Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I haven’t yet found a copy of whatever agreement they signed at Durban. But thanks to Kumi Naidoo, the radical head of Greenpeace International, I know that there’s nothing to worry about. He’s done the analysis for me.
Figure 1. Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International Executive Director PHOTO SOURCE NYT
DURBAN, South-Africa, December 11, 2011/African Press Organization (APO)/ [emphasis mine] — On the closing of the latest round of UN climate talks in Durban Greenpeace today declared that it was clear that our Governments this past two weeks listened to the carbon-intensive polluting corporations instead of listening to the people who want an end to our dependence on fossil fuels and real and immediate action on climate change.
“The grim news is that the blockers lead by the US have succeeded in inserting a vital get-out clause that could easily prevent the next big climate deal being legally binding. If that loophole is exploited it could be a disaster. And the deal is due to be implemented ‘from 2020′ leaving almost no room for increasing the depth of carbon cuts in this decade when scientists say we need emissions to peak,”
said Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International Executive Director.
“Right now the global climate regime amounts to nothing more than a voluntary deal that’s put off for a decade. This could take us over the two degree threshold where we pass from danger to potential catastrophe.”
A “voluntary deal that’s put off for a decade” that contains a “vital get-out clause”… as a compromise that works for me. The real threat now is the “Green Carbon Fund”.
I am curious, though, about the location and nature of the “vital get-out clause”, I want to know how that part works for when we need it … reader’s contributions invited. Anyone have a copy of the actual agreement? I heard it was 100 pages long at one point …
Overcast morning here … what a crazy world. It’s Sunday, I’m gonna watch football and hope the sun comes out.
w.
UPDATE: What I think is the final copy of the document is available here.
UPDATE II: How foolish of me not to realize that in the UN system, something only 55 pages long can only be a draft agreement. The actual agreement is 138 pages long, and is here (h/t Fred Berple). It requires developed countries to
Reduce global greenhouse gas emissions more than 100 per cent by 2040,
Truly, you couldn’t make up useful idiots like the Durban delegates if you tried. Me, I’m shooting for a 137% reduction in global innumeracy …
UPDATE III: Once again, fooled by the UN. That was not the final, final, really final document. What I find for the really final one is here. They’ve removed the requirement to reduce emissions by more than 100%.
David says:
December 12, 2011 at 4:06 am
Yep, channeling the “famous” Nancy Pelosi, we’ll have to pass it before we find out what’s in it. And by the time it passes, that content will look decidedly different from the current content. So until it passes, this will continue to be one big drunken chirade.
American Thinker article on the Durbin pseudo-agreement:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2011/12/climate_change_debate_about_global_wealth_redistribution.html
what a brilliant summary A Global Welfare System and One right now I cannot afford to contribute to… already support other charities in 3rd world countries……
Kumi Naidoo is a smart guy, but his only expertise is activism. His opinion on GW isn’t worth 10 cents!
I can fully understand the position of the non-Annex I (non-Western, non-developed, non-rich) countries. After all, the weekly take-home pay of an average American worker is more than families in most of these third-world countries will see in an entire year.
Thus one average American worker can readily save 51 climate change-ravaged third-world families from the great hardship of working for an entire year, and be no worse off than they are. Yup, makes sense.
TedK:
The Global Enviroment Facility is ‘Celebrating Twenty Years’ according to its web site, http://www.thegef.org. During the Copenhagen conference two years ago the Guardian described it as “a partnership of 10 agencies including the World Bank and the UN Environment Programme”, quoting an Oxfam adviser as saying “It proposes a green fund to be run by a board but the big risk is that it will run by the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility and not the UN. That would be a step backwards, and it tries to put constraints on developing countries when none were negotiated in earlier UN climate talks.” Later during the same shambles the BBC picked up the same theme:
Such convoluted history shows how hard it is to understand an UNFCCC ‘Daft’ as an outsider. Here are two other mentions of the GEF, the first from Andrew Orlowski in March 2010 on the choice of Ron (Lord) Oxburgh to lead one of the Climategate inquiries, given his lead role in London for an outfit many of us had never before heard of called GLOBE:
Sounds as if Canada won’t be dipping in its pockets for such shadowy outfits in the future, at least, based on the straight talking of Peter Kent. And who has made money from working for GEF. The following paragraph is now longer visible on the web site for the Chicago Climate Exchange but in December 2009 described its then Vice President, Paula DiPerna:
That text was once at http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/content.jsf?id=139.
