Category: COP17

Durban decay

COP17 is over, at last.

All that’s left is the clean-up after the tw0-week long beach party. Well, that and for participants to try and spin the inconvenient truth that the world’s governments don’t have their hearts in dealing with a pretend problem like global warming when a very real economic crisis is looming.

Greenpeace is mighty unhappy about results in Durban:

Despite the rallying calls that filled the hallways of the conference center yesterday, polluters have won this round of talks with politicians making little progress on a global deal to tackle climate change. Two years ago in Copenhagen, politicians promised a US $100 billion fund would be set up to help the poorest countries adapt to and mitigate climate change. They came to Durban two years later only planning to design a way to collect and distribute the money. It turns out they could not even manage to do that.

While the details of the talks may be complex the truth is simple. We are nowhere near where we need to be to avert catastrophic climate change.

Essentially the ‘Durban Platform‘ kicked the can down to road, with nothing much planned before 2020. Which makes pre-COP17 declarations about this being the world’s last chance to save Gaia pretty much redundant. You can see a list of last chances from prior climate conferences here. If the list looks familiar, most of the links are the very same I used in this post in November. Probably just coincidence, but if not, you’re welcome.

Sophiaalbertina followed the collapsing COP17 comedy on Twitter:

Australia is pretending the non-deal is really a great deal and proves they were right to pass a carbon tax after all. Simon’s not buying that for a dollar. The Guardian has reactions from politicians and activists, and few of the latter group are happy about the outcome of the COP17 cop-out:

“Let me be clear: this was not enough. Not even close. This was meeting expectations lowered beyond all expectations. Rescuing defeat from the jaws of worse defeat. In the long-run, Durban will be nothing but a footnote in a narrative of missed opportunities and willful ignorance.”

Oliver Hughes, student activist at COP17

When a climate conference ends with unhappy hippies, you can rest easy that the world is still a relatively sane place.

Next year, COP18 heads to the Mid-East, where the delegates who bother to show up can play Qatar hero, or something.


Blame Canada

The COP17 hippie shindig is in full flow in Durban, and my home and native land is none too popular amongst hippie hoi polloi.

First, Canada announced it shared American concern about the UN’s proposed $100-billion ‘Climate Fund’:

Heading into the United Nations climate conference in Durban this week, the United States has made it clear it will not support the current proposals for the climate fund over concerns about how the money would be raised, lack of verification of how it is spent, and an unwillingness of major emerging countries to commit to legally binding emissions reduction.

Separating global warmists from other people’s money is always unpopular, after all, the UN alone has 23 separate agencies (PDF) to feed in Durban:

African leaders condemned the frozen North for daring to promote its natural resources instead of promoting fear of a harmless trace gas essential to life on Earth, and activist group Environmental Defence created an ad to name and shame Canada ahead of the Durban jawfest.( The link is to a video, but be warned, it’s a minute and a half of your life you’ll never get back.)

Then news was leaked that Canada not only will not sign Kyoto II, but that it intends to be the first ratifying nation of the original Kyoto Protocol to quit. Jennifer Marohasy notes this may allow Canada to avoid penalties for not meeting its targets:

Under the agreement Canada agreed to reduce greenhouse emissions to 6 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. Canada cannot meet this commitment with emissions having continued to rise. By officially withdrawing from Kyoto Canada can apparently avoid paying the associated penalty for failing in its quest.

Canadian Green Party leader Elizabeth May was aghast:

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May called the move “a very damaging act of sabotage.” “It will reverberate around the world,” May told CTV. “Canada will be a pariah globally if it goes through with this.”

Ms. May forgets that thanks to her own activism and that of Greenpeace, the WWF, the NRDC and Sierra Club, Canada is already a ‘pariah’ in the eyes of much of the world. So politically, Canada had nothing to lose by bailing on Kyoto.

What drives the Blame Canada movement is fear and loathing. Greenpeace, the WWF et al are too afraid to protest and pull their populist stunts in places like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Iran or China, because they know they’ll be jailed, or worse. So they bury their heads in the tar sand and pretend that protesting oil from a developed nation that respects women’s rights, fair pay and environmental stewardship doesn’t in turn promote the import of oil from stone-age theocracies who don’t let their chicks drive and enjoy a recreational stoning from time to time.

Greens loath the tar sands, and the fact there is enough oil and natural gas under Canadian soil to keep the world in comfort and cars for decades to come drives them crazy. They’re energy deniers, and they’re picking on Canada because they’re too cowardly to tackle the real problem nations.

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About the only thing Canada is guilty of is exporting lovely ladies to Hollywood, we’ll even plead guilty to that charge.

Elisha Cuthbert says: "click, eh"

COP17: Mess of the Durban shills*

The COP17 climate talks opened in Durban today, to the Gore Effect and bad weather, smelly Occupy Durban hippies and the news that Canada, the bad-boy of western Climate nations is about to quit Kyoto.Take that, Gaia.

As if this inauspicious start wasn’t bad enough, early reports from Hades were that is was getting chilly down there as a UN prediction came too close to being right about something.

World leaders would be forgiven for wondering what happened to the glitz and glamor from Hopenchangen in Copenhagen just two short years ago. Or they would, if any had bothered to show up.

Some comforting and familiar sights are in Durban for delegates to view with nostalgia. Various small islands are still looking for a handout and warn that they may not have much longer to exist unless endless amounts of other people’s money is handed over. This is a tough sell in a year when the residents of a once prosperous but currently impoverished island are furious about handing £1 billion over to combat the as yet unseen, but assuredly devastating effects of a harmless trace gas essential to life on Earth.

But, it’s not all bad news. Weepy Bill McKibben isn’t in Durban, but there are a couple of primo Google juice hotties on hand. Or, as you may know her, Angelina Jolie. Which gives us the opportunity for a little Rule 5** fun early in the week.

*click*

*With apologies to Thomas Hardy

**It took far longer than 12 months for The Daily Bayonet to reach 1 million hits, but hotties make the wait more fun.

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