People send me stuff… UPDATE: See below for another interpretation
Remember how this was phrased? “sign it, it’s just voluntary!”
Recall Rio 1992 “Earth Summit” where the meme was “hey, it’s voluntary!…with a negotiating schedule attached”. Apparently, like a Roach Motel, “countries check in but they can’t check out”. This email is from UNFCCC’s list server and note my bolded section below. The arrogance, it burns.
—–Original Message—–
From: globalmedialist-all <globalmedialist-all@lists.unfccc.int>
To: globalmedialist-all <globalmedialist-all@lists.unfccc.int>; germanmedialist <germanmedialist@lists.unfccc.int>
Sent: Tue, Dec 13, 2011 4:46 am
Subject: [UNFCCC medialist] STATEMENT BY UNFCCC CHIEF ON CANADA’S ANNOUNCEMENT TO WITHDRAW FROM KYOTO PROTOCOL
STATEMENT BY UNFCCC CHIEF ON CANADA’S ANNOUNCEMENT TO WITHDRAW FROM KYOTO PROTOCOL
The Durban agreement to a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol represents the continued leadership and commitment of developed countries to meet legally binding emission reduction commitments. It also provides the essential foundation of confidence for the new push towards a universal, legal climate agreement in the near future.
I regret that Canada has announced it will withdraw and am surprised over its timing. Whether or not Canada is a Party to the Kyoto Protocol, it has a legal obligation under the Convention to reduce its emissions, and a moral obligation to itself and future generations to lead in the global effort. Industrialized countries whose emissions have risen significantly since 1990, as is the case for Canada, remain in a weaker position to call on developing countries to limit their emissions.
I call on all developed countries to meet their responsibilities under the Climate Change Convention and its Kyoto Protocol, to raise their ambition to cut emissions and to provide the agreed adequate support to developing countries to build their own clean energy futures and adapt to climate change impacts they are already experiencing.
==================================================
UPDATE: There’s some ambiguity here in the announcement, upon further reading it could be interpreted that they are saying this:
“I see you withdraw from Kyoto but you are still legally bound to reduce emissions UNDER THE 1992 ‘VOLUNTARY’ RIO UN FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE (UNFCCC)”.
So maybe it isn’t Kyoto they’re saying they can’t leave, but its parent treaty, Rio’s UNFCCC, which is the model for this Spring’s upcoming UNCSD ’12.
But that’s voluntary too, so how can a “voluntary” agreement be legally binding?
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What “legal obligation”? Is the UNFCCC going to force a sovereign nation to abide by such a statement? Are they going to invade Canada to force them to abide by Kyoto? Inquiring minds want to know.
Hotel California?
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!
“it has a legal obligation under the Convention to reduce its emissions, ”
Does this apply to China and India as well? I can’t wait to see the “legal” action they will pursue.
If you sign a legally binding convention, without reading the small print you deserve to be shafted. The people negotiating these deals are supposed to be professionals not the archetypal “little old ladies” who can be sweet talked into investing their life savings in a ponzi scheme.
I have never seen an international convention whose provisions were “only voluntary” what would be the point of that
I think the second word of Canada’s reply should be “off.”
So the UNFCCC has said Kyoto (a voluntary contract between countries) creates legal obligations whether or not a country is a signatory to that contract. If I sign a contract then it creates legal obligations on me. If I terminate that contract the legal obligations cease, unless there are clauses that continue after the termination. For instance an employment contract may have commercial confidentiality clauses that I, as an employee, agree to be bound by beyond that contract.
For any party to imply that there are clauses in a contract that are not within the contract itself is at best dishonourable. The UNFCCC is morally bound to withdraw it. Without this, they cannot be trusted to form more binding and complex agreements in future, insofar as they may later compel signatories once in the agreement to take on further obligations.
Gosh darn those obnoxious, disagreeable Canadians!
Stop! Or I’ll say stop again!
If Canada has only renounced the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, they perhaps should also withdraw from the UNFCCC.
Baby steps. Let’s see countries start withdrawing from the UNFCCC.
Are they going to send UN blue helmests to Canada and drag its Prime Minister to the International Court of Justice inThe Hague and trial him as a war criminal… The levels of insanity are skyrocketing…
The title and the understanding need correcting as they are conflating two things. There is no such thing as the ‘Kyoto Convention’. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1994) is adopted by 195 countries in the world but the Kyoto Protocol (1997) by only a few dozen. It’s quite possible to exit the Protocol but still be expected (as signatory) to uphold the Convention. Canada could, I suppose, remove itself from the Convention, but until it does it remains a signatory.
