Maverick's World

President Cheney: India-US Nuclear Deal

Many of us were surprised to hear that Vice President Cheney has overtly supported the India-US nuclear deal. It came as quite a surprise to Indians who felt that Cheney's loyalty to Enron, and Enron's interests in India. Most of us cannot forget the famed Dabhol Working Group set up to strong arm India and Maharashtra to pay an exorbitant amount of money for Enron. Actually most of us have a detailed memory of events at Dabhol. So with all that in the background - why is Vice President Cheney changing his tune?

Hollywood hates Dick Cheney, they have done a lot to give him a bad name. All those liberal reporters in those blue-state newspaper, those folks think of Dick Cheney as the devil himself. The left wing lunatics in the press - they simply demonize him for the fun of it - I mean, look here is an article accusing the Bush administration of being "too busy" extorting money from India to pay attention to Richard Clarke's memo about Bin Laden planning to hit the US.

It is important to note that we in India do not share these views. To us Dick Cheney is merely another in the long line of gentlemen to visit India since Robert Clive and the East India Company. We in India realize that he has commercial interests to protect - don't we all? - you might very well think that - I could not possibly comment.

America today is in a jam - as Al Gore would have us believe in his movie, "The Inconvenient Truth".

Americans are simply producing too much carbon dioxide - unless they do something to stop that - they are going to see unpredictable weather patterns that wipe out their extremely lucractive coastal economy and they are going to suffer from pandemics due to ecological changes arising from a gradual increase in global temperatures. If the Americans don't stop carbon dioxide production and more importantly do not stop the Chinese (and India) from producing carbon dioxide - well then - something much worse than a few katrina type hurricanes will manifest - the polar ice caps will melt.

Ofcourse - as with so much else Al Gore proposes that the Government take an interventionist role - the parliament step in and make laws, the executive implement them and the judiciary protect the rights of citizens under those laws. All of which sounds good in theory - but as we all know - it will *all* be completely ineffective in doing anything to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

In order to achieve any meaningful change in carbon dioxide emissions - US based groups trading in carbon fuels and energy are going to have to be given huge subsidies. In time this will enable them to transit out of the carbon fuels trade to more lucrative trades in carbon dioxide sequestration technology and other low emissions energy technologies like nuclear, solar, winid, hydel etc... The huge economic and financial infrastructure setup to trade in carbon fuel will slowly have to shift to trading carbon dioxide credits. This restructuring represents the largest known economic transition in human history and if carried out improperly will result in a global economic upheaval the likes of which the world has never seen.

To manage such a huge transition - the US needs a man who can command the respect and confidence of the energy industry, someone who the carbon based fuel suppliers feel is above board and clearly works in their favor. This is the only way to ensure that these extremely rich individuals do not do something unpredictable. Only if such a man is President of the United States can we expect to see any meaningful changes in the carbon dioxide emission levels.

At the present time given his long experience in government and the energy industry, only Dick Cheney fits this bill.

posted by maverick @ 5:07 PM