The COP15 balloon appears to have lost all it’s air. Nobody’s signing up.
Excerpts from reports in the Guardian and the Financial Times
From the Guardian
The UN has dropped the 31 January deadline by which time all countries were expected to officially state their emission reduction targets or list the actions they planned to take to counter climate change.
Yvo de Boer, UN climate change chief, today changed the original date set at last month’s fractious Copenhagen climate summit, saying that it was now a “soft” deadline, which countries could sign up to when they chose. “I do not expect everyone to meet the deadline. Countries are not being asked if they want to adhere… but to indicate if they want to be associated [with the Copenhagen accord].
The timetable to reach a global deal to tackle climate change lay in tatters on Wednesday after the UN waived the first deadline of the process laid out at last month’s fractious Copenhagen summit.
From the Financial Times:
UN abandons climate change deadline
Nations agreed then to declare their emissions reduction targets by the end of this month. Developed countries would state their intended cuts by 2020: developing countries would outline how they would curb emissions growth.
…
Countries pushing for a new legally binding treaty on climate change will be disappointed, as The waiving of the deadline sets a bad precedent for efforts to finalise a deal this year. The next scheduled meeting is not until late May, in Germany, with another in late November, in Mexico but many officials say more will be needed.
…
The result of Tuesday’s Massachusetts senatorial election, which took away Barack Obama’s super-majority in the Senate, is likely to push climate change further down the US agenda. It was the latest in a series of setbacks that have caused efforts to push a cap-and-trade bill through the Senate to grind to a halt, making it harder for the White House to participate meaningfully in global climate negotiations.
Instead, the administration has been pressing ahead with steps to limit the US’s carbon emissions through regulation. The Environmental Protection Agency has unveiled new draft rules that would sharply tighten regulations on smog-building pollutants, or ground-level ozone, and has cracked down on greenhouse gas emissions by ruling that carbon dioxide and five other gases pose a danger to health.
h/t’s to WUWT readers Thomas Chisolm and Bruce Foutch
No wonder.
COP 16 will also go amiss, I bet.
In like a lion, out like a lamb.
I really think that the IPCC and the world has become so reflexive in the dismissal of opposing views that they really thought that the treaty they got was a victory. Trumped by observations again.
I will point it out, but not gloat.
U.N . abandons deadline
‘Instead, the administration has been pressing ahead with steps to limit the US’s carbon emissions through regulation. The Environmental Protection Agency has unveiled new draft rules that would sharply tighten regulations on smog-building pollutants, or ground-level ozone, and has cracked down on greenhouse gas emissions by ruling that carbon dioxide and five other gases pose a danger to health.’
Just when the UN finds a good ‘excuse’ to back away from this obviously poisoned challis, the US administration makes an ass of itself by declaring CO2 a danger to health.
What planet are these people from? It’s Gilbertian.
“Countries are not being asked if they want to adhere… but to indicate if they want to be associated [with the Copenhagen accord]”
… or just sign up to get on the mailing list
Another tipping point came and went and nothing happened.
Fortunately the UN’s politics are as good as there science.
Thanks for the story.
This report confirms that even politicians can learn.
Perhaps the true AGW believers will eventually learn too.
Keep the spotlight on the Climategate iceberg. Much more will be revealed!
With deep gratitude,
Oliver K. Manuel
I guess this results, at least partially, from the Climatagete scandal, the Pachauri fiasco, and the IPCC botch.
“The Environmental Protection Agency has unveiled new draft rules that would sharply tighten regulations on smog-building pollutants, or ground-level ozone, and has cracked down on greenhouse gas emissions by ruling that carbon dioxide and five other gases pose a danger to health.”
The signup is deflated, the threat was imaginary, and the EPA has cracked up.
Nobody can afford the IPCC’s price tag for the Emperor’s new clothes, signed up or not.
The wheels came off.
Those that can, do…
Those that can’t, become bureaucrats and tell people what to do, when to do it, how to do it, and if it is permitted to do it…
And in the surreal world the UN inhabits, its little hamster critters will keep on furiously racing in their little wheel, going nowhere and with nothing to show for all their frantic motions, except for promises to have another meeting.
After the Mexico meeting, hold the next meeting in Moscow … in January 2011.
WHAT??? THATS ridiculous.. I mean Obama spoke and everything.. I mean.. cmon. You must have your numbers wrong or something. Thats absurd. Massachusetts would sooner support a republ… ummm…ohh wait…
— nevermind
I’m willing to bet this push by the EPA to classify CO2 as a “pollutant” will further damage the Democrats in the eyes of independent voters. How the administration back tracks and extricates itself from this wrong turn will be fascinating to watch.
The Copenhagen Accord contained little substance but it did have an agreement that all nations would state the steps they would take to curb carbon emissions to help save the world from the purported threat of anthropogenic global warming.
rE YOUR FIRST PARAGRAPH.
Please consult any grammar textbook. “It’s” means “It is” and DOES NOT INDICATE POSSESSION BY “IT”.
Nobody wants to invest in a Ponsi scheme, once the formal charges are being drawn up, and prime movers are being sacked or investigated. DUH!
The undeveloped countries walked out, back at the COP15 meeting when they found out they would not be receiving shares of the loot.
With the amount of corruption, and lost profits from the crimes incurred in the EU Carbon trading scheme, why would anyone want to sign on now?
A major cultural hurdle that alarmists have yet to grasp (or even acknowledge) is that when Americans hear things like “Dr. Pachauri”, “Evil DeBoar”, and “COP-15”, they tend to conjure up images of Dr. Evil, mini-me, and RoboCop engaged in a vicious doomsday plot to destroy the Earth. Until the clueless bureaucrats in the UNFCCC learn how to identify and address this serious PR deficiency, their much vaunted “agreements” will continue to be DOA.
