Sunday, November 8, 2009

Como você diz "Drill Here! Drill Now!" Em portugês?

Not too long before the House passed cap and trade in a bid to save all those drowning polar bears and decimate jobs in the transportation, utility and energy sectors while cutting ourselves off from domestically available resources, Brazil's nominally socialist president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (who everybody understandably refers to as Lula for short) authorized the quasi-private energy company Petrobras [NYSE: PBR] to begin drilling for oil on the offshore Campos and Santos Basins.

For a 'socialist', the Brazilian economy has been doing relatively well under Lula's watch. The BOVESPA (Brazil's stock exchange) has been performing admirably in the last 52 weeks, Petrobras is going after oil and natural gas deposits in the region and Rio even managed to land the 2016 Summer Olympics. Couple this with the burgeoning economic alliance with China, India and Russia and Brazil is now an economic force to be reckoned with in the southern hemisphere, if not on the global stage.

I can't begrudge the president of Brazil or Brazilian companies for seeking greater access to energy resources in the region. In fact, I wish our government had similar priorities. But isn't it interesting how all the solutions to 'climate change' so far seem to involve increasing government control by unaccountable agencies into our daily lives?

With that in mind, Lula seems to be a big supporter of the USA crippling itself economically before Brazil does the same.

He said highly industrialized countries who have been emitting greenhouse gases for more than a century have a responsibility to adopt tougher targets.

"The United States has more responsibility than China; Europe has more responsibility than South America or Africa," Lula said.

China has replaced the United States as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases because of its fast-growing economy and dependence on coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.

Obviously this is a means for Lula to let his country and the others in the CRIB bloc off the hook while shifting the blame to the United States or European Union. The very sad part is that America's very own Congress and President seem more than willing to go along with it.

Interestingly, Lula seems to have no issue with PetroBras drilling for oil offshore.

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