David Wojick, Ph.D.
Reading the breathless Green coverage of the soon-to-be COP 28, the UN conference on climate change (CFACT is on the way!), I noticed a fundamental fallacy occurring endlessly. The analysts seem to assume that decision-making is democratic, such that what you need to pass a rule is a majority vote along the lines of Congress or Parliament.
The reality is extremely different. Every member Country has veto power. This dramatically changes what is possible. The analysts consistently miss this, especially by talking about possibilities that are, in fact, impossible.
A good example is a recent Washington Post article discussing the possibility that COP 28 will adopt a decision calling for the phasing out of not just coal but all fossil fuel use. They correctly report that some countries are all for this while others are strongly against it.
The presently crazy Biden U.S. is for it despite being the world’s biggest per capita user of fossil fuels. Russia is sanely against it as fossil fuel exports are their primary revenue source.
It is then consistently reported as a maybe yes, maybe no situation, like Congress debating a controversial Bill. The obvious reality is that absent a miracle, this measure has no chance whatsoever. It is, as the saying goes, dead on arrival.
An even better example is the ridiculous proposal from France and, again the U.S. that the member countries all agree to, somehow, stop the private financing of coal-fired power plants. Given that China and a number of big developing countries are betting their electrical future on coal this is clearly nothing more than political posturing. Even a miracle could not save this nonsense. But it is dutifully reported and analyzed as a real possibility. At least it is here in America and likely in France, too.
Wishful COP 28 thinking is not news nor analysis, but it fills the pages. The reality is that none of these big-ticket issues that we read so much about have the slightest chance of happening.
The one big issue where something might actually happen is loss and damage. But it will be small, hyped as huge.
Recall that at COP 27, there was reported to be a great advance, creating a Loss and Damage Fund. This is where the developed countries will pay the developing ones something toward their supposedly climate-caused losses and damages: crop losses and food damages, for example.
In reality, all that was created is a name, an idea if you like. A Committee was established to give, or at least propose, form and substance to this nebulous idea. That has not happened because the issues are overwhelming. After all, every county gets bad weather. The U.S. has said it will donate millions of dollars while developing countries are talking trillions.
However, this loss and damage concept is so vague that there is room for moving forward without being so specific or dangerous, that we start getting vetos.
For example, they might agree on where this little fund will be established. This is presently controversial but probably not a deal breaker because the developing countries want to see money moving.
Or they might all agree that the first, small funds go to the Least Developed Countries or maybe to the poorest Small Island States. This is a feel-good first step that makes the fund real. It carefully avoids the issue of who gets how much of them trillions.
This is how COP diplomacy works. Find little steps that everyone is willing to allow while pushing the big issues down the road. Then, report these small steps as big breakthroughs. Of course, there is truly serious green stuff going on, but that is at the national level. COPs are just a carnival.
So, as you watch yet another COP play out, keep in mind that the grand schemes endlessly reported and analyzed at great length are going nowhere fast. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Or as they say in Texas, all hat, no cattle.
Be amused, not angry.
Stay tuned to CFACT for jovial coverage of the COP 28 circus.
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Dr. David Wojick is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT.
Good report by Dr. David, bringing the dysfunction of the COP’s into view. Given the need for unanimous votes I bet only a Hookers Travel Assistance bill could pass. Party!
Be amused, not angry?????
I’m angry.
Don’t blow a gasket – it isn’t worth it.
Amused contempt is the proper attitude. They cannot stand mockery.
Alinsky taught us ridicule is our most powerful weapon.
At the sheer waste of money and the mindless display of opulent wealth, yes – that is annoying giving they are also trying to shove their, apparent, virtue down our throats. But aside from that this is a nothing, a carnival of absurdity that achieves absolutely zero amount of consequence. It’s a committee for the jobsworth muppets that are enthralled by the process and all the negotiations but would be appalled to find they’d actually done something. It’ll lose it’s appeal before they get to triple digits.
“This is how COP diplomacy works.” and the EU slots right in.
https://climate.ec.europa.eu/international-action-climate-change/cop28-2023-11-30_en
I would imagine it will be somewhat tricky this time round for the EU now that Frans Timmermans has been handed his fundament. All those anti-agricultural ideas got the democratic heave-ho.
But isn’t this COP supposedly about cutting out meat?
“This year’s international climate change conference, COP28, will be the first such conference to have a major focus on food, which the UAE as COP28 president sees as important aspect of its agenda. This is long overdue:”
https://www.chathamhouse.org/2023/11/cop28-governments-must-agree-how-transform-food-systems
Lately, the EU has been mimicking a famous geriatric man who seldom appears to know where he is, let alone why he is there. Having lost bigtime in Holland…
“The United Kingdom should rejoin the European Union to “fix” Brexit, Ursula von der Leyen has said, after Labour pledged to forge closer ties with the bloc if elected.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/11/29/uk-rejoin-eu-fix-brexit-ursula-von-der-leyen/
von der Leyen should be speaking to actual British voters – the people who decided to leave the EU. But that isn’t how EU diplomacy works. It operates in erstwhile smoke-filled rooms with much ear-stroking and arm-twisting. If you recall how schools indoctrinate etc…
“von der Leyen admitted that European leaders had “goofed up” over the departure of Britain from the bloc and suggested the younger generation could “fix” it.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/29/sunak-rejects-von-der-leyens-comments-that-uk-could-rejoin-eu
The EU: every bit as democratic as the UAE
The reality is possibly that behind the scenes, rich and powerful men are seeing the collapse of the fossil energy fuelled post WWII consumer boom, with expanding wealth and populations, and latterly debt.
Their fear is that the population increases needed to solve the debt crisis will only come from third world immigration, and the only way to ensure stability in the face of public discontent at being overwhelmed by other cultures and a falling standard of living is a Draconian dismantling of democracy.
Historically democracy is the way to stabilise a nation where large number of people – the middle classes – have utility, value and hence wealth.
Technology has stripped the artisans and the merchant classes of their livelihood, following the demise of the labouring classes in the post war period.
Increasingly the over educated middle classes are absorbed into ‘The Party’ – that huge mass of ‘useful idiots’ who comprise the public sector and owe their livelihoods to The Party.
There is little difference between ‘cradle to the grave’ socialism and the more or less benevolent slavery of the 19th century, African American were looked after, so long as they were prepared to grade their freedom for it.
This is probably the way the future will go, until the whole system collapses back into the barbarism that will accompany loss of access to cheap energy.
Their belief that a debt crisis can be solved through immigrants placed on public assistance is fundamentally wrong but appears to be exactly what they support.
I wonder who decides what yachts their compatriots can purchase.
Is there a ‘How dare you!’ crowdsourcing fund to get Greta there?
She’s busy calling for a solution – from the river to the sea…
“Thunberg has made waves by switching her focus from saving the planet to saving Gaza. Like every other Gen Zer with a TikTok and an insatiable urge to signal his / her / zir virtue to the world, she’s become an overnight authority on Israel-Palestine. She posed with a placard saying ‘Stand with Gaza’. She turned Fridays for Future – where pious rich kids bunk off school to raise awareness about climate change – into ‘Justice for Palestine’ stunts. And on Sunday, she made a climate protest in Amsterdam pretty much all about Palestine.
…
Greta’s cack-handed embrace of the Palestine issue is not surprising, but it is shocking. It’s not surprising because she is the patron saint of fashionable causes, and there is no cause more fashionable among the West’s time-rich TikToking upper-class brats right now than Israel-bashing. Every woke cause is leaping on the anti-Israel bandwagon. Want to stay relevant? Want to enjoy clicks and clout online? Then you’d better say ‘F[n]uck Israel’.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/14/greta-thunberg-and-gen-zs-irrational-hatred-for-israel/
Gemma Tognini in The Australian Nov4 2023-
A family of four. Two young children, a boy and a girl, six and eight years old. They sat at their breakfast table and were made to watch as their father had his eyes gouged out in front of them. Then someone cut off their mother’s breast. The same savages turned then to the little girl, the eight-year-old, and cut off her foot before turning to her little brother. Just six years old. They sliced the fingers from his hand. Only then was this family killed. After their execution, the Hamas terrorists sat down and helped themselves to a meal.
I’m willing to bet some of you couldn’t finish reading those words. Maybe you skimmed over them; reading them was too much.
Not too much for the woke Gretaheads it seems.
7th century values….
see above
below
Please avoid non-AGW issues and politics here. Not all of us support Zionist genocide objectives.
Yep, Israel is so “genocidal” that “palestinian” populations of Gaza and the West bank has dropped from less than 1 million in 1950 to over 5 million today.
Those damn Jews are killing the Muslims every day for years and years and always by sticking babies in ovens to cook to death.
