The UN Climate End Game

Guest opinion by David Archibald

“Everybody Wants To Rule The World” was a 1985 song by Tears For Fears. Now in 2015, a number of parties are doing their best to that end – ISIS in the Middle East, Russia chewing up the Ukraine, China in the East and South China Seas and the UN Climate Change Commission. A draft document out of Geneva gives details of the UN plan to rule the world.

For most of us, the memorable thing from the Lima climate late last year was Greenpeace’s despoiling of an ancient Nazca figure of a hummingbird.

But the Lima conference has been quickly followed by another in Geneva. The purpose of the latter conference was to produce the negotiating text for the climate conference to be held in Paris in December. The Geneva meeting was conducted in a rush with no opening statements, even by the head of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres. Ms. Figueres expectation of the climate treaty coming is that it will be “a centralised transformation” that “is going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different”.

Just how different is shown by snippets of the Paris negotiating text. Let’s start with this one from page 5:

“All Parties to strive to achieve low greenhouse gas climate-resilient economies and societies, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their historical responsibilities, common but differentiated responsibilities / evolving common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, in order to achieve sustainable development, poverty eradication and prosperity for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, taking fully into account the historical responsibility of developed country Parties.”

Animal Farm was supposed to be a cautionary tale about communism. The UN has taken “All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others.” and turned into “All countries are common but some are more differentiated than others.”

How will the UN determine how much one country might be differentiated from another? That is explained on page 85:

“In reviewing and revising Annex I to the Convention, the total amount of greenhouse gases, expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent, emitted by a Party to the Convention since 1750 A.D. shall be added and divided by the current population of that Party. Based on the thus obtained per capita greenhouse gas emissions and population size of each Party to the Convention, the average global per capita emissions of greenhouse gases shall be used to evaluate the status of the greenhouse gas emissions of a Party to the Convention. Each Party to the Convention whose per capita greenhouse gas emissions exceed the global average per capita greenhouse gas emissions shall be proposed to be inscribed in Annex I to the Convention, and the remaining Parties shall not be proposed to be inscribed in Annex I to the Convention.”

Why 1750? Are the sins of the fathers are to be visited their sons even unto the 11^th generation, which is us? Climate treaties used to be based on 1990 as the start date because that was convenient to the Europeans as the fall of communism in that year had curbed their coal consumption. The European countries were going to be the easy treaty compliers while the US was punished. That was the plan at the beginning. But now it is changed to 1750.

The significance of Annex 1 is that if you are on it, you will be paying for the whole circus – US$100 billion per annum for kleptocracies. What if you don’t want to be on Annex 1, because you know that global warming is nonsense or something? What might happen is hinted at on page 8:

“Option 4: Decides that the developed country Parties shall not resort to any form of unilateral measures against goods and services from developing country Parties on any grounds related to climate change, recalling the principles and provisions of the Convention”

The option says that developing countries are not to have unilateral measures taken against them but who would bother doing that? The implied target is elsewhere. Countries that are allocated to Annex 1 but don’t cough up the cash might have unilateral measures taken against them by “developed country Parties”.

Australia signed up for the UN climate treaty in 2007. Canada pulled out in 2011 and Russia and Japan have rejected new targets after 2012. Perhaps the US will keep us free – Ms Figueres has said that the US Congress is “very detrimental” to the fight against global warming.

So that is why the global warming scare is so hard to kill. The end game is world domination. With such a big prize – the biggest possible, facts aren’t even inconvenient. They are not part of the process. It has been a long slog but gird your loins for a battle that might last into mid-century. Lima was COP 20 and Ms Figueres is prepared to take it to COP 40.

David Archibald, a visiting fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., is the author of Twilight of Abundance (Regnery, 2014)