President Barack Obama spoke on the last day of climate talks at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. The President called on all major economies to put forward decisive national actions that will reduce their emissions and turn the corner on climate change.
Excerpt From NYT’s ClimateWire, By DARREN SAMUELSOHN AND LISA FRIEDMAN
Obama Tries to Rally U.N. Climate Conference, but Deadlock Persists
Behind the scenes, dozens of presidents and prime ministers worked on a three-page document that they hope will become the lone outcome of the two-week negotiations here.
But the blame game is also under way with more than 115 heads of state in Copenhagen — many with years of work and their prestige on the line — struggling to bridge a divide between the world’s rich and poor nations. Several major industrialized countries pointed the finger at China for balking at demands to ensure their emission commitments would be open for public scrutiny.
A hush fell over the entire Bella Center during Obama’s eight-minute speech (pdf). He took on climate skeptics with his opening words and then made an all-out push for a collective agreement.
“While the reality of climate change is not in doubt, I have to be honest, as the world watches us today, I think our ability to take collective action is in doubt right now and it hangs in the balance,” he said. “I believe we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of a common threat. That is why I have come here today. Not to talk, but to act.”
But with nearly 200 countries handing the negotiations over to their heads of state after two brutal weeks of gridlock, those talks have yet to bear any fruit.
China’s leader ignores compromise meeting
Obama and 19 other world leaders, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, met for about 90 minutes in the Bella Center trying to find a compromise.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao boycotted the meeting and instead sent his vice foreign minister, He Yafei. In remarks to reporters, Sarkozy noted the protocol breach and said an agreement remained out of reach because of Beijing’s resistance to emissions monitoring.
Read the rest of the story at the New York Times: Obama Tries to Rally U.N. Climate Conference, but Deadlock Persists
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I gain inspiration from stories and mythologies that fit the current problems. I love the original story from which Shakespeare’s Hamlet was drawn, even more than the Shakespearean version, as an inspiration for troubled times. It’s earthier but also full of vitality and higher truths. I’ve typed and uploaded it here for your enjoyment and recognition of clues.
“We come here in Copenhagen because climate change {legislation} poses a grave and growing danger to our people. All of you would not be here unless you — like me — were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, it is science. Unchecked, climate change {legislation} will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet. This much we know.”
Now it sounds correct to me.
We also now know how to create cooling. According to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he “still” smelled sulfur after President Obama made a keynote speech at the Copenhagen climate conference Friday, accusing the American president of carrying same satanic Chavez believes followed Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush.
And per the Geoengineering scheme sulfur lowers the temp. So all we need is Obama running all over and spreading the sulfur.
Obama once again proves that he is one of the global warming loons. He has made a fool of himself and embarrassed his nation in Copenhagen. Acute narcissism is a terrible condition that Obama puts on display every time he opens his mouth to speak.
Consider: China has made huge, and one-way, monetary and political investments over the past couple of decades in becoming the earth’s producer of consumer goods. That has created insatiable rising expectations among its people, which, if denied, will topple the country. The US is the primary consumer of all those goods and has run up a trillion-dollar tab. China knows that if the US starts sending billions to southern hemisphere dictators, it’s never gonna pay off that bill, with dire consequences to follow. China’s leaders don’t do retail politics; they are not interested in being “popular” world citizens; they’re focused on doing the best they can for China. So, China walks out of Copenhagen in order to stop its major debtor from screwing up its economy even worse. Makes sense.
Have I missed something?
My personal expeirience is that most developing world countries were ruled by a mixture of gangsters, thugs, drug dealers, dictators and other fine upstanding examples of the political human race we call “world leaders”.
So if the UN give them some money these gangsters will spend it on “saving the planet”, this appears not to be likely. Or are Greenpeace planning to go and have a chat with them and persuade them to join the cause. This is not something I would reccomend after having an AK45 rammed in my stomach in West Africa! and all I suggested was to share a bit of rice with the starving kids!
First of all you will have to sort out the gangsters, but who is up for that!
The irony in the whole thing is that China ia the only country acting like a capitalist society & none of the capitalist are.
Of course, the correllary to that irony is that China may save us all from ourselves.
President Obama should get better speech writers. His choice of phrasing presents evidence of a non-scientific process yet he presents the issue as one of science, rejecting reality and substituting one of the IPCC. This choice of phrasing alone is enough to completely negate any value of the balance of his words for the balance of his term.
