My country is going to commit economic suicide ...

[Mr. Scram]

The irony is that you have only managed to provide a ridiculous claim from an activist you-tube video. While you accuse others for not providing sources and ignoring facts. You have been showered in studies that you just ignore. You are obviously not interested in a honest discussion about this.

Only a video taped testimony of a highly relevant expert who was on the ground at the time, on top of a huge pile of other evidence which points in the exact same direction. Stop embarrassing yourself.

[Mr. Scram]

26000+145000=171000 how is that an order of magnitude lower. I don't understand how you came up with that result.
And "blowing your country into oblivion for centuries" is just more scaremongering. Evacuating Pripyat was expensive but so it is if a hydro dam fails and you have to rebuild everything. If you read the study I posted (why are you asking for sources if you don't plan on reading them?) then you see air pollution is also expensive: "The health impacts from exposure to NO2 and PM2.5 can be conservatively estimated to cause socio-economic costs of ~56 billion Krona in 2015." That's ~6.2 billion USD annually.

Can't help to notice that you never provide any sources of your own.

The Wikipedia article reports that the reported death toll is 26000. Famine and sickness have nothing to do with hydroelectric power, as they're not a direct result like radiation sickness and DNA damage is. It's at worst an indication China was pushing its infrastructure and services too hard in an era of artificially accelerated growth. Not that we've seen any peer reviewed research showing even that number, so it's questionable how many people actually died. Common sense tells us 171000 is a silly number anyway. We've all seen the impact of the 2004 tsunamis which impacted a much bigger area across many nations and densely populated coastal areas and that was a bigger disaster by not that much of a margin.

I've provided plenty of sources up to and including an actual video recording of an expert saying the exact thing I've been saying, which you've all attempted to conveniently brush aside. Now you're the one making all sorts of claims about hydroelectric power, so you'll have to provide the evidence. You've indicated before that you felt that peer reviewed papers are most appropriate.

[apis]

I don't think we can really come to a conclusion here. Basically every choice is bad.

Some choices are worse than others.

I'm wondering about opinions wether something will actually change in the next 10 years when it comes to CO2 reduction. Climate scientists seem to point out the next 10 years will be crucial to achieve a real change.

The use of fossil fuel isn't just increasing, it's accelerating. It should have been brought to zero many years ago.

Personally I think nothing significant will happen to achieve a significant CO2 reduction and most of the plans put in motion are just window dressing. The negative impact on the world's economy will be too severe when making a radical change in such a short timespan.

Economists have concluded it's much more expensive to do nothing in the long run. Unfortunately too many in the world suffer from fact resistance and denial of knowledge. Since the worlds remaining superpower, USA, is still stalling, nothing much is going to happen in the near future.

But as I've been saying, even if we ignore climate change, air pollution is such a big problem it makes sense to get rid of fossil fuel burning anyway.

[apis]

Famine and sickness have nothing to do with hydroelectric power, as they're not a direct result like radiation sickness and DNA damage is.

Of course it was a direct result of the dam breaking.

It's at worst an indication China was pushing its infrastructure and services too hard in an era of artificially accelerated growth.

We can say the problems in the Soviet Union was the cause of the Chernobyl accident and how it was handled as well.

Not that we've seen any peer reviewed research showing even that number, so it's questionable how many people actually died. Common sense tells us 171000 is a silly number anyway. We've all seen the impact of the 2004 tsunamis which impacted a much bigger area across many nations and densely populated coastal areas and that was a bigger disaster by not that much of a margin.

Fine, so now when it suits your interest you are going to demand all facts can be traced to peer reviewed research.
Great, then disregard the comparison with hydro electric if you will, I'm not against hydro, it was only to put things into perspective. It's still obvious that nuclear is very safe, and in particular much safer than coal.

We can make another comparison instead, in the Swedish study I referenced before it says 900 die every year because of air pollution from wood stoves in Sweden. Do the math. I assume you are now going to argue for a ban of wood burning or else you are a hypocrite.

[apis]

From the thread about EVs:
https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2018/overview/

In 2016, household and outdoor air pollution led to some 7 million deaths worldwide.

That's only one year. That air pollution comes from burning and could be avoided if people had access to electricity. It's clearly much safer with nuclear power than using fire.

[cdev]

Apis, what 'solutions' are you arguing for, and what exactly do you want the world to do?

Just more nuclear power plants?

What about more renewable energy?

