Essay by Eric Worrall
As the UN climate team grapples with their total lack of talented candidates for the top job, Christiana Figueres may have sensed her moment has come, and is suddenly appearing in the media again.
For 50 years, governments have failed to act on climate change. No more excuses
Christiana Figueres, Yvo de Boer and Michael Zammit Cutajar
Thu 2 Jun 2022 18.00 AESTConflict and Covid make these troubling times, but national leaders must cooperate and take action now
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You might think that political leaders could have no higher priority than securing a “liveable and sustainable future”. Is that not what all of us, in every country, need and want for ourselves and for future generations? It is true that other issues are causing grave concern in many societies: governments worldwide are tackling poverty and hunger, wars and civil conflicts, the rising cost of food and energy, health systems and economies crippled by Covid-19.
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If science has not persuaded most governments to act, perhaps economics will. The IPCC provides clear evidence that societies will be more prosperous in a world where climate change is constrained, than in one left to burn. In the energy sector, evidence of the zero-carbon transition is all around us. Wind and solar generation shows compound growth of about 20% a year and is cheaper almost everywhere than the alternatives. Electric car sales doubled between 2020 and 2021.
Unless one is invested in fossil fuels, there is now no reason not to take the clean energy path. Many corporate actors understand the need for early action on this front. But governments still need to incentivise the transition. The evolving Just Energy Transition packages may yet offer an investment pathway that can accelerate deployment in emerging and developing countries. Corporate action towards other targets such as reduction of methane emissions, also needs to be encouraged.
If economics should give us hope for accelerating action despite the host of other issues menacing our times, then so should history. Fifty years ago the international community faced a similar litany of troubles: depletion of natural resources, desertification, the legacy of atom bomb testing, mercury contamination, cold war proxy conflicts. Geopolitics split the world. Yet at the 1972 Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, leaders agreed to cooperate on threats faced in common.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jun/02/for-50-years-governments-have-failed-to-act-on-climate-change-no-more-excuses
I think the title of Christiana Figueres piece, “For 50 years”, tells us all we need to know about the climate crisis.
For 50 years nothing much has happened to the climate. Food production and life expectancy have risen, yet the world has wasted insane amounts of money chasing climate phantoms, while real problems go unattended.
Still I hope Christiana Figueres gets a second crack at the top job. Can you imagine how dreary it would all be if say Canada’s Catherine McKenna got the job? When you look at the list of candidates, you will understand why my vote is for Christiana.
I know, Christiana gave us the Paris Agreement. But at least her wild directionless enthusiasm is entertaining. I suspect last time round she annoyed her fellow UN apparatchiks even more than she annoys us. And Christiana’s repeated attacks against Capitalism kind of keep it obvious what in my opinion is the real agenda of the climate crisis movement.
Thanks to them and net zero we have greenflation…
https://wholesale.banking.societegenerale.com/en/insights/news-press-room/news-details/news/greenflation-the-costs-the-energy-transition-start-hit-home/
On an occasion Ms Figueres said: “Make low carbon sexy!”
No thanks, that is very sexist.
No amount of alcohol could make her sexy, even at closing time, Vuk. I know ’cause I’ve been there, done that and got the hangover. And I don’t need no steenk’n T-shirt to remind me.
With Figueres!?
What is it with all these ultra hot climatista babes? She and Naomi are neck and neck in the Medusa race.
Now THAT’S sexism done right.
Oh dear… 🙂
doesn’t there need to be some indication of sex to be able apply the sexism standard.
I mean, you can’t really be accused of sexism agin a lump of coal, a dead possum, or a lug nut. All of which are sexier than the two things that you are talking aboot.
I don’t think there is much she has not said, most of it deceitful rubbish to promote an elite fraud on the West to profit China, based in delusional Malthusianism that even an idiot can check is wrong on the many measurements of reality made to check such assertions since. . She has no idea whether what she says is real, but knows most of the people listening don’t know and don’t care, as long as it profits them.
Being notorious is so much easier than being famous.
Or being right.
Fraudster Figueres feasting!