So you hadn’t heard of it. To be honest I couldn’t place it myself but those are the notes I found in my personal wiki.
There’s a great deal of clean up of this level of international organization that has to happen. But I think it’s crystal clear that member governments that have been willing to fund such things in the past are far from keen now. Just to remind them why, here’s the key paragraph from Willis once again:
Thanks for saying that Mr Eschenbach. Bye bye Global Environment Facility. (I know it might take a decade or two but the funding must run dry. So bye bye.)
Here’s another goal for them: stop season-change now. After all, would we not be better off if the citizens of the world did not have to endure freezing winters? Let’s get the climate bureaucrats onto this one double-quick!
An agreement that includes the provision for the reduction by 2040 (or any other date that you can think of) of manmade carbon emissions by more than 100%, is not an agreement, it is simply a farce. 20% would be either optimistic or absurd depending on one’s point of view. More than 100% merely indicates that there was not one single delegate present who should be safely let out on his own. Seemingly there was no one there to stand up and point out that this single provision destroyed both the conference and any agreement that it came up with.
The Greens would like to get this going now “because time is running out”. What they really mean is, in case global temperatures cool naturally before the carbon tax dollars get into the system.
This is all good stuff for the Australian elections in March 2013, that should see the socialistic Greens booted out along with the Labour government that’s turned a $350B surplus into a $290B deficit within 12 months of office.
Willis Eschenbach says: December 11, 2011 at 12:55 pm
“Kinda depressing that Al Jazeera has the in-depth article.”
Why depressing?? the best mainstream news organisation I’ve seen recently…
Willis, @ur momisugly
UPDATE II: How foolish of me not to realize that in the UN system, something only 55 pages long can only be a draft agreement. The actual agreement is 138 pages long, and is here (h/t Fred Berple). It requires developed countries to …
I’m not sure that can be “the agreement” as it’s evidently an unfinished draft. For example, page 8 begins …
[move paragraphs 34- 38, after the preambular paragraphs]
[Add a heading on global goals and move under this heading, after paragraph 33,
paragraphs 39-51]
Global goal for substantially reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050
8. [The text could be structured in three groups: elements relevant for the global goal,
2ºC and the numbers; the goal for developed countries and contribution by developing
countries; and context elements]
[Group 1: global goal]
9. In the context of the ultimate objective of the Convention under its Article 2 and of
the Bali Action Plan (decision 1/CP.13), Parties share the vision for the achievement of a
global goal to reduce global anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases based on equity,
common but differentiated responsibilities and respective
Surely they aren’t stupid enough to sign up to an binding agreement which isn’t finished. I mean, they wouldn’t, would they?
Apologies, I don’t know how I managed to mess up the link. Anyway, it’s the one in the head post:
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2011/awglca14/eng/crp38.pdf
Sunspot says
This is all good stuff for the Australian elections in March 2013, that should see the socialistic Greens booted out along with the Labour government that’s turned a $350B surplus into a $290B deficit within 12 months of office.
—————-
You are somehow forgetting to explain a few things
1. The global financial crisis. If that money had not been returned to taxpayers quickly, so they could spend it, Australia would have 10% unemployment like the USA. Australia has 5% unemployment.
2. The next budget has Australia back to budget neutrality, with a thin surplus. And many economists, like people who actually know what they are talking about, say this is a bit too quick and will knock a couple of points off GDP.
—————-
And the conservatives, if they had been in power, would not have done anything different. it’s all conventional economics 101.
Australian politicians of all stripes are pretty pragmatic. We try to keep the loons out of power.
Joachim Seifert says:
December 11, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Hi crosspatch
interesting would be, according to your opinion, the process of as you put it:
” The complete discrediting of the IPCCs AR4, the GISS and CRU climate model projections, and the sea level rise scare. By 2020, I am fairly well certain, we will see such a wide divergence between the observations and those projections as to completely discredit them once and for all.”
