Posted on 10/02/2009 10:50:05 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
Manoel Silva de Cunha, leader of a group of 200,000 Brazilian forest-dwellers, was blunt about why he traveled this week from the Amazon to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's Global Climate Summit.
The rubber tappers, nut gatherers and fishermen who live off tropical forests want money from American corporations to help them preserve the trees that cool the planet.
"These companies have polluted a lot," he said. "They have to make up for it."
Many of the 1,200 delegates who crowded into Century City's Hyatt Regency this week came with similar hopes: to cash in on California's expertise, its technology and the multimillion-dollar carbon trading market it plans to launch in 2012.
While Congress dithers over national climate legislation, and negotiators wrangle over a global treaty, governors, premiers and environmental officials from 70 states and provinces around the world gathered, as Schwarzenegger put it, for "action, action, action."
This year's gabfest is double the size of California's first climate summit last year and, for the first time, is co-sponsored by the United Nations.
Whatever greenhouse gas targets are ultimately adopted by national governments, it will be up to localities to "protect your forests from fire, your water supplies from contamination and your coastlines from erosion," Olav Kjorven, a U.N. assistant secretary general, told the group.
California, he added, has "blazed a path for other regional governments around the world to follow."
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
whoever’s pushing this “market” has surely got his share of the “tradeables” going into the game.
Sure, Awe-nold. California needs to send its surplus money to some freaking Brazilian forest-dwellers.
How about we give them Al Gore instead.
And have these mooches sent a Similar delegation to Communist China?
Awesome new opportunities for graft, corruption, dirty dealing and none of it tied to anything vaguely productive!
Wow, we really need a deal like this one!
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