“Convincing” is a process of arguing an arguable point and is also a well established clinical characteristic of a liar. The word has been defined as “refute, convict, prove” and has root meaning “to conquer.” This is what lawyers do. This approach considers only one side of an issue and is not that of solid science. Yet this is what the President speaks of as climategate looms large and folks finally wake up.
He should be saying that information has been “conveyed” to him and he has concluded that [fill in all of stated IPCC doomsday projections]. Conveying facts and data is a trait of someone who is not lying. But then if he said that he would be lying and he knows we know it. Look at his face when he says what he says. You can see him grimacing inside because he know is it all cow pucky but he already signed up for the ride and can’t get off. Like a kid going up the roller coaster incline for the first time.
Obama:”While the reality of climate change is not in doubt”…..
“I have to be honest” it is easy to understand why negotiators from nearly 200 nations can’t agree to take collective action when such underhand vocabulary is used! No doubt they will cabal a plan together, I mean cobble a plan together.
Instead of Hopenhagen, they should call it “The Meeting of Socialist Dictators Who Stole Elections”. Obama fits right in.
The wheels on the bus go round and round… round and round… round and round
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/12/18/18greenwire-climate-talks-in-copenhagen-heading-into-overt-54854.html
Fall off already!!!!!!!!
“He came, he saw, he disappointed.” — Vanity Fair
http://www.vanityfair.com/online/politics/2009/12/copenhagen-alert-obamas-speech-flops-summit-in-crisis.html
Or, “he blew it.” And a powerfully weak blow it seems to have been. It always is, when the vain attempt to lead the vain. If all goes well for us, it will all have been in vain.
Just reminds me of the Peanuts Cartoons with the parental authority speaking:
Wha wa waawha WHawhaa wa waw WAWAwa Wa wa!
@Jeremy (09:21:48) :”always be an example of rational skepticism. It takes time to shed BS thinking, and it is a process that is unique to each individual. Regardless of what age they are, what culture they’re from, or what they believe, the best thing to show people is how to ask good questions and the importance of the question itself.”
Thanks, Jeremy, for replying on this. Will take it on board.
This sounds very like the justification for invading Iraq and finding the WMDs that were positively there from the ‘interpretation’ of the data.
After NOT finding the WMDs, Bush spoke at the UN (from MSNBC):
“Two years after he told the world body that Iraq was a “grave and gathering danger” and challenged delegates to live up to their responsibility, Bush strongly defended his decision to lead a coalition that overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime without the blessings of the U.N. Security Council.”
With very few changes, Obama could use the same speech when AGW id finally accepted as false/fraudulent.
Maybe they should call it Crapenhagen!
The hubris of the Obama administration exceeds that of the Kennedy
Administration because they are in the aggregate not as bright or clever as the Kennedy admin. That he is insulated from serious scientists is a major problem for all of us, who will be expected to pay for this unprecedented robbery of all the world’s people.
….your president is bowing and scraping for Chinese midlevel ministers while the Chinese primeminister has other stuff to do somewhere in copenhagen.
You owe them 1 fantazillion dollars and they couldn’t care less.
COP15 marks the start of a new world order. But not the world order that activists dreamed about – and Iran parties along by putting boots inside Irak.
Both Europe and the US leaders have stuff to consider now and raising sea levels should be the least of our worries….
USA Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently pledged $100 billion per year from the USA to the UN to fight global warming. Since the US government has been running deficits for over 10 years, we can be assured that the money when paid out will be with either borrowed or freshly printed dollars, and will be added to the already existing $12 trillion debt of the US government, about $39,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.
We all know that we can trust the UN with our money. They have a history of that.
Source: Wikipedia
“The Oil-for-Food Programme, established by the United Nations in 1995 (under UN Security Council Resolution 986)[1] and terminated in late 2003, was established with the stated intent to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs for ordinary Iraqi citizens without allowing Iraq to rebuild its military.”
The programme was introduced by United States President Bill Clinton’s administration in 1995, as a response to arguments that ordinary Iraqi citizens were inordinately affected by the international economic sanctions aimed at the demilitarisation of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, imposed in the wake of the first Gulf War. The sanctions were discontinued on November 21, 2003 after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the humanitarian functions turned over to the Coalition Provisional Authority. [1]
As the programme ended, there were revelations of corruption involving the funds.
