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?
We all need to understand that this goes deeply within the United Nations various bureaucratic arms. Countries around the world must stand up to and reject the IPCC, the UNFCCC, The UNEP, the UNDP, the UN WMO, etc. We need a concerted international effort to shut them down entirely. That is why I advocate countries de-funding the United Nations entirely. As much as the UN had potential to do good, it also had the potential to descend into a cesspool of radical movements and causes, and it obviously has done just that with the global warming scam. we have to understand the bigger picture beyond a few climate scientists and nip this in the bud. D-fund the UN, let it wither away to nothing.
Otherwise yes, what she meant was the 1992 Rio convention
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Change_Convention
which established her UNFCCC and which is clearly described as being legally non-binding, imposing no limits and having no enforcement mechanisms. But there’s no contradiction. She didn’t claim otherwise. She has just screamed that Canada has signed an empty piece of paper in 1992 in Rio which is why the UNFCCC’s Costa Rican boss may send Canada an equally vacuous e-mail about obligations and moral duties to itself and the future of the Milky Way that really mean zero.
More Bates Motel than Roach Motel it seems to me.
Well, I don’t figure I’ll be back
There for a spell
Even though Rita moved away
And got a job in a motel
He still waits for me
Constant, on the sly
He wants to turn me in
To the F.B.I.
Me, I romp and stomp
Thankful as I romp
Without freedom of speech
I might be in the swamp
A “non-binding obligation” is like being voluntold what to do.
Torgeir Hansson says:
December 13, 2011 at 10:59 am
“The IPCC needs to be gutted, no question. But don’t give me this nonsense that the UN should be dissolved. Crack a history book. Learn about places like Normandy, Iwo Jima, Birkenau, Bastogne, Hiroshima, and Kursk. ”
So you imply Hitler and his allies would not have dared to start a war had there been a UN? Yeah sure, Hitler would have so p***ed his pants.
Maybe it’s you who needs a history book; if you manage to find one, look up the League Of Nations, and maybe the Treaty Of Versailles.
It’s the same in all these unelected bureacracies. Barosso, chief and unelected commisar of the EUSSR tells the UK elected PM what he cannot do.
To quote(and change) a famous quote said during WWII…
from the Canadian People to the UN…..NUTS….
To quote one Generalissimus, “How many divisions has that UNFCCCC?”
Just a curiosity, Canada used to have the second biggest Navy in WWII.
‘UN peuple, UN royaume, UN chef’
Canada can make us free.
(Not too heavy, I hope…)
It’s time to classify the UN as a terrorist organization.
From Torgeir Hansson on December 13, 2011 at 10:59 am:
You need to know about Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and review the Cold War and the skirmish wars in Korea and Vietnam. The UN was formed to prevent another all-encompassing World War. But now that we have nuclear bombs, virtually all the countries are too scared to start anything massive. The nukes do what the UN was supposed to do.
And now the UN is sitting back, impotent, as Iran and North Korea pursue nukes, as well as a bunch of others undoubtedly. It’ll be up to other individual countries to stop them, as possible. This will include Israel stopping Iran, for which the UN will agree on yet another action condemning Israel. However, as things are going, soon lots more countries will have nukes, and the way things look as soon as one starts using them then everyone will be using them, in defense… Which will highlight for everyone that the UN was even more worthless than generally thought, and the UN will be forgotten/dissolved as the world picks up the pieces.
Really, the main purpose of the UN has become to be a forum for all those little countries to voice their complaints, which 99.5% of the time reduce to complaining that the more-developed better-off countries need to cough up the support to help them out. With 0.5% being complaining about Israel, and somewhere in the rounding error is what’s passably real work that can be better done with standard one-on-one agreements between countries.
The world has enough diplomats, there’s enough foreign aid and charities about, and the wars will all be limited and brief until the large glowing one that won’t. The world will get along just fine without the UN.
Curiousgeorge says:
December 13, 2011 at 9:32 am
I can just imagine Canada’s response to this. The middle finger salute comes to mind.
—————————————————————
Joey B. said it well enough, although Sean Peake’s reply was much more Canadian.
As a Canadian I can tell you we don’t like being threatened by bureaucrats. The mostly likely response will be to quietly ignore climate change twice as much as we did before. And work a little harder selling our oil sands to China. Welcome to Canada.
Think I might take a couple of weeks holiday in em………………… where shall I go? errrrrrrrrrrrrr how about Canada!
Yes, that’s where I’ll spend my dough, in wonderful and hospitable Canada. In some parts they even speak English. Come on you people out there, show your appreciation by taking a vacation in Canada. For those of us left in Englandland, we have the perishing Olympics to put up with next year, so the place will be unbearable, so don’t visit here, you’ll be ripped off for sure. Let the drug artists strut their stuff alone in Stratford, let’s all go to Canada.
p.s. for the uninitiated, Stratford is the area where the games will be, (I had a car nicked there once, while I was actually standing next to it), and it’s a long way from London, and will cost you an arm and a leg to get there, get in and get out again. Check the crime figures before booking.
James Sexton says:
December 13, 2011 at 9:48 am
Hotel California?
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!
My fear:
They stab it with their steely knives,
But they just can’t kill the beast.
Is this announcement today a coincidence or UN payback for not toeing the line?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/12/13/pol-un-aboriginal-women.html
I hope it’s coincidence.
Torgeir Hansson says:
“The IPCC needs to be gutted, no question. But don’t give me this nonsense that the UN should be dissolved. Crack a history book. Learn about places like Normandy, Iwo Jima, Birkenau, Bastogne, Hiroshima, and Kursk. Until you have done so, don’t bother me with this dissolution talk.”
I am well acquainted with the history and have family that fought in those places, IMO, the UN has abandoned its original directive and has set its sites on being the global government. The UN is poorly organized for such a function being that there are no checks and balances, no population weighted representation, etc. Therefore, I would either disband or severely downsize the UN if it were up to me.
Sounds like Gore (the other one!) Vidal’s book ‘Duluth’ – with the subtitle, ‘Love it or loathe it, you can never leave it or lose it’! Also, one of those nightmare sci-fi traps where you have entered a strange topology that allows you in, but, once in, all routes out just lead in again.
“Voluntary”
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all.’
I’ve sent a letter of gratitude to Peter Kent, Canada’s Environment Minister.
I also asked for Canada to sue the IPCC (and all the lying NGO’s that supported them) for fraud.
crosspatch says:
December 13, 2011 at 11:25 am
Well, if the UN believes something is “legally binding” let them send their police. I seem to remember a certain US President who once had the Supreme Court rule against what he was doing. He continued anyway saying something along the lines of “The Supreme Court has ruled, now let them enforce it” and he did what he pleased anyway.
—–
Not true:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_v._Georgia
Torgeir Hansson says:
December 13, 2011 at 10:59 am
Sir, today’s UN is controlled by the communist avante garde. They are the chief threat to world peace.
@ur momisugly Luboš Motl -Indeed Christiana Figueres is the Costa Rican head of the UNFCCC. She’s the sister of Jose Figureres former president of Costa Rica now hiding out in France to avoid prosecution for illegal kickbacks during his term.
Huh, the whole family is in the scamming racket it appears!
maybe a tad off topic but have we all seen chicken little? Green Climate Fund – that would mobilize $US100 billion in cash transfers from the developed to the developing countries. The details of both the new binding treaty and the fund were left for later.
http://justmeint.wordpress.com/2011/12/13/the-sky-is-falling/
Definitely the only ones who will really benefit will be those who cry wolf…… and canada has taken a huge leap forward by showing they know this and are pulling out . We could be so brave PLEASE in Ozzy , fire Julia and follow Canada’s lead…….
Progressivism at its best.
All international agreements are voluntary. Nations have sovereignity, and must agree to be bound by any laws, treaties, protocols, etc. That’s why the Geneva conventions don’t apply to terrorists, or North Korea or Iran.
UN = hosers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoser