Representative Dana Rohrabacher lays out the truth on the House floor. Starting in 1992 with George H.W. Bush we have been on a path to a one world government. All of the climate treaties including in Copenhagen are just disguises for this, the ultimate plan, a Global Government. This will not be the Utopian world alliance some of you are hoping for. No, this will be cuts, loss of jobs, a global common money, essentially, great for the elite and bad for you. This is essentially what Climategate is all about. If you follow the money you will find out what this is all about.Representative Dana Rohrabacher lays out the truth on the House floor. Starting in... more
This is just plain crazy.
How can they let this happen?
Excerpt:
"Under proposals due to be ratified at the summit, countries which cut down rainforests and convert them to plantations of trees such as oil palms would still be able to classify the result as forest and could receive millions of dollars meant for preserving them. An earlier version of the text ruled out such a conversion but has been deleted, and the EU delegation – headed by Britain – has blocked its reinsertion.
Environmentalists say plantations are in no way a substitute for the lost natural forest in terms of wildlife, water production or, crucially, as a store of the carbon dioxide which is emitted into the atmosphere when forests are destroyed and intensifies climate change."
With the clock running out and deep differences unresolved, it now appears there is little chance that the climate change negotiations in Copenhagen in December will produce a comprehensive and binding new treaty on global warming.
The United States and a number of other major emitting countries have concluded that it is more useful to take incremental but important steps toward a global agreement rather than to try to jam through a treaty that is either too weak to address the problem or too onerous to be ratified and enforced. Instead, representatives at the Copenhagen meeting are likely to announce a number of interim steps and agree to keep talking next year.
“There isn’t sufficient time to get the whole thing done,” Yvo De Boer, the Dutch diplomat who heads of the United Nations climate secretariat and serves as the de facto overseer of the negotiations, said late last week. “But I hope it will go well beyond simply a declaration of principles. The form I would like it to take is the groundwork for a ratifiable agreement next year.”
Negotiators have accepted as all but inevitable that representatives of the 192 nations in the talks will not resolve the outstanding issues in the brief time remaining before the Copenhagen conference opens in mid-December. The gulf between rich and poor nations, and even among the wealthiest nations, is just too wide.
Yet expectations remain high for a meeting that carries important weight not just for the environment but for a broad range of international issues, including trade, security, economic development, energy production, technology sharing and the very survival of some vulnerable island nations.
So officials are now narrowing expectations and defining the areas where there is agreement, such as the need to halt and then reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions, although how and by whom remains the subject of intense dispute. Negotiators are also discussing what form any declaration that emerges from Copenhagen might take and how to ensure that any promises made there are kept.
Among the chief barriers to a comprehensive deal in Copenhagen is Congress’s inability to enact climate and energy legislation that sets binding targets on greenhouse gases in the United States. Without such a commitment, other nations are loath to make their own pledges.With the clock running out and deep differences unresolved, it now appears there is... more
World climate negotiators will gather in Bonn next month to edit an "indigestible" set of proposals into a manageable document for international consideration, the head of a key U.N. panel said on Tuesday.
The August meeting is the first step in a timeline aimed at reaching a new worldwide agreement to combat climate change in Copenhagen in December, said Michael Zammit Cutajar, chairman of a working group of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate change.
Not previously planned or publicized, the Bonn meeting precedes already scheduled gatherings in Bangkok and Barcelona, in addition to forums in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New York City to discussing the problem of climate change.
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My my, there sure is a lot of "discussion" going on. And how much carbon will be expended traveling to all of these cities and forums while doing nothing?World climate negotiators will gather in Bonn next month to edit an... more
As climate change talks in Bonn, Germany, began wrapping up yesterday without any signs of real progress, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Climate Change Secretariat, let the truth slip out to reporters: It will be "physically impossible" to have a detailed global warming deal by the December Copenhagen summit, he said.
Today, on the final day of the two-week negotiations, de Boer changed his tune, claiming he is now confident of reaching an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen.
But let's be real -- how will that happen?
Just look at the last two weeks. Negotiations began on June 1, with 53 pages of draft negotiating text on the table for the first time. That document brought new optimism. But over the course of the summit, delegates from 192 nations piled on 200 pages of particulars, injecting more complexity into what is already a complex process.