Give a few clues of what we can expect during 2017 – 2019, before 2020, and how these guys will finally leave the stage……
——————————————————————-
I can’t answer for crosspatch (whose comment above I thought was excellent), but I’ll say this.
If you want a clue what “2017 – 2019” will be like, just imagine your worst ever nightmare, multiply it by ten, add in halucinogenic drugs and excruciating torture and you might be getting somewhere close to the kind of evil which is at the heart of these “plans”.
Getting through the next five years without these crazed b*stards at the UN wrecking humanity will be a blessing. They need to be stopped and time is running short before they assert total control, at which point nobody will dare question anything they say.
Look at what’s already happened in the world this year. Many precedents have been set in the areas of finance, military action, governmental and beurocratical power grabs. Lots of mean, nasty, horrible things have been going on. It’s only going to get worse buddy.
So, “these guys” don’t “finally leave the stage” unless public opinion, or something, removes them from it. They’re on a mission, so we need to be on our guard.
My guess is they’re soon going to give us something which will relegate the climate change “problem” to a distant part of our memories. They’re so generous that way. If a gift stops giving, come up with a new one.
New “Final” document here. The previous document (CRP.39) has now been renamed. It is now described as:
It still has the “more than 100%”, so all is not lost.
w.
THE WORLD FROM BERLIN
The Durban Climate Agreement ‘Is Almost Useless’
The climate talks in Durban ended with an agreement to agree on a new agreement on emissions cuts in coming years.
And I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say that we support you more than 100%, Willis. Anything they can do …
LazyTeenager says:
December 12, 2011 at 1:52 pm
Unfortunately we do have the Green “loons” holding the balance of power.
The current labour/greens government dished out billions to people that did not need it, supposably, in an effort to reduce the impact of the GFC. The people that benefitted the most were department stores owners selling large LCD TV’s. Soon after that the reserve bank had to increase interest rates to head off inflation. All that money is pretty much down the drain and should have been kept until we really needed it. A capital works infrastructure program would have been the answer but would be beyond a labour government. The previous Coalition government provided income tax cuts on many consecutive years and still manage to create a $350B surplus. Historically, Australian Labour governments have never been good money managers.
The current government now has to apply new taxes such as the carbon tax and additional mining tax to get back into surplus. None of this money will go towards the so called “Climate Control”
“Dave L. says:
December 11, 2011 at 1:12 pm
Kumi Naidoo was once a communist activist for the ANC in South Africa. He is a watermelon.”
Activists – pffftt. They tend to morph to where the money is flowing, just like jellyfish floating around the oceans in search of nutrients. Jellyfish have more spine though 😉
Eschenbach says:
December 12, 2011 at 2:48 pm
New “Final” document here. The previous document (CRP.39) has now been renamed. It is now described as:
Supplementary document containing texts reflecting work undertaken at the fourth part of the fourteenth session of the AWG-LCA, in order to carry forward ideas and proposals in areas in which continued discussions are envisaged next year.
It still has the “more than 100%”, so all is not lost.
w.
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Willis – I can’t print these out to look at them, but this appears to be just a supplement to the actual agreement which would still be in the series 38/39, and covering stuff needing to be done for it. 39 is still the latest version which is what Monckton wrote on, but I can’t easily see what the changes are in 39 to the 38 ‘standard’ version.
polistra says: December 11, 2011 at 1:23 pm
“It’s not all that unusual for Al Jazeera to have the most unbiased take on news nowadays. The official US line about AJ has always been false. The Arab world has its own biases, but it’s generally free from our particular censorships and orthodoxies.”
polistra, this is very well put, and worth noting (and repeating!). If you have not copyrighted it, I might steal it to explain to people why I prefer to watch Al Jazeera these days.
Al Jazeera (eng.) merely simulates sanity. If you want to know what they REALLY have to say, get a simultaneous translator to sit with you through some of their Arabic programs/news on the same subjects. ‘Day and night’ doesn’t begin to describe the contrast.
It’s taqiyya on stilts.