You showed your @ss. This site is known for the people here who actually look at facts. How did you think your rac!st BS would survive here? Is it OK for all the califate countries to clear out nonbelievers? To a b!got like you, it is!
25% of Israel is Arab and most of those Muslim. They have a vote. Name one Muslim dominated country that can say that of Christians or Jews are any other religion. There are none.
Fun fact. Muslims for centuries “imported” Africans as slaves to serve them. The slaves were always “neutered” so that they would not dilute the blood of the tribes. That is why after MILLIONS of slaves were imported and used, there is no mixing of genes apparent in the Arab or Persian cultures.
Grow up.
The African male slaves were neutered, the African female’s were not – when they fell pregnant they were either killed or the baby was killed at birth. That is why, despite the Muslim world transporting as many (or more) African slaves than the European countries combined, there are no descendants of the African slaves in the Muslim countries.
Yes it is.
Iran.
See this Wikipedia page as a starting point :
Standard disclaimer : Citing Wikipedia as a “fact checking” source is bad for your reputation. Always double-check it for yourself elsewhere to be sure (/ less unsure).
It was a 2 part question, also to include a legitimate percentage of non-Muslim voting populace. Sorry if I did not make that clear.
In Israel the non Jewish voters have their own parties, not just some token reserved seats. Without that constitutional requirement, there would be NO non Muslim representatives in Iran’s Parliament. Why? Due to real genocide. Somehow the religious makeup of Iran went from 98.4% Muslim in 1956 to 99.4% in 2011. (according to wiki)
The Gaza Strip is 98.7% Arab and 99% Muslim. Genocide much? Such welcoming and friendly people, I can understand why the US college educated support them so strongly.
BTW: Wiki has no “Gaza Strip” search, only includes such information under “The State of Palestine”.
Yep, wiki is a middle of the road kind of information source. Just read about the promotion of climate denial at WUWT.
And you are…?
Gregory Woods fully supports Hamas, just like Greta and so many other dilettantes who wouldn’t survive ten minutes in their desired caliphate.
Of course the NBC iterates the lines taken above with to mention of the inability to affect the Keeling Cutve or the relentless fact that the increase in renewable capacity is always less than the increase in energy consumption .
Here is a fine example of veto power:
“Two years ago, we already knew that we’d be in the United Arab Emirates for Cop28. Similarly, we already know that Cop30 will be in Belém in Brazil in two years time. But we don’t know where we’ll be this time next year. It’s up to the UN’s Eastern Europe group to decide. Various EU states have offered but Russia has vetoed them because of EU support for Ukraine. Russia supports Azerbaijan’s candidacy but Armenia, which is at war with Azerbaijan, opposes that and wants to host itself – which Azerbaijan opposes right back.”
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2023/11/29/seven-things-to-watch-out-for-in-world-leader-speeches-at-cop28/?utm_source=Climate+Weekly&utm_campaign=5a0d8f330c-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_07_28_05_27_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-6ff1db6665-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D
Funny if COP 29 never happens.
And they start off with the DOA phasing out of fossil fuels.
If they can’t agree on a country then it’s got to be Antarctica, hasn’t it? Let’s see them deal with that amount of ‘Klimutt Krazy’ at their luxury gabfest. I bet we’d see a record low number of attendees and, who knows, the few that do turn up might actually agree on something!
I’d worry if it were Antarctica. So much hot air descending on the continent so quickly that it could accomplish what CO2 couldn’t possibly begin to accomplish – the melting of all that ice.
COP28 Circus?
A circus is funny.
This anything but.
But a circus has clowns, and sometimes clowns are scary.
COP28 has 70,000 clowns
69,900-odd clowns; they still haven’t got rid of the hydrocarbon representatives (not to mention their UAE hosts who are not likely to be in with the activist crowd, unless they’re young, female and more attractive than a goat).
The serious stuff is at the national level. COPS are funny when you compare the rhetoric to the reality, at least to me.
Green Party German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock was kind enough to explain the whole thing to us.
The SCMP has a clever web page that shows the international dimensions of the AGW catastrophe.
South China Morning Post, really? Now some of your comments here are easier to understand.
LOLOLOL!