The talks reinforced the gridlock between rich and poor nations, offered little in the way of political ambition and political will from the world's major polluters and ended without agreement.
The notable high- and lowlights follow:
Industrialized nations once again failed to take strong leadership on short-term reduction targets for CO2.
Hopes were high that Japan would help raise the level of ambition for the world with its long-awaited announcement of a domestic target. But those dreams were dashed on June 10, when the nation declared an emissions reduction goal of just 8 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. That's two percent deeper than the cuts the nation is currently responsible for under the Kyoto protocol.
WWF described the target as "appalling" and a "trust killer." Point Carbon, an Oslo-based research and consulting company called it "the weakest target any country has pledged so far." China's climate ambassador Yu Qingtai said: "I do not believe it is a number that is close to what Japan needs to do, should do."
But Japan was not without its supporters. Jonathan Pershing, the U.S. deputy climate envoy, told Spiegel Online that "one should not underestimate Japan's efforts." And here's why:
Japan's target only includes reductions in domestic industrial emissions. It does not yet account for additional reductions from domestic forestry and agriculture, as well as international "offsets" from financing projects in developing nations.
The EU has pledged a 20 percent reduction, which could increase to 30 percent if other rich nations sign on. President Obama has said he wants to return US emissions to 1990 levels. The U.S. Congress is now debating the ACES climate bill, which could lead to a 4 percent cut below the 1990 baseline. Australia has declared a 5 percent cut below 1990 levels. That could go as high as 25 percent if a meaningful climate treaty is achieved. Russia has remained silent.
In total, the proposals from representatives of more than 30 of the world's richest nations amount to a reduction in the range of 17 percent to 26 percent of 1990 levels, de Boer has said. WWF claims that figure is actually closer to 10 percent.
Either way:
"This is not enough to address climate change," said de Boer.
So what is enough? Developing nations must cut emissions 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels to prevent catastrophic climate change. So says the climate science.
Prior to the Bonn talks, a group of Nobel Prize Laureates made a strong case for that level of action. This week, another group of top scientists delivered a similar plea. One of the signatories, Dr. Myles Allen, a physicist at the University of Oxford, went even further:
"In addition to setting targets for emissions in 2020 and 2050, we feel the UNFCCC process should acknowledge that avoiding dangerous climate change will require emissions of the longest-lived greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide eventually to cease altogether."
end of excerptAs climate change talks in Bonn, Germany, began wrapping up yesterday without any... more
Bonn, June 9 (IANS) Frustrated by the way governments are dragging their feet on combating climate change, leaders of green NGOs from around the world have come together to present the climate treaty they want to see inked at a global summit scheduled to be held in Denmark in December.
The Copenhagen Climate Treaty, as they call it, will be presented to bureaucrats from over 180 countries meeting here (June 1-12) in an attempt to draft the official version of the treaty.
Srinivas Krishnaswamy of Greenpeace India, one of the 47 authors of the NGO document, told IANS: “The treaty does not only tackle dangerous climate change. It will bring sustainable solutions to address the global recession, boost social justice and help eradicate poverty.
“It proposes institutional and political solutions as well as legal structures that governments should adopt to get an agreement all countries could sign up in Copenhagen.”
The authors of the NGO draft treaty have proposed a “global carbon budget that caps the world’s total emissions and breaks down which country can emit how much during the process of transforming the world into a zero carbon economy”.
Excess carbon dioxide emitted due to industrial activity is the main greenhouse gas that is causing climate change, which is already affecting farm output, making droughts, floods and storms more frequent and more damaging and raising the sea level.
India is among the countries worst affected by what UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called “the defining challenge of our age”.
India’s chief climate negotiator Shyam Saran told IANS that the government wants more emphasis on strengthening the existing UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol rather than a new treaty.
Reacting to this, Krishnaswamy said no existing agreement would be replaced but would be strengthened to “become broader and deeper, reflecting the need for industrialised countries to commit to much greater cuts in emissions”.
“The Copenhagen Protocol would be additional, setting targets for the US (which is not part of Kyoto), describing the actions that developing countries should take, and defining the financial and technological support industrialised countries must provide to them. It would also set out how adaptation and forest protection will be funded,” he explained.
Developing countries have been strongly against any attempt to cap their carbon emissions, arguing this would constrain their economic growth to handle a problem caused almost exclusively by industrialised countries over the last more than 200 years.