Well I guess the poor countries might vote for her
Read her book “The Future We Choose” and note that on page 55 she (and her co-writer Tom Rivett-Carnac) does not know the difference between energy and electricity. You or I might get away with that, chatting in a bar, but for Ms Christiana Figueres to write that in a book, which dozens of the good and great think is marvellous, then we really are in trouble – especially if she continues to exercise such influence in the UN…
You actually read it? Respect. If she actually gets the top job, and you have time, please send a review to WUWT via submit a story.
Eric, Flattering thought. Will watch and may take you up – if I have time. Worthwhile anyone reading the book just because it is so nebulous and imprecise. The energy/electricity confusion is common enough but not from our “climate change” leaders…
I think she’s great.
At least the Costa Rican Marxisr has been honest about all the GangGreen nonsense. “Let’s Destroy Capitalism”.
However, if I might be forgiven for using the rough vernacular, despite this brief honesty, she should really be sh@gged with a ragman’s trumpet.
That’s totally uncalled for.
Poor trumpet!😮
LOL. Rarely LOL.Blowing her own trumpet might be fun for her, but physically challenging…. Forgive me, but what is a ragman and why would their trumpet be different from another. Is this an allusion to Louis Armstrong’s handkerchief? Do tell.
That is not a nice thing to say . .
“For 50 years, governments have failed to act on climate change. No more excuses”
Yeah, but at that time, the science said “Ice Age Cometh”. We would have done the wrong thing!!
A hog with her snout in the trough.
Figueres does fit the insult of watermelon.
Agreed, Eric: Regular citizens of the world need her for a shining example of socialist thinking and its control of the Catastrophic Climate Change Narrative.
Absolutely – keep the core mission front and central, so nobody forgets what is really happening.
As long as WUWT adopts its lukewarmist stance it will always be a poor debater in the enormously overwhelming powerful anthropogenic global warming movement that controls every aspect of the said debate.
Why does WUWT persist in the ill-founded belief that anthropogenic CO2 has any effect whatsoever on the surface warming of the planet? It doesn’t.
WUWT believes in the flawed belief that back radiation from ghgs in the atmosphere causes surface warming – it doesn’t.
WUWT panders to the crazy, ill-founded beliefs of its star boy, Willis. When Willis is confronted with producing evidence of the GHE he resorts to insults rather than providing evidence. I know from personal experience. Willis’ psychology degree trumps my applied maths and physics degree.
WUWT believes the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) is a real thing – it’s not.
When will WUWT come out of that lukewarmist closet?
When will WUWT say categorically that CO2 is plant food and maybe cools the atmosphere a little by releasing energy to space?
Maybe WUWT is happy and warm where it is. Who knows?
A degree doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all, which in your case is obvious times 2.
So Rich, you have a degree in psychology too?
Not a good place, eh?
There’s a range of different opinions on WUWT. Monckton’s irreducibly simple model sets a top bound of 1.3C per doubling from memory. I tend towards the view any CO2 forcing is mostly countered by a slight increase in rainfall, which Willis has also suggested. If you have evidence to back your view why not write it up and submit a story?
Maybe, perhaps, you should start by correcting the terminology;
from “CO2 forcing” to ‘CO2 potential’ first.
‘forcing’ by the default of the concept, in terminology, implies and interjects ‘acceleration’, especially and specifically while variability considered.
No ‘acceleration’ no variability of ‘forcing’.
Therefor, the only consideration for some CO2 forcing conundrum, can stand only for
the anthrogenic CO2 emissions, which, in whatever way addressed has
a 0.0 radiative forcing or a 0.0 radiative potential, within the premise of climate.
cheers
When I asked Monckton to supply evidence for whether CO2 does anything he cited Tyndall 1861.
Really????
Willis just goes apesh1t when I ask for evidence of the warming effects of back radiation.
I am very disappointed in you Eric that you would ask me to to provide evidence to dispute a suggestion by Willis. Surely the onus lies with Willis to provide evidence not for me to prove a negative?