It’s a well done web page, not necessarily a true one, Mr. Media Authority LOL LOL LOL. And what on-line media source do you recommend for factual information? The NYT, WaPo, LA Times, Chicago Sun-Times? Maybe the CBC or BBC? Maybe it’s best not to indulge in the work of any media source at all and not defile your miniature mind. LOL LOL LOL
Nobody in their right mind partakes of any media source for information, let alone knowledge. The only reason to read a paper or visit an on-line outlet is to see what is being talked about, what the concerns may be, who’s ox is being gored. Ignoring them in their entirety means that you think that you already possess all the correct information and knowledge intuitively. LOL LOL LOL
Meanwhile: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-11-28/nuclear-energy-new-sociopath-approved-solution-climate-change
It’s not clear who they’re describing as ‘Sociopath’s’ apart from Kerry who, let’s face it, would likely get the gun the wrong way round!
Why is everyone missing the point? Nuclear is now ok.
Nuclear has always been ok. However there are still many activists who are dead set against nuclear, Greenpiss included, who will oppose it. Amongst green activists it does seem to be a generational thing – the old guard are still on the anti-nuclear bandwagon while the young turks are embracing the idea as the only viable ‘solution’ to climate catastrophe. It should be interesting to watch the (un)civil war develop!
POX 28 must pledge to help the Tuvaluans….I am both angry and amused.
At least they’re not as bad as the Maldives government. Back in 2009 the President and his cabinet held a meeting, in full scuba gear, underwater in a pathetic and transparent stunt to ‘raise awareness of sea level rise that will flood the Maldives’. Like Tuvalu there is no danger that the popular tourist destination of the Maldives is going to sink underwater, like Tuvalu the islands are mostly growing and, like Tuvalu, they’ve been busy building a new airport and tourist infrastructure.
Roll up to the Reckless Renewables Rally-
Chris Kenny speaks to protesters at ‘Reckless Renewables’ rally (msn.com)
The adults are beginning to stir.
Very good piece. We need a lot more like it and more people like those at the rally who have their heads screwed on straight. Not surprised that it was mostly older Australians at the rally.
Nor is it surprising that Sky News was the only media outlet in Australia which apparently covered the rally. Orwellian Big Brother censorship.
They don’t look like farmers to me but the MSM have an extremely limited vocabulary and, if you’re not an urban, woke activist, they do struggle to find the right words.
“….calling for the phasing out of not just coal but all fossil fuel use….”
Hahahaha…they missed school the day the teacher talked about the invention of fire….
Yes our civilization is still based on fire. There is a saying that every social movement ultimately expires from an excess of its own principles. Fighting fire is just such a case.
Coal is just biomass trees that Mother Nature has heated and compressed for easy storage.
Hmmm, I wonder where those, ‘third world’ countries would be right now, without the industrial revolution? Certainly not flying to a COP conference.
The UN has outlived its purpose. An example of what a democracy becomes when the majority of voters would rather have a dictatorship.
There is one requirement for civilization. Just one, but an important one. Without it, civilization invariably declines, and dictators thrive.
That requirement: an understanding that government exists only to preserve liberty and justice. With those tenets, people thrive and there’s growth and an increased standard of living.
Unfortunately, growth leads to conflict, which is what we have now in the world.
The UN’s purpose should be to reduce conflict, but its structure leads to the conclusion that the only way to reduce conflict is to eliminate growth. China’s leadership can provide that, therefore China has become the leader of the non-free world and the UN.
It’s time to leave the UN. Now, before the under-30s with their Stalin fascination have too much power.
There’s nothing to worry about regarding COP 28 because it’ll be like all the earlier ones: full of dire warnings about a potentially doomed planet, demands for an international fund to compensate the developing world for damages done by excessive fossil fuel use in the wealthy countries, and pledges to phase out fossil fuels almost overnight. None of this will happen, of course, just as it didn’t after all the previous conferences. In fact, the opposite occurred since fossil fuels are still responsible for over 80% the planet’s primary energy generation and global carbon emissions continue rising. So who’s listening and what actions are being taken? No one and nothing.
Very nice. The first thing to understand is that we shouldn’t send money to any nation. If a nation suffers a disaster we should be the first to offer help by way of rescue, clean up, recovery, rebuilding and humanitarian efforts. We should never ship pallets of money to them and hope for the best, that is stupid.
I would only allow a “loss and damage tribunal” if there were an actual board with actual scientists including skeptics picked by us.
Countries can come cap in hand with their claims and then have to prove them
Ireland just pledged €25M to the above mentioned, Loss and damage fund.