Krishnaswamy said: “Newly industrialised countries, such as Singapore and Saudi Arabia, should take on binding emission reduction targets. The criteria for designating a country as ‘newly industrialised’ should be agreed in Copenhagen.
end of excerptBonn, June 9 (IANS) Frustrated by the way governments are dragging their feet on... more
From Arctic Inuit to Pacific Islanders, indigenous peoples from 80 countries are meeting at a summit in Anchorage, Alaska (pdf), this week to forge a common position on climate change. They want an official voice alongside national governments in upcoming negotiations to agree a successor to the Kyoto protocol.
The meeting is emphasising indigenous peoples' histories of adapting to change. But beneath it is the fear that they will be trampled by rich countries trying to cut greenhouse emissions by managing indigenous lands.
"Indigenous peoples have contributed least to the global problems of climate change, but will almost certainly bear the greatest brunt of its impact," says Patricia Cochran, chair of the summit and head of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. Arctic peoples are hurting as sea ice changes and permafrost melts. The Yup'ik village of Newtok, Alaska, is now moving to higher ground to escape storm surges unleashed by disappearing sea ice and another 26 villages in Alaska are similarly threatened.
On the margins
A report last year (pdf) by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature found that indigenous peoples are concentrated in the marginal lands likely to suffer most from climate change. Pastoralists such as Africa's Samburu already suffer from drought, and islanders face dispossession by rising seas.
But Sam Johnston of the United Nations University, which is helping to organise the Anchorage meeting, says indigenous peoples are also threatened because they are impoverished and have little political power or entitlement to their lands. Many feel their interests are not served by their national governments.From Arctic Inuit to Pacific Islanders, indigenous peoples from 80 countries are... more
POZNAN, Poland – As talks over a new climate treaty intensified here today, legions of environmental campaigners, corporate lobbyists and reporters tried to read meaning in the flow of delegates between rooms set aside for each country along Hall 7 or clumped in conversation near the coffee bar.
A door opens and shuts. Was that a Chinese delegate heading into Canada’s space?
Is that the Mexican delegation — having just announced it would implement emissions caps – consulting with the European Union?
But the thing that stood out most, perhaps, amid the temporary particleboard corridors, was the bunker-like nature of the office labeled “U.S. delegation.”
Let me make one unscientific observation: Countries that have the most concrete emissions commitments seem to have chosen to create offices with windows, which look out onto the corridor. Belgium, New Zealand, and Germany, for example, have windowed storefronts.
Transparency. Look in and see what we’re doing!POZNAN, Poland – As talks over a new climate treaty intensified here today,... more
And what will come from Poznan? Nothing significant to address climate change as it must be addressed now.... so we will sit for another year waiting for Copenhagen for a bunch of rich people to get on jet planes to pollute the air again to sit at a meeting saying the same thing as this year as people worldwide continue to suffer the effects of climate change as the Arctic ice continues to get smaller. If there truly is a God, it boggles my mind why it would deign humans as the species responsible for the stewardship of this planet. We are FAILURES at it.
From the article:
In the third part of our series on the eve of the Poznan conference, we look at how climate change is already changing ordinary people-s lives from Australia to Brazil.
Joao da Antonio-s eyes are full of tears. If good rains do not come, he says, he will pack his bag, kiss his wife and two children goodbye and join the annual exodus of young men leaving hot, dry rural north-eastBrazil for the biofuel fields in the south.
Da Antonio, 19, can earn about £30 a month for 10 hours gruelling work a day cutting sugar cane to make ethanol, and more than a million small farmers like him migrate south for six months of the year because the land can no longer support them. Tens of thousands a year never return, forced to move permanently to Sao Paulo or another of Brazil-s cities in search of work.
Life here is one of suffering, Da Antonio said. I will do anything to earn some money. None of us want to die, but the lack of water here will kill us.
Around the world, millions of people like Da Antonio are feeling the force of a changing climate. As UN negotiations towards a global climate deal continue in Poznan, Poland, this week, evidence is emerging of weather patterns in turmoil and the poorest nations disproportionately bearing the brunt of warming.
While rich countries at the talks seek to set up global carbon trading, using financial markets to tackle - and profit from - climate change, poor countries want justice. They are seeking environmental justice: money to adapt their economies to climate changes they did not cause, and technology and resources to allow them to escape poverty while preserving their forests and ecosystems.