(Solar, in particular, since most of our energy comes from the sun already, and efficiency is improving significantly over time)

The recent Laos dam collapse should have awakened a global debate on corporate irresponsibility, and lack of effective governmental oversight due to deals that intentionally tie governments hands.

Lots could be said about shoddy construction practices and failure by the Laos government to properly regulate the builders, but it wasn't. The media seems to have fallen strangely silent. Why no discussion? Is it a symptom of deeper problems?

Why should we think that a general breakdown in regulatory oversight by nations everywhere would not also apply to nuclear now too, even though the stakes are far higher?

Consider this- sea level rise means we could potentially lose a substantial percentage of the world's farmland, including the incredibly rich delta areas of major rivers. Serious nuclear accidents (and maybe we should consider them all potentially serious under the circumstances) could render precious farmland unavailable for many generations or even millennia, or even more.

IMHO, just as we all agree more fossil fuel use is not a good solution, maybe we should consider the dam problem, perhaps building more dams is not the solution, nor are more nuclear power plants, given the risks- losing increasingly precious arable land for thousands of years.

On the other hand, solar is an increasingly mature technology thats steadily improving. Especially if we can change our lifestyles to better make use of it.

Wind power, especially if sited in places like mountain passes where the sound doesn't bother nearby residents, also has a lot of potential thats still unrealized.

We also should work on developing and improving new turbine designs that can better utilize lower wind velocities, with the goal of having multiple, independent, diverse sources of renewable energy at hand, as well as local manufacturing capability.

[Kleinstein]

Burning more coal and oil is not a good idea, because of pollution (including CO2). However if we don't act this might happen, as the negatives hit us all and not just the source.
Natural gas should in many aspects at least be better than coal, and may help to get a little more time.

Building up more PV (or other solar) and wind sounds logical. However it gets increasingly difficult as it needs additional storage when used as the main source. It also depends where you are. There will be more renewable, the main question is how fast.

There are few other sources like bio-gas, hydro and geothermal. However while these can be good at some places the potential is limited. So they can help, but only for a part (could be still more than nuclear) and often limited to some areas.
Building more nuclear does not look like it would work  - like fusion its likely too late getting much power. So maybe a small side note like geothermal - and at a high price.

Chances are that energy will get more expensive, unless we find cheap storage. So we kind of have to expect to adapt to this by using less energy. It could help to already now raise the prices by higher taxes on energy so that we start to adapt earlier - usually we are slow to react and things like houses are build for a long time.

There is small chance that PV or wind can be cheaper than coal, even if one includes storage. From that point the turn over could be relatively fast. It's kind of only a question when this happens, if more of the pollution costs are charged to the coal.

[cdev]

I bet you many households could cut their energy use in half or more.

It helps a lot if you own, I don't see renters as having many options compared to homeowners. Perhaps thats a good reason right there to subsidize people owning their own small homes instead of renting. We could have yearly competitions in every country to design the best low cost manufactured home for the money, and then they could face off with one another around the globe.

It would be a great way to get a bunch of different engineering disciplines to work together on a major world problem, bring attention to it and the ideas they came up with would get a lot of attention and be subject to the hive mind effect, which would lead to rapid improvement.

[apis]

Apis, what 'solutions' are you arguing for, and what exactly do you want the world to do?

We need to use all available alternatives to replace fossil fuels and we will still have to reduce power consumption.

Solar is pretty ideal but it still does not provide energy when it's dark, which is the big problem, and there is no storage solution available (we can't just wait and hope it will be invented in the future). Wind has the same problem, only produces energy when the wind is blowing. So we can't rely on wind and solar alone. Another problem is that it takes time to expand solar and wind. Solar is new and the production capacity is limited. Wind power stations don't produce much energy, you need thousands of wind turbines to replace one nuclear power station, and the production capacity of those are also limited. So expanding solar and wind also takes a lot of time. So to replace fossil fuels as quickly as possible we need to also build as many new nuclear power plants as we can, even if that will only replace 12% of the existing coal power plants it's still a significant number.

Gas is marginally better than coal, but still better I suppose, but not something we should be investing in long term. Bio-fuel burning have all the downsides of coal except for CO₂ emissions. Potential for geothermal only exist in very few locations like Iceland, it's negligible. Hydro is more dangerous than nuclear, but it's still a very good option, but there are only so many rivers and most that can be used are already used, so its also not possible to expand much (it also kills the life in the rivers and lakes).