But peeps, that’s how the UNFCC/IPCC et al work – you contributed to the report, therefore you must have the recognition for it by having your name written in such a sly deceptive manner explicitly implying that you wholeheartedly agreed with everything written wthin said report!!!!!! I agree with Joey B & Peter Miller, nice 🙂 Oh how I wish Blighty could & would do the same. I recall Lord (what a great economist I was to predict the fall of Lehmann Brothers & the Global Financial crisis – not) Stern when he sadi we live in a global village, so we are bound to have a few village idiots! In my experience, the ones shouting the gloom & doom & the hulluballoo are usually they, & there are often more than just a few, & they’re often in high places!.
I regret that the UNFCCC has announced that it has sold its soul to the Devil, and that it has a legal obligation under its contract to increase its emission of deception, and an immoral obligation to coerce the inhabited world to fall down and worship Baal.
I call on all individuals everywhere to meet their responsibilities before God, to denounce any and every totalitarian’s ambition to rule the world, and, according as you purpose in your own heart, to provide assistance to your neighbor to help them build their own tyranny free future, and to adapt to the ever changing, unrelenting assaults on freedom.
“Industrialized countries whose emissions have risen significantly since 1990, as is the case for Canada, remain in a weaker position to call on developing countries to limit their emissions.”
Funny, I don’t think I’ve heard of industrialized countries, let alone Canada, calling on developing countries to limit their emissions, despite satellite data saying that developing countries are the main source of C02 in the world (and it is C02 we’re talking about here, not some amorphous “emissions”).
I’ve only heard it the other way around.
Well, if they think statements like that floats their boat, there really isn’t much water left in the pond, eh?
Canada should zero out its UN contributions as well.
Time for Canada to put some of these schmucks on the no entry list.
This exactly the reason why Canada must leave the UN entirely.
Canada is a very rich and law abiding country essentially at peace with all nations (except a couple via UN resolutions). Canada is not well served by mixing it up with this rabble of no-good-inks.
The UN is a cancer on the face of our great country and it is time to have it removed from our reality.
The UN does not represent a moral authority, it wages war more than any country in history.
To the UN… piss-off.
I actually expected some blowback would follow over the next few weeks from various countries in more or less a round about way – and I really did expect the UN to go crazy. After all the UN’s first job in today’s world is to suck nations into sending them free money. Then full time condemning Israel is their next big priority. Everything else is a distant third after that.
This is a good thing to have happened – for the first time this allows other nations, not only Canada, to see first hand the degree to which the UN believes that it has jurisdiction over sovereign nation states. And the degree to which sovereign states have allowed the UN to strip them of their own sovereignty. Something many of us here in the west have known for years and have long complained about – the insidious role the UN has played in stripping sovereign states of the sovereignty and in its place acting as THE world government body that all states MUST answer to. It is appropriate that Canada, in quitting the Kyoto accord, exposed the UN fallacy of becoming a UN member is anything BUT a volunteer organization. In fact – to even join the UN then said state agrees to tun over its sovereignty to the UN body which is comprised of 57 Muslins states and third world nations who then set the policy FOR every other nation.
I say to the UN – %#&@ur momisugly YOU!
While, frankly, I’ve never found Canadian English quite as, shall we say, expressive as the Australian or possibly even the US variant, I’m sure there’s a fair number of Canadians who can work up the right response to the UN kleptocracy.
Given their various declarations that “this isn’t just about climate change anymore”, it seems strange that they drag the pretence that it is about climate back into it now. Or maybe the hydra-headed monster that is the UN just has trouble keeping track of what its various mouths are saying.
It will be interesting to see how Maldivian and Tuvalu assault troops under UN command will put Canada under their yoke to collect on those dues …
Dear UNFCCC Chief,
You haven’t heard the best part. In addition to telling you idiots to get stuffed, we are also insisting that no money from our annual national UN fees will go towards anything or anyone associated with any part of the UNFCCC, Kyoto, the IPCC.
In summary, [SNIP: language. -REP]!
Best regards . . . . Canada
Canada has announced it is withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol, yes.
But Canada is still a member of the UNFCCC. It has made a pledge to reduce its emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020 under the Copenhagen Agreement. I do not believe that this is a legal obligation, however, as the Copenhagen Agreement was voluntary.
Aside from that, this letter appears to be spin, put on the situation to try to save face as the UNFCCC is revealed to be powerless to prevent this, and is thus humiliated by Canada’s unilateral action.
If they don’t like that then our next announcement should be that we’re getting out of the UN, period.