All I can state in response to this is that if it does not happen we can kiss this planet s sustainability for humans and other species goodbye unless we stand up enmasse. If not, we humans deserve what we get. If we are going to sit and continue to allow governments putting their own selfish priorities ahead of the one crisis that trumps them all and will decide our economic and environmental fate, then we will prove just how stupid we are as a species.
However, I and many others will not go down without a fight. Should no treaty come to pass in December 2009 and the next administration renege on anything promised, prepare for the demonstrations that will follow. That is of course, unless Obama signs the Homegrown Terrorist Act and we are all considered terrorists for trying to protect our Earth to save ourselves.
After eight years of the Bush regime s total destruction of this planet I am not about to watch four more years of promises not come to fruition because other excuses will take precedence as a reason to not do the right thing. That is simply unacceptable.All I can state in response to this is that if it does not happen we can kiss this... more
The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through the current banking crisis, according to an EU-commissioned study.
It puts the annual cost of forest loss at between $2 trillion and $5 trillion.
The figure comes from adding the value of the various services that forests perform, such as providing clean water and absorbing carbon dioxide.
The study, headed by a Deutsche Bank economist, parallels the Stern Review into the economics of climate change.
It has been discussed during many sessions here at the World Conservation Congress.
Some conservationists see it as a new way of persuading policymakers to fund nature protection rather than allowing the decline in ecosystems and species, highlighted in the release on Monday of the Red List of Threatened Species, to continue.
Capital losses
Speaking to BBC News on the fringes of the congress, study leader Pavan Sukhdev emphasised that the cost of natural decline dwarfs losses on the financial markets.
"It's not only greater but it's also continuous, it's been happening every year, year after year," he told BBC News.
"So whereas Wall Street by various calculations has to date lost, within the financial sector, $1-$1.5 trillion, the reality is that at today's rate we are losing natural capital at least between $2-$5 trillion every year."
The review that Mr Sukhdev leads, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), was initiated by Germany under its recent EU presidency, with the European Commission providing funding.
The first phase concluded in May when the team released its finding that forest decline could be costing about 7% of global GDP. The second phase will expand the scope to other natural systems.
Stern message
Key to understanding his conclusions is that as forests decline, nature stops providing services which it used to provide essentially for free.
So the human economy either has to provide them instead, perhaps through building reservoirs, building facilities to sequester carbon dioxide, or farming foods that were once naturally available.
Or we have to do without them; either way, there is a financial cost.
The Teeb calculations show that the cost falls disproportionately on the poor, because a greater part of their livelihood depends directly on the forest, especially in tropical regions.
The greatest cost to western nations would initially come through losing a natural absorber of the most important greenhouse gas.
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And that isn't only on a monetary scale. The loss of forests, natural carbon sinks, biodiversity, our oceans, and the ecosystems that depend on them will lose us as a species far more than $$$$$$. We will lose our very essence and our reason for being on this planet. We will lose the very breath of our Earth. To me, while the global markets struggle to maintain a tangible asset, let us not forget that our Earth and its sustainability is our most precious asset in more ways than just the tangible. And if we as a world community do not get truly serious about dealing with this loss within the next year it will not matter what happens on a global market. The loss to us otherwise will be even more catastrophic.The global economy is losing more money from the disappearance of forests than through... more
I am so hopeful with Mr. Gore giving the keynote in Bali next month at the UN summit on climate change! I have been hoping and asking that he do this. And it will be just days after his Nobel acceptance. I really do have a good feeling about this, and that this will be the catalyst for a global change taking place. And I agree with Mr. Gore that calling it 'Kyoto" may give a negative connotation to it so it should be named something totally different. And I am also hoping that any treaty forged there takes into account that those nations that are polluting the most and that have caused the effects of this should contribute more than others in footing the bill to mitigate what they have done and continue to do, and that includes China. While I believe this must be a global effort, I do not believe that Africa and other parts of the world that have not contributed to the effects of this crisis should be penalized, especially since they are feeling the worst effects of it due to our behavior. I hope to see a fair treaty and one that truly looks to the scientific facts rather than trying to appease certain political interests.I am so hopeful with Mr. Gore giving the keynote in Bali next month at the UN summit... more