[snip]
“In addition to criticism of the basic approach, the programme suffered from widespread corruption and abuse. Throughout its existence, the programme was dogged by accusations that some of its profits were unlawfully diverted to the government of Iraq and to UN officials. These accusations were made in many countries, including the US and Norway.[5]
Benon Sevan of Cyprus, who headed the programme, defended it, claiming that it had only a 2.2% administrative cost and that it was subject to more than 100 audits (internal and external), blaming restrictions from the Security Council for making the situation difficult. He also claimed that 90% of Iraq’s population relied on the programme for its monthly food basket. While Benon Sevan was in charge of the programme, he stonewalled efforts to review and investigate the programme.[6] He ordered his staff that complaints about illegal payoffs should be formally filed with the whistleblower’s country, making them public and allowing Iraq to bar any whistleblowers. In 2000, Dileep Nair, the UN corruption watchdog, wanted to determine the programme’s level of vulnerability. Sevan, along with UN Deputy Secretary-General, Louise Frechette, rejected any such investigation, claiming that it would be too expensive to be worthwhile. Sevan ordered the shredding of years’ worth of documents concerning the programme.[7]
In response to these criticisms, and to evidence acquired after the United States invasion of Iraq, UN Secretary-General accusations were made that skimmed profits were being used to buy influence at the UN and with Kofi Annan himself.
According to an interim report released on February 3, 2005 by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker’s commission (see #Investigations below), much of the food aid supplied under the programme “was unfit for human consumption”. The report concluded that Sevan had accepted nearly $150,000 in bribes over the course of the programme, and in 2005 he was suspended from his position at the United Nations as a result of the investigation of fraud in the programme.[8]
Peter van Walsum, the now-retired Ambassador of the Netherlands to the United Nations and chairman of the Iraq sanctions committee from 1999 to 2000, speculated in a recent book that Iraq deliberately divided the Security Council by awarding contracts to France, Russia, and China but not to the United Kingdom and the United States. He also stated he encountered a number of cases in which he felt the lack of Iraqi cooperation was designed to exacerbate the suffering of its own people. He also claimed that it was his opinion that the sanctions were not an effective deterrent.
Until 2001, the money for the Oil-for-Food Programme transited through the BNP Paribas bank, whose main private share-holder is Iraqi-born Nadhmi Auchi, a man estimated to be worth about $1 billion according to Forbes, and ranks 13th in Britain according to The Guardian. Auchi received a 15-month suspended sentence for his involvement in the Elf scandal, which has been qualified by the British newspaper as “the biggest fraud inquiry in Europe since the Second World War. Elf became a private bank for its executives who spent £200 million on political favours, mistresses, jewellery, fine art, villas and apartments”.[9] Elf, an oil company, merged with TotalFina to become Total S.A. in 2003″
Cpoenhagen appears to be DEAD!!!!!!
YAY!! This is a great day.
The attempt to fleece the USA for money has been thwarted.
Next battle, the Cap and trade bill in Congress.
Enjoy the day for tomorrow we must continue the fight!!!!
There it is, at .42 – the tell tale body language sign of discomfort that “what I am saying is not what I believe” – he scratches his chin. Not something he does often when speaking, so it stood out for me. Ask any experienced poker player, police interviewer, negotiator, pick up artist – a sure sign of internal conflict. Its an involuntary action, most of us do it when telling porkies, and it’s very hard to keep under control.
And another thing he said which I thought was a bit low, was that it was evidence that America was serious about climate change by “changing its leadership.”
Is this not an underhanded way of saying Bush failed and the people kicked him out? And isn’t saying or implying criticism of past administrations against presidential protocol?
rbateman (11:00:00) :
“Copenhagen should give new meaning to the phrase:
“Party until the cows come home”.”
OR: “Until the crows come home to roost.”
“So, China walks out of Copenhagen in order to stop its major debtor from screwing up its economy even worse.”
Bingo! (Now why didn’t I see that?)
Given the current policy, he had to say what he said, no surprises really. But he was not convincing and appeared less than comfortable. I think he has doubts. Behind the scenes there would have to be discussion on the possibility that the case for AGW is overstated.
Refering to the NAture ZEAlots
Not only is this a terrible day for the enviro-nazeas, but it’s snowing too.
Wouldn’t it be sweet if he comes home to 12 inches of snow.
God has a sense of humor.