Cap & Tax (Trade) is DOA. The EPA has now received three (3) lawsuits over the Co2 “endangerment” finding and there will undoubtedly be more hurdles on that front.
More important, the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts is just the tip of a much larger iceberg. The tide is turning towards fiscal responsibility by government (because there is no more money) not just in the US, but in many other countries around the world.
Bottom line – the current worldwide economic downturn has and will claim many causalities. One of those causalities will be reflected in history as the AGW movement. When the money is tight (or non-existent), priorities changes and people are less sympathetic to higher energy prices, higher taxes and more regulations for the sake of some UN driven vision of eco justice (or wealth redistribution).
Hey AGW proponents – It’s not going to happen, there is no money to underwrite your boondoggle any further. Pack it in and go find a green job…
Imagine that. Let’s schedule a new and improved Climate Summit…..yeah, that’s the ticket.
Interesting to note that the report states that India, Russia, Norway, France and Mexico have signed on…. and not very surprisingly, Australia, as well…. looks like Lord Monckton has his work cut out for him on his Down Under Tour.
Hide the deadline.
“Robert E. Phelan (22:59:32) :
Interesting to note that the report states that India, Russia, Norway, France and Mexico have signed on…. and not very surprisingly, Australia, as well…. looks like Lord Monckton has his work cut out for him on his Down Under Tour.”
The political situation is still somewhat iffy for cap’n’trade here is Australia. It’s also an election year so who knows what will happen.
I’m in NZ. My stupid Prime Minister turned up to COP15 with an ETS law signed. One of very few. We’re also one of very few to sign the “Copenhagen Accord”.
Sadly, despite my more than rudimentary search skills, five minutes has given me me no list of the signatories to the Copenhagen Accord. Anyone got any idea who (else) signed on the dotted line to confirm their abject stupidity? Link or list would be great.
NYT getting a little huffy about the COP15 failure. No carbon(CO2) tax or sunspots for you NYT.
“I don’t think that any political development in the United States means turning back nine years of political development on the climate change agenda,” de Boer said. “The change of one state from one party to another is not going to cause a landslide in the politics of the United States on the question of climate change.”
U.S. Bound by Obama’s Copenhagen Emissions Pledge — U.N. Official
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2010/01/20/20greenwire-us-bound-by-obamas-copenhagen-emissions-pledge-17687.html
Why Cap & Trade will fail, and why the USA will hand nothing to other countrys for “climate debt”:
Well, heard on the news that we have $12.3 TRILLION national debt in the USA and they want to raise the debt limit by another $1.9 TRILLION because when they raised by IIRC $1.4? TRILLION a few months ago they thought it would get them through a whole year … but it didn’t.
Now the USA population is about 300 Million so we can take 12,000,000 / 300 = $40,000 per person or about $160,000 per family of 4 (2 adults, 2 children – really worse than that for the typical family since we have more than replacement rate kids…)
So our Dim Dems want to add about $20,000+ per family per year to the national debt.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t have a spare $20k / year to hand over in ADDED taxes. So anybody who buys those bonds is going to be given a great big NOTHING when they come due. (And the idea that I’m going to find a spare $160,000 before I die is laughable in the extreme…)
So go ahead, EPA and California State, and go ahead Dim Congress. Whip out that credit card and go nuts. The faster this whole thing augers into the ground and the USA has to join California in filing bancruptcy, the sooner we can start over with a new crop of congress critters.
Oh, and it would kind of bring to a halt handing out $Billions to various nutty causes and worse countries around the world.
Note to China: Please loan us lots of money that we will NEVER pay back. We need it to, um, because, er, well, we just need it… “For the Children”…
(And yes, I know that right now the US $ is rising, it is only a short term thing. A nice trade, but not a long term bright idea.)
Sidebar: The state and local governments have their own $Billions of debt on the credit card. California has a DEFICIT of about $20 B (the actual estimate wander from $20 to $40 and I’ve heard $60B once including some unfunded obligations). So take that $160,000 and add to it about the same for “other government debt” AND about another $200,000 for unfunded social programs and unfunded obligations (i.e. Social Security that has no money but is obligated to a big ramp up in payments). You actually end up about $ 1/2 Million per family. Don’t know about you, but for my family that number is just insane.
So the odds of those debts ever being repaid is roughly zero.
As soon as the global debt markets realize that, well, lets just say that the result will not be pretty.
Strangly, I don’t really care at this point if they want to load on a few dozen more $Trillion for nutty energy and health programs. Once you’ve decided not to pay the credit card bill and to just default on it; well, who cares what gets charged on it before it gets shut…
So even if we hand countries buckets of pretty pieces of paper, they will get nothing of value out of it. We will pay our promisses with more, new, and prettier promisses 😉
Oliver K. Manuel (22:09:51) :
I spent the whole night reading John P Castello’s finely detailed account of the climategate emails. Fascinating, reads like a thriller novel. Would be a good tool in the hands of a barrister.
Maybe the “hockey teams’s” future cellmates will appreciate discussions of temperature anomalies and ice core data.
Long after AGW and Climate Justice have passed, there will be old, entrenched taxes as a legacy of the carbon bubble. These taxes will have names to make you forget their origin, but they won’t go away.
Who would approve a “Tax on Giving Someone a Job”? Yet call it Payroll Tax and we accept it comfortably…whereas it’s as acceptable as doggie-do in your morning cornflakes.