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Posted on 12/19/2007 2:16:50 AM PST by jsh3180
The success of the major Anglosphere nations at last week's United Nations climate conference in Bali marks the beginning of the end of the age of climate hysteria. It also symbolizes a significant shift of political leadership in international climate diplomacy from the once-dominating European continent to North America and its Western allies.
This power shift has perhaps never been more transparent and dramatic than in Bali, when Australia's Labour government, under the newly elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, announced a complete U-turn on the thorny issue of mandatory carbon dioxide emissions targets. Only days after Australia's delegation had backed Europe's demand for a 25% to 40% cut in emission by 2020, Mr. Rudd declared (his signature under the Kyoto Protocol wasn't even dry) that his government would not support such targets after all.
Indeed, Australia's position hardened further when Trade Minister Simon Crean announced that developing countries like China and India would have to accept tough binding emissions targets before Australia would ever agree to any post-Kyoto agreement beyond 2012.
Similar stipulations were made by Canada and Japan. Surprisingly, even the British government appeared to deviate from the European Union position when Britain's Trade and Development Minister, Gareth Thomas, told the BBC that developing countries would also be required to accept targets for CO2 emissions.
Rather than being isolated, the decision by the United States and Canada to take the lead in international energy and climate diplomacy appears to have galvanized key allies, who are gradually rallying around a much tougher stance vis-a-vis China and India.
In Bali, the Anglosphere nations have in effect drawn a red line in the sand: Unless developing countries agree to mandatory emissions cuts themselves, much of the Western world will henceforth reject any unilateral burden imposed by future climate deals.
As a consequence, the so-called Bali road map adopted last Saturday has shifted the pressure further on to developing nations to share responsibility for CO2 emissions, a move that is widely regarded as a significant departure from the Kyoto Protocol.
For the first time, there are now firm demands for developing nations to tackle CO2 emissions by taking "actions in a measurable, reportable, and verifiable" way. There can be little doubt that the words adopted in Bali herald increasing pressure on China and India to accept mandatory emissions targets.
Australia's public endorsement of this line of attack attests to the fact that the West's climate strategy no longer depends on party politics. Nobody has made this new reality more obvious in recent days than Democratic U.S. Senator John Kerry. Speaking to reporters at the Bali meeting, he notified the international community that a rejection by China and other emerging economies to cut their own greenhouse gases would make it almost impossible for any U.S. administration to get a new global climate treaty through the U.S. Senate -- "even under a Democratic president."
Yet, neither China nor India will be able to agree to any emissions cuts in the foreseeable future. While their CO2 emissions are expected to rise rapidly over the next 20 to 30 years, there is simply nothing in the world of alternative energy or clean technology existing today that has the capacity to arrest this upwards trend. Any forceful attempts, on the other hand, to rein in the dramatically rising energy consumption in almost all of Asia would, inescapably, trigger economic turmoil, social disorder and political chaos.
In Bali, more than perhaps ever before, climate alarmism has finally hit the solid brick wall of political reality. It's a reality that won't go away or be changed any time soon. After more than 20 years of green ascendancy on the world stage, green politicians and climate campaigners are for the first time faced with a conundrum that looks as impenetrable as squaring the circle.
Reflecting on this predicament and the results of the Bali conference, Germany's former foreign secretary, my old friend Joschka Fischer, declared that nothing short of divine intervention would be required to reach a post-Kyoto agreement by 2009, in face of insurmountable obstacles.
"Perhaps something will happen in the meantime, something that does not normally happen in politics, namely a small miracle. After all, given past experiences, one must fear that international climate policy won't probably advance without the direct intervention of higher powers."
That Europe's most famous and most eminent green politician is prepared and desperate enough to publicly call for heavenly support is a strong indication that the age of climate alarmism is now being gradually replaced by fatalism. That's what the encounter with a brick wall tends to do to hot-heads. One can only hope that a period of sobering up from green dreams and delusions will provide political leaders with the prerequisite for a realistic, pragmatic and most of all a manageable approach to climate change.
--- - Benny Peiser is the editor of CCNet, an international science-policy network.
This makes my year complete :-).
An enjoyable early morning read! Thanks for posting this.
bump
Yet on assorted threads posted about multiple articles clearly showing the Bali conference failure, the broad FR response was to wail how spineless Bush had sold out to the forces of Kyoto. Barf alerts and all.
Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown
New!!: Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH
Ping me if you find one I've missed.
Demands that the rest of the world comply first doesn’t make for a victory. It’s a stalemate. A victory says: “No way ever will we sign a CO2 accord.”
As declared elsewhere recently, we must have the courage to do nothing!
This makes sense because there is nothing we can do to effect climate change one way or another. Of course we could send a spaceship with a delegation (led by Nobel prize winners) to the Sun to effect change at that location, the actual source