So of course we should expand solar as much as possible, and wind, and hydro and geothermal. Just as we should expand nuclear. We should definitely not close down working and safe nuclear reactors as long as there still exist coal power plants. Even if we do all that we will still have to reduce power consumption to get rid of the remaining fraction of fossil fuel from the energy mix.

Solar is most efficient near the equator so countries near the equator should have higher priority on getting the solar panels, while far north/south we should focus more on nuclear (and hydro when available). Most northern countries use nuclear already anyway so it's not much of a change.

[NiHaoMike]

Bio-fuel burning have all the downsides of coal except for CO₂ emissions.

Also solves a few more pollution problems like mercury and sulfur.

I wonder why there's not more investment in damless hydroelectric. It would be similar to wind power except it would work 24/7.

[tautech]

There’s a few technologies in use addressing waste like capping landfills and harvesting the methane for power generation.
But there has to be a will to make the long term investment in gensets and grid infrastructure.
A school buddy did the number crunching to prove it was a goer for this project.
https://orders.wastemanagement.co.nz/site/redvale-energy-park-community/

[apis]

I wonder why there's not more investment in damless hydroelectric. It would be similar to wind power except it would work 24/7.

Because you can use hydro electric for storage. When the wind is not blowing you turn on the hydro dam. When it begins to blow again you turn it off and water is stored in the dam for later use. But there is not enough suitable rivers in the world that you can use hydro everywhere, so it is not a global solution.

[tautech]

I wonder why there's not more investment in damless hydroelectric. It would be similar to wind power except it would work 24/7.

Because you can use hydro electric for storage. When the wind is not blowing you turn on the hydro dam. When it begins to blow again you turn it off and water is stored in the dam for later use. But there is not enough suitable rivers in the world that you can use hydro everywhere, so it is not a global solution.

There’s tidal generation too that IMO has been under exploited.

[cdev]

Apis, what 'solutions' are you arguing for, and what exactly do you want the world to do?

We need to use all available alternatives to replace fossil fuels and we will still have to reduce power consumption.

...
Solar is most efficient near the equator so countries near the equator should have higher priority on getting the solar panels, while far north/south we should focus more on nuclear (and hydro when available). Most northern countries use nuclear already anyway so it's not much of a change.

Apis, I think the need for power may go down. Because power consumption, especially at night, is a good indicator of the health of an economy, I'm told.

Let me start out with wy the economy may soon constrict.

T thanks to WTO rules, we're told that we cant make decisions like th one you suggest any more, whomever pays the most money determines where commodities like solar panels, natural gas, water etc. must go. With labor it will be the opposite. Whomever works for the cheapest gets the jobs. Its will become the Corporations decision if they want to bring in labor to run the power plants, wherever they are located, as local content requirements (LCRs) are being eliminated. So  they will be able to get their nuclear engineers and oil rig workers wherever they are the cheapest, like they do in the Middle East now. Paying them in their home currency. Overseas. The faster the business slacks off, the faster these changes (similar to the kafala system, will be implemented, 'saving' trillions of dollars now spent on whats its claimed are unnecessarily high wages.

See the OECD's publications on mutual recognition of professional qualifications and the ILO's publications on migrant labor's conditions under Mode Four.

Our economies are inefficient now (with all the overpriced labor, we're behind the times they say.) People are using energy like its going out of style. But things are looking up for the environment, thanks to the WTO and its 'efficiency gains' (job losses).

Who needs more nuclear power plants when nobody can afford electricity.

There are no Home Depots in favelas.

The problem though may end up being economic suicide if they sign a contract but then there is no demand they still may have to build it. I've seen lots of stadiums and housing developments like that in my drive across the country. Ghost towns and ghost arenas.  Bridges to nowhere.

[apis]

There’s tidal generation too that IMO has been under exploited.

Maybe. There was a company that was testing wave generators here in Sweden recently, but it turned out it didn't work well enough to be viable. There are lots of great ideas, but if we are to replace fossil fuels today (and according to climate scientist we should have done that ten years ago) we need things that we know work and that we can start building right now.

In the future maybe we can replace the remaining nuclear power plants with tidal generators and solar power that uses storage from some new invention, that will be great, but we can't do that today.

[cdev]

So, basically, the solution you envision is more and bigger nuclear power plants?

[tautech]

There’s tidal generation too that IMO has been under exploited.

Maybe. There was a company that was testing wave generators here in Sweden recently, but it turned out it didn't work well enough to be viable. There are lots of great ideas, but if we are to replace fossil fuels today (and according to climate scientist we should have done that ten years ago) we need things that we know work and that we can start building right now.

