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Major outcome of Durban climate talks

www.prokerala.com12/11/11

Major outcome of Durban climate talks…The main outcome of the Durban talks:…* To extend the Kyoto Protocol: To extend for anot…* Long-Term Cooperation (LCA) actions: These are t…* Green climate fund (GCF): During the …

Durban climate change talks: a deal on hold | Environment …

www.guardian.co.uk12/10/11

Progress at the COP17 climate talks in South Africa are paused but some fear that the delay will mean they run out of time.

"A new global climate deal has been struck after being brought back from the brink of disaster by three powerful women politicians in a 20-minute, "huddle to save the planet".

Anybody that has read the Climate 2 emails knows that the whole global warming thing is simply a rip-off.

Durban

And the Durban thing is even worse, because poor (hand-out and non-producing) countries are demanding that richer (hard working countries) subsidize them much more!

Much like many countries in Europe that want Germany to continue to bail them out.

And what arrogance to believe that, "We can save the planet", which has existed for billions of years without them!

What Happened At The Conference

A major crisis was provoked shortly after 3am on Sunday (December 11, 2011) morning when angry EU delegates clashed with China and India over the legal form of a potential new treaty.

The EU plan to bind all countries to cuts was close to collapse after India inserted the words "legal outcome" at the last minute into the negotiating text.

But EU climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard, backed by UK energy secretary Chris Huhne said:

"It would have made the EU plan legally meaningless and would have forced the EU to walk away effectively collapsing the negotiations".

With many ministers exhausted after nearly six days and three nights of intense discussions, Hedegaard told the 194 countries in Durban:

"We need clarity. We need to commit. The EU has shown patience for many years. We are almost ready to be alone in a second commitment period to the Kyoto protocol".

"We don’t ask too much of the world that after this second period all countries will be legally bound. Let’s try and have a protocol by 2018".

The Indian environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, responded fiercely that:

"Developing countries are being asked to sign up to a deal before they know what was in the proposed treaty, and whether it would be fair to poor nations".

"Am I to write a blank cheque and sign away the livelihoods and sustainability of 1.2 billion Indians, without even knowing what the EU roadmap contains?".

"I wonder if this is an agenda to shift the blame on to countries who are not responsible for climate change. I am told that India will be blamed. Please don’t hold us hostage. We will give up the principle of equity".

And China’s chief negotiator, Xie Zhenhua, lambasted the EU in a passionate speech, saying:

"Who gives you the right to tell us what to do?"

The Huddle

With tempers rising and the talks minutes from being abandoned, the chair, South African foreign minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, ordered China, India, the US, Britain, France, Sweden, Gambia, Brazil and Poland to meet in a small group or "huddle".

And surrounded by a crowd of almost 100 delegates on the floor of the hall, they talked quietly among themselves to try to reach a new form of words acceptable to all.

The Compromise

It was however, Brazil’s chief negotiator, lawyer Luis Figueres, who came up with the compromise,

"Substitute ‘an agreed outcome’, with ‘legal force for legal outcome’".

Causing a EU lawyer to respond,

"Yes, it’s much stronger; effectively meaning, a legally binding agreement".

"Yes, yes," cheered the crowd of onlookers around the politicians, and the talks were back on track.

Two hours later the 16-day talks were effectively over, with a commitment by all countries to accept binding emission cuts by 2020.

As part of the package of measures agreed, a new climate fund will be set up, carbon markets will be expanded and countries will be able to earn money by protecting forests.

The Stupidity

Chris Huhne (UK energy secretary) hailed the conclusion of the talks as,

"A triumph of European co-operation".

"We have taken a significant step forward and this will give business confidence and stop us locking in a whole generation of high-carbon technology.

And Poor Countries?

But Martin Khor, director of the intergovernmental South Centre in Geneva, said poor countries would be obliged to cut emissions proportionally more than the rich.

"It’s like the starving will be made to give up half their small amount of food but the rich just a bit".

The Rabid Ignorant And Naive Left

"Negotiators have sent a clear message to the world’s hungry: let them eat carbon", said Celine Charveriat, director of campaigns and advocacy for Oxfam.

