upon someone else.’

People contribute where they see a positive outcome to that contribution and where they have some say in how that contribution is used.

‘And on top of this is the sheer difficulty of getting lots of people to agree to anything.

Maybe you are right and the world needs a Fuhrer to take decisions for us but I’d rather stick a gun in my mouth.

It is difficult to detect what the competition effect on jurisdictions is, although we might imagine it to be pretty high given how much people are prepared to spend and to lose in order to move into a superior jurisdiction. So we should fear the kind of incentives a global government would have, or lack of them.

This should not be heretical to the left: Marx wanted the abolition of the State, eventually.