In the future maybe we can replace the remaining nuclear power plants with tidal generators and solar power that uses storage from some new invention, that will be great, but we can't do that today.

Sure but if you consider premium tidal flow sites like the Straits of Gibraltar and the potential GWs it could provide only the will to tackle such a project would seem to be the stumbling block.

[apis]

There’s tidal generation too that IMO has been under exploited.

Maybe. There was a company that was testing wave generators here in Sweden recently, but it turned out it didn't work well enough to be viable. There are lots of great ideas, but if we are to replace fossil fuels today (and according to climate scientist we should have done that ten years ago) we need things that we know work and that we can start building right now.

In the future maybe we can replace the remaining nuclear power plants with tidal generators and solar power that uses storage from some new invention, that will be great, but we can't do that today.

Sure but if you consider premium tidal flow sites like the Straits of Gibraltar and the potential GWs it could provide only the will to tackle such a project would seem to be the stumbling block.

I don't know a lot about it. Wouldn't it hurt animals and plants in the oceans? I know the hydroelectric dams are pretty devastating to the wildlife in the rivers and lakes they are built in. It would also only produce energy intermittently like solar? All alternatives to fossil fuels are good though, except the bad ones.

So, basically, the solution you envision is more and bigger nuclear power plants?

If you mean me, then no, as I've written numerous times now:
The solution is more of everything that can be used to replace fossil fuels, that includes nuclear, solar, wind, etc, etc. And that won't be enough anyway so we are also going to need to do significant energy reductions. Nuclear alone couldn't replace coal even if we tried because it would take too long time to build that many new reactors, we need to use every available option so that the need for energy reduction is as small as possible.

[tautech]

There’s tidal generation too that IMO has been under exploited.

Maybe. There was a company that was testing wave generators here in Sweden recently, but it turned out it didn't work well enough to be viable. There are lots of great ideas, but if we are to replace fossil fuels today (and according to climate scientist we should have done that ten years ago) we need things that we know work and that we can start building right now.

In the future maybe we can replace the remaining nuclear power plants with tidal generators and solar power that uses storage from some new invention, that will be great, but we can't do that today.

Sure but if you consider premium tidal flow sites like the Straits of Gibraltar and the potential GWs it could provide only the will to tackle such a project would seem to be the stumbling block.

I don't know a lot about it. Wouldn't it hurt animals and plants in the oceans? I know the hydroelectric dams are pretty devastating to the wildlife in the rivers and lakes they are built in. It would also only produce energy intermittently like solar? All alternatives to fossil fuels are good though, except the bad ones.

Really everything we do on this earth has some impact on flora and fauna, with pollution being the hardest to reverse whilst careful use of resources and new technologies allow us to harvest energy sources that were once only dreamed of.
WRT tidal generation, if the blades are large enough and available flow strong enough, blade rotational speeds can be kept slow with the use of gearing to minimise risks to sea dwelling creatures.
It’s a potential energy source available four times/day irrespective of sunlight or weather conditions.

[Jwillis]

First of all I work in the petroleum industry and won't take anything that they say as truth or fact.Their objective is to make money, And couldn't care less if people freeze in the dark.I've seen and been on projects that were supposed to produce clean secondary electrical energy for local consumption .These projects were intentionally sabotaged by over spending budgets to sway investors to back out.Hence the projects are mothballed and sold off for scrap.
The new 5th generation nuclear reactors are extremely safe and efficient.One was supposed to be built near were I live.and it would have produce 40 Gigawatts of electricity which is twice the amount this Province uses now.Unfortunately people couldn't get their heads out of their back sides to listen to facts instead of emotional rhetoric. and scare tactics delivered from people who don't even live in this country.
Agreeably all forms of energy production is the way to go depending on geographic location.Every source will have it's benefits and draw backs.Solar panel production  requires a extremely toxic  manufacturing process and the area required for solar farms is immense compared to other sources. Nuclear power is expensive to start up and even with the new generation reactors ,what do you do with the waste that is produced.Wind again requires large areas of land and your relying on unpredictable wind patterns.Fossil fuel has it's draw backs as we all know to well.And many other forms are geographically dependent like hydro and geothermal.
The point is we can't have a win win situation and we need except the down sides with the potential benefits of every possible source .