"Governments must immediately turn their attention to raising the ambition of their emissions cuts targets and filling the Green Climate Fund. Unless countries ratchet up their emissions cuts urgently we could still be in store for a 10-year timeout on the action we need to stay under two degrees of temperature increase".

And Greenpeace International director Kumi Naidoo said:

"The chance of averting catastrophic climate change is slipping through our hands with every passing year that nations fail to agree on a rescue plan for the planet".

And Michael Jacobs, of the Grantham climate research institute of climate change:

"This will force governments to admit their current pledges to cut emissions are not enough to achieve 2C rise and will have to be strengthened".

Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International, said:

"Delaying real action till 2020 is a crime of global proportions. This means the world is on track to a 4C temperature rise, a death sentence for Africa, small island states and the poor and vulnerable worldwide. The richest 1% of the world have decided that it is acceptable to sacrifice the 99%"

The Bottom Line

The whole thing is such a rip-off, but these NGO’s would have no raison d’être without these forums; so perhaps their responses should be viewed in that light.

If their agenda is really similar to Obama’s, which is equalization (redistribution) of wealth, then at least say so, but please don’t jump on the burned out Global Warming wagon.

The Dark Side Of Cap And Trade

Like many others, I hadn’t really taken a good look at what Cap And Trade really is, until the onset of the negotiations in Copenhagen, but the more that I now look into it, the more horrified I am.

What Is Cap And Trade?

The stated idea behind Cap And Trade is the control of pollution (CO2 – greenhouse gas); with its end goal being the reduction of the overall pollution by a nation, region, or industry.

So What’s Wrong With That?

What’s wrong with it, is that it would cost the industrialized nations billions of dollars to move the pollution from one part of the globe to another!

The Mechanics Of Cap And Trade

1) A government would decide on how much pollution its country would be allowed, and then set a cap at that level.

2) Companies within that country would then be issued credits which would allow them to pollute up to the amount of the cap.

3) The amount of pollution that the company would be allowed to create would be based upon how large the company was and what industry it was in.

4) Companies that produced pollution below their cap, would then be allowed to sell their credits to ones that exceeded it.

So the intention is that the industrial world would pay the underdeveloped world huge sums of money for doing nothing at all, and you can easily imagine the bureaucracy and corruption that would occur if this nonsense were ever to come into being.

The flawed idea behind Cap And Trade is that companies that were penalized would work hard to reduce their pollution, and even though the technology is presently not available and won’t be in the foreseeable future, Obama is promising that the U.S. will reduce its pollution by 80%, which would take it back to levels that existed before the industrial revolution.

What Would The Near Term Effects Be?

The bill that was recently passed by congress (Waxman-Markey), and is now fortunately stalled in the Senate was hastily and badly written and would:

1) Drive up the price of energy.

2) Deter American job creation and send jobs overseas.

3) Make it far harder for the U.S. to exit the ongoing economic crisis.

Since the U.S. operates an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) would end up regulating almost everything, and every company that emitted more than 250 tons of CO2 a year would fall under EPA control, meaning over a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and related enterprises.

The Third World Has Tried This Before

The so called developing nations have long been the majority in the UN and in the early 80s they called for a "New International Economic Order" (NIEO) whose demand was to simply transfer fantastic amounts of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World.

The stated reasons were "equality and compensation", a "redistribution of wealth which was owed the third world because of colonialism".

The reason that the idea went nowhere was because Reagan and Thatcher were in power, and they effectively said, "Get up off your asses and work, like the rest of us".

Most of us would more than likely be willing to do rational things to safeguard the environment, but the entire concept of perpetrators and victims breaks down when it comes to global warming because countries collude in pollution.

Does China Have The Largest Carbon Footprint?

It would be more correct to say, "China is the place where the world’s carbon footprint is presently located".

If China’s factories presently emit such a large amount of pollution (CO2 and greenhouse gasses), it is because it is manufacturing things for the west, and the west is therefore less polluted because of it.

If China were forced to produce less because of the high cost of buying credits, then the countries in the presently underdeveloped world would then start to manufacture, thereby causing more pollution in their locales.

The source of pollution would simply have moved from one location to another, but the industrialized world would be paying billions of dollars to have its sources of revenue taken away.