With lukewarmism you leave yourself open to being told that you don’t understand the catastrophe that is coming down the line.
Is that what you want Eric?
Just tell them they are talking B0ll0cks!
The question I wish I had an answer to is “How does a person of so little apparent talent obtain such a plum
assignmentsinecure?Got it on her looks?
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.” –
Christiana Figueres, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary
That part wasn’t supposed to be said out loud.
That’s why Eric is rooting for her appointment. She tends to say the quiet part out loud.
She is a witch! That is what I think of that woman.
https://youtu.be/zrzMhU_4m-g
Economic Systems: The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man’s stewardship of the environment. But we know that’s not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this.
At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”
The only economic model in the last 150 years that has ever worked at all is capitalism. The evidence is prima facie: From a feudal order that lasted a thousand years, produced zero growth and kept workdays long and lifespans short, the countries that have embraced free-market capitalism have enjoyed a system in which output has increased 70-fold, work days have been halved and lifespans doubled.
Figueres is perhaps the perfect person for the job of transforming “the economic development model” because she’s really never seen it work. “If you look at Ms. Figueres’ Wikipedia page,” notes Cato economist Dan Mitchell: Making the world look at their right hand while they choke developed economies with their left.
Investors Business Daily
If renewable are much cheaper than Fossil fuel, why do the renewable sector require subsidies ?
Because they apply creative accounting, ignore the removal and replacement expenses for original plus two to three replacements to obtain equivalent to a power station working life, ignore “firming” essential back up equipment costs, etc.
And rarely is the real Capacity Factor quoted, often just “Capacity” and usually that is actually Nameplate Capacity which is deceptive.
More to the point, why do electric rates “skyrocket” everywhere they add significant wind and solar to the grid, if it’s supposedly “cheaper?”
In Australia coal fired power stations designed to generate baseload electricity and peak demand have been forced to give way to wind and solar when those so called renewable energy installations can deliver. The result is an adverse impact on power station efficiency of generating capacity and loss of operating profitability,
The electricity grid supply pricing is forced up by the lack of competition including the specifically subsidised by taxpayer’s for profit wind and solar that supply on and off up to around one quarter of the electricity.
Where I live in Central England UK, the weather for the coming days through to the summer solstice when the days once again begin to draw in, is for max temperatures below 20 deg. C.
There is no hint of any climate temperature change making things warmer, here.
What the constant push for green energy so favoured by the Climate Change alarmists has done, is make the cost of living unacceptably high for many people.
It is also making the transition from poverty to sustainable self sufficiency in the third world nations beyond their control. The UN and its agents have worked tirelessly to maintain the impoverished nations, remain impoverished. They do this, by denying them the freedoms to develop previously enjoyed by fossil fuel based western economies.
If this is some planned scheme to ensure the third world becomes more aligned with the rich nations that provide humanitarian aid and support, it is clearly working.
By impoverishing the Western economies and thus, harmonising the advancement of poverty across the world, then the plan has seen spectacular results over the past couple of years.
Christiana Figueres, good or bad, is simply the ongoing face of this disgraceful desire to advance poverty so favoured by the UN and its agents. The Charities delivering that policy to the world, need to ask themselves some very fundamental questions. What is their role in this ongoing destruction of basic rights to improvement opportunities desperately needed by the poor?
Christiana Figureres, last time around, held a press conference to tell the gathered ‘journalists’ that the object of all the Davos fuss and thunder was to do away with Capitalism. Scratched her off my list of people to possibly listen to.
Their role is to ensure the UN gets their “cut” of every bit of “assistance” given to poor countries from rich (but under the UN’s plans, soon to also be poor) countries.
The “global governance” scheme underlying all the “climate” bullshit has always been about taking over the world without firing a shot, by establishing iron-clad control over ENERGY USE, through which those assuming said control of energy can control EVERYTHING.
And the UN, of course, believes it should sit at the top of this energy control Ponzi scheme.
Perfect, Figueres has already previously admitted that the climate agenda has nothing to do with the climate,it’s about redistribution of wealth.