Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Paris Agreement Architect and Former UNFCCC head Christiana Figueres is disappointed at the ongoing failure of heavy industry to reduce their dependency on vast amounts of reliable energy.
INTERVIEW-Dirty industry undermines push to curb global warming – ex-UN climate chief
by Sophie Hares | @SophieHares | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 23 February 2018 16:45 GMT
“The United States is in a whopping collection of one country”
By Sophie Hares
TEPIC, Mexico, Feb 23 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Industry’s dependence on polluting fossil fuels is at odds with a “revolution” in transport and renewable energy, and could stop the world doing a crucial U-turn on rising emissions of climate-changing gases by 2020, a former U.N. climate chief warned.
“We’re definitely not on track with everything to do with heavy industry that continues to depend on intense, high-carbon electricity, and we’re not on track with land use,” said Figueres, former executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
“So what happens if we don’t get there is we increase our risk and increase the exposure to extreme weather events,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.
…
A push by cities in the United States to join states and corporations in moving forward with action to tackle climate change is a counterbalance to President Donald Trump’s decision to pull his country out of the Paris deal, said Figueres.
“The United States is in a whopping collection of one country, the only country in the world, that has said it would like to leave the Paris Agreement,” she said.
“It has had a minimal impact internationally as no other country has decided to follow suit,” she added.
…
Read more: http://news.trust.org/item/20180223164531-0q9x5
I sympathise with Figueres.
You would think that if they put their minds to it, owners of say metal foundries would have found ways to process ore and melt metal which didn’t involve prodigious amounts of reliable energy, a solution more in tune with nature than all those dirty smelly factories, perhaps a smelting technique which involves concentrated positive thinking and a few wind turbines.
Clearly heavy industry bosses are just too lazy to think outside the box, to find the environmentally sensitive solutions our planet so desperately needs.
Update (EW): h/t Urederra Corrected Misspelling of Christiana’s name in the title and first paragraph
Exxon (and the other giant corporations) has a common interest with Russia in keeping the public unaware of the fact, that abundant, cheap energy is already available, in the form of ‘Fast breeder reactors’.See the documentary ‘Pandoras promise’,
Has its own website, where you can learn more,
If you are so inclined.
I thought all the states were staying in the Paris agreement independently? So whats the problem?
EU designated money grubber
“the only country in the world, that has said it would like to leave the Paris Agreement,”
What about all those countries that never joined in the first place?
What about all those countries that joined but aren’t required to do anything more than countersign the checks they are given?
… and all those countries that joined to avoid economic sanctions and political blackmail.
“You would think that if they put their minds to it, owners of say metal foundries”
Christina and the other greens consider themselves to be the “idea” people.
They come up with big ideas, then it’s up to the little people to figure out how to implement these big ideas.
And if the little people can’t figure that out, then they just go out and get themselves some new little people.
Aesop had a fable about such fools.
Its far easier to say “just put a bell on the cat” than to actually do it.
We have a saying in our engineering circles regarding such ignorant ideas stemming from morosophs, they are called “bell the cat solutions”. Usually they are uttered with such disdain and begin with “All you need to do is…” with no ideas on how such a thing could be accomplished.
“Green Progress”..? Now that’s a new concept.
Her earrings look suspiciously metallic.
Figueres is like many in the environmental movement: They believe industrial improvements are just a matter of passing a new law that requires something to happen. A significant fraction of modern Western countries really are that out of touch with what makes the world go round, and how we got here.
I’ve had more than one electric car enthusiast tell me that the perfect battery could be achieved within a decade if only they could get congress to pass a law requiring battery companies to make one.
There’s also the case of refineries being fined for failing to use a chemical that nobody made.
That’s because many, many greens are crazy conspiracy theorists while accusing their opponents of being crazy conspiracy theorists (while being involved in the biggest scam in history).
Yet more leftist…
Now there is a woman whose ‘ carbon footprint’ went up to scale of a small town when she got her green job. So much time did she spend in the air if was not for the first class travel and five star hotels, it would be hard to see how she got any work done.