[Kleinstein]

The production of PV panels depends on the type of panel. The normal crystalline cells do no need an especially toxic process. Some thin film panels use slightly toxic materials, but is relatively small quantities and usually it well encapsulated. It still needs quite some energy to make the PV panels.

The 5th generation nuclear concepts have to pretend they are safe. However most of the concepts considered are usually considered to be more problematic from the safety side than plain old BWR or PWR. They are advances in using more breeding so they need less uranium and this nearly always makes safety more difficult. Due to the reduced funding chances are high that there will be only very few 5 th generation reactors - maybe a few sodium cooled fast breeders from Russia, as here the development is well ahead of the others.

I totally agree that we will need several sources - more like all we can get that is clean and economically acceptable. For economic reasons this might exclude nuclear - especially the new reactor concepts.

[soldar]

You should follow our solution

This post makes no sense and yet it is "thanked" by a bunch of posters. I see much knee jerking going on here.

Let us see... The OP is complaining that his country and government have decided on a "economic suicide" policy on their own. Not mandated or even suggested by the EU at all. They are in the EU and have decided to do something on their own and have no problem doing it. The EU seems to not care.  So, the solution would be to leave the EU? Does not compute.

As for Brexit, it is clear by now that people in the UK had no idea what they were voting or what they would be getting into. Now it is becoming apparent and yet the UK continues to charge ahead bravely towards the cliff. If we are talking about economic suicide Brexit takes the cake.

It is not a problem of preferring one viable thing over another viable thing, it is a problem of wanting the impossible. You can promise two women for every man and two men for every woman and people could well vote for that but it is clear they will not be getting it.

Brexit has been a vote and a promise to leave the EU but not have border controls with the EU. You cannot be inside and outside the EU at the same time. It is a contradiction that nobody can make happen.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

H.L. Mencken (1880 - 1956)

Reality is beginning to set in and it ain't pretty but many in the UK choose to bury their head in the sand rather than face the reality of the facts.

The UK and Theresa May have become a Monty Python sketch
 

[cdev]

Have any of you heard this bizarre nuclear energy story? Eight years ago, in 2010, North Korea declared in a news story that they had successfully harnessed 'the energy of the sun' to make nuclear power. A number of news media in a bunch of countries scoffed it off.. and it was generally forgotten.

But, a small amount of data suggested it turned out that something had happened on that day, April 12, 2010.

And it makes an interesting story that has a very remote, I think, and unlikely possibility of being true. (But still, its a nonzero chance)

Anyway, seismology reports suggested there was a test of some kind, and so did radioisotopes detected in the area several days later.

I'll add some screenshots from the reports below in a bit.

--------

Brexit:

The thing thats going to bite Britons in Brexit is the price of leaving the WTO GATS and then a second bunch of demands will likely be made upon rejoining the organization anew. What people will realize is - FTAs, especially when they involve services, and procurement of same, are not about trade, they are a pretext, a big con against all of us - everywhere. Whose #1 goal is rolling back all the gains of the 20th century, not just decent wages, but also everything else. Literally almost everything that could be taken.

A problem being, that 'countries' are the way 'people' are supposed to have representation but 'countries' now are so heavily controlled by lobbies, that they now are representing corporations, not people.

 So we people have practically nobody anywhere standing up for our interests any more. Instead they are falling over one another to trade them away. Running up 'debts' to repay them in our names, is a very good analogy because thats exactly whats being done, without telling us.

People also don't have any "standing" as individuals at this supranational level (Most deon't even have the slightest idea of what it does or even that it exists) because of these huge shifts that have put the power in totally unaccountable "global economic governance organizations".

Since we're talking about energy, people should know,  the #1 area this has proven to be a disaster- is energy, unfortunately.  In the past corporations used to buy commercial insurance to indemnify themselves against risks.  That is how it should still be done now.

But, its not. Instead corporations have used their new found power to force countries to agree to almost irreversible deals that make it impossible to regulate when they need to. Its as if they tack the decks so corporations always win, almost, if any law is changed, even when the country has a very good reason to do so.  They have even been sued for raising minimum wages.

And this kind of suit, ("ISDS" investor vs. state)  involving energy (clashes between investors against nations) have been the most common category of these private, arbitrated legal suits.

ISDS now is a means by which taxpayers of nations are being stolen from on a massive scale.

See https://www.citizen.org/our-work/globalization-and-trade/investor-state-system and https://isds.bilaterals.org for some background on what I mean. 

[soldar]

The thing thats going to bite Britons in Brexit is the price of leaving the WTO GATS and then a second bunch of demands will likely be made upon rejoining the organization anew. 

Brexit is the greatest blunder. I could not imagine something like this could happen.

"Thirty million, mostly fools."

Writer and economist Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), when asked the size of the population of England.

Of course, that is true of every country in the world and that is why we elect politicians who are supposed to bear the responsibility of governing and knowing what they are doing. But now the British Parliament and Government have abdicated their responsibility and painted the country into a corner.  The referendum should never have been carried out but once it was done and Cameron had resigned, the Commons should have done their duty, solemnly declared that Cameron is a moron, and that they were going to do their duty of governing for the benefit of the country. Instead they have resigned their responsibility and everybody is sitting around waiting for a miracle that cannot and will not happen. Disgraceful.

It is going to be a disaster for the British people and they bear some collective responsibility for the mistake they made when they voted but I place most of the responsibility on the politicians who have not been up to the task and their responsibility to guide the country.

[cdev]

We have to understand how anxious certain groups of people are about the shifts which are coming in the next few decades.

Because those shifts are guaranteed to greatly reduce the sizes of the middle class, everywhere, under all current scenarios, substantially. Its unavoidable as jobs dry up. And unfortunately, long before they are eliminated by automation, they become the subject of trade commitments. Which some interpret as requiring a large scale shift of workforces via the principles of global value chains and comparative advantage. They make a compelling argument to some.

Since one's quality of life is so wedded to how much money a person's family has, what happens when fewer and fewer people work and the money wealthy people possess has little connection to work, except in generations past?

FTAs have little to do with trade and much more to do with attempting to create a voting-proof preemptive lock down of policy, an attempt to 'future proof' the future.

This is why "debts" created via deals like the GATS and other FTAs, as well as ISDS and 'big' energy projects, especially, which might require cancellation are dangerous.

As dangerous as relaxing financial services rules, because so much money could change hands without any safeguards in the hands of voters.

We're all under attack, we're being written off for the duration, already, but we don't realize it.

ISDS is just one of the new mechanisms which can be used.

 The temptation to do so could provide a attractive means too tantalizing for elites to resist, to snatch away (or trade away) many things that people took or sometimes still take for granted.  Because we're unrepresented, in the situation of global capture, its like the wolves run the henhouse now.

Is it everything thats not nailed down thats at risk? Bring this up here in the US and people respond with arguments saying that the very specific conditions which would trigger obligations have not been met yet, and that laws prevent Congress from doing the more extreme things that other countries claim we promised to do.
 
This is contradicted however by numerous online descriptions which tend to reflect the viewpoints of a particular cross section of people who claim that such promises were made.  The poor countries have a very well educated elite, very wealthy people, who are fighting for what they consider to be their entitlement. They want the Western countries to hand over the 'benefits' they claim they had been promised for joining groups like the WTO. The shift requires the privatization of large numbers of 'services' (and the jobs done by workers in them, as well as some other things that governments control, everything they control must support the new priority of increasing international trade.) Its assumed this will dramatically impact the indigenous workforces in developed countries, as rules silently kick in that put the targeted service sectors more decidedly into play.  How would this be done? WTO rules require the measures be 'minimally trade restrictive' and also that subsidies and countervailing measures such as local content requirements and other non-tariff barriers to trade - regulations of all kinds above some global least common denominator all countries agree upon, which is very controversial because human rights and any controversial aspect like what is bad for health, are totally left out) Existing rules successfully framed as posing a barrier to poor countries firms getting their just due, must be gradually eliminated ('progressive liberalization') Professions are supposed to produce documents as to how mutual recognition of academic qualifications and licensing will proceed. But so far only the ones for accounting seem to have been finished.

If one reads the trade literature, in one place one might read how fog in trade agreements and "creative ambiguity" is useful, (in confusing the public) and elsewhere how such changes would result in huge 'efficiency gains' (due to falling wages of high paid, they seem to all agree, too well paid workers, not acknowledging the worth of others labor seems endemic in the kinds of people who dream these schemes up) etc.

They rehash again and again their same long debunked trickle down-ish arguments which don't stand up to close examination.

Similar to the situations in other areas, one not only gets the impression the decisions have already been made to do much of that and that the 'debate' is phony, its actually easy to show that is the case, if you simply peel off another layer of the 'trade' onion.

In this environment of dishonesty, even the most innocent looking change is fraught with risks, because in this world of hidden traps caused by unseen trade implications to everything, nothing is what it seems to be.