“It has had a minimal impact internationally as no other country has decided to follow suit,” she added.
She and her peeps were expecting US to pay for their party. They are really worried about it now. They know the Euros arms are too short to reach their wallets, and the Chinese do not give money to white people.
“She and her
peepsperps were expecting US to pay for their party.”There. That looks better.
If this nasty person got her way, and the citizens of the developed world could no longer afford to contribute to the tourist and free trade areas of Costa Rica, her family would quickly understand what the french aristocracy went through.
Be careful what you wish for christina. The world economy you are fighting for is the exact opposite of sustainable.
Well luv you could cut out the unnecessary metal earring adornments and replace the glass with a coconut shell or gourd and then you can start getting to work on the synthetic clothing and speaking of getting to work…
Fugueres is fixing to starve the world, increase poverty and kill people who are now on subsistence income .
This is except for a certain elite, of which she no doubt feels she is a member.
Cheers
Roger
http://www.thedemiseofchristchurch.com
I do recall that at the United Nations she actually said that she didn’t care if global warming was real, she just wanted the redistribution of wealth.
Charlie,
I have heard similar but can’t recall where and when. Do you have the accurate quote or is it just what Tom in Denver quotes above.
“concentrated positive thinking and a few wind turbines.” 😀
Has anyone asked how much money she earns from her “ignorance” and who is paying her?
“It has had a minimal impact internationally as no other country has decided to follow suit,” she added.
What’s she worried about then?
Christina’s exit from the scene was a move that will be gathering momentum now that the US has pronounced on the silliness of this lemming thought process. At the moment they are all stunned into relative silence (The real manifestation of psychological Dеиуаl). The cities and states and industries indeed aren’t overturning Trumps policies. They are doing what they do until it costs them something -offering half hearted words. Maybe waiting for mid terms to see if democrats got game. The fat lady is running through her scales and waiting for the lights to go up.
The researchers are re-researching the old warming chestnuts because there is nothing else they can do, particularly with shrinking funds for doing it and a palpable loss of heart for the game. Research that unravels the decades of confident huffery puffery is allowed to eat away at the edifice. The critical crisis being faced is existential for the old guard.
I only rhetorically ask what is it about these efite elites that disdain the very industry that makes their life so incomparably superior than anything ever before. A complete detachment from the real world, flying between luxury hotels and condos in metropolitan cities on their private jets.
They make me reach – for the pitchfork.
Heavy industry needs reliable 24/7 power, as we saw with the South Australia blackout. The iron in smelting furnaces cooled and set solid, rendering the furnaces useless for future use.
I wonder whether Figueres and the other Green dreamers who are so gung-ho about switching to alternate energies realize that to build just a single 5MW windmill requires more than 1000 tons of steel and cement, both of which are produced with the use of fossil fuels? Stanford economists estimate than in order to transition to totally renewable global energy sources would need 8.3 million of these machines besides hundreds of square miles of solar panels and much more investment in hydro dams and nuclear plants. Iron ically, the Greens are the ones most vehemently opposed to the last two, which are currently by far the most reliable of the renewables. Mind you, practicality and reality have never been the long suits of the environmentalists.
Agree
“I am the daughter of a revolutionary and I feel very comfortable with revolutions,”
Christina Figueres
The tens or hundreds millions victims of the revolutions were much less confortable with the revolutions than you are, Mrs Figueres.
China waiting with open arms and a free pass to belch CO2 with gay abandon.
Europeans deserve to be stripped of their heavy industries for voting in politicians that support the UN and EU.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of idiots!
BREAKING: US forecast to be world’s top oil producer by next year | TheHill
OMG! MICHAEL MANN PREDICTS DOOM
if Trump goes ahead with plans to transform America into a fossil fuel hyperpower. Mann warns that by 2020 the climate crisis will reach the tipping point of no return where the climate will be chaotic and broken beyond repair; and the forces unleashed in the atmosphere will doom the earth to SIXTH EXTINCTION HELL..
DECARBONIZE OR DIE!
DECARBONIZE OR DIE!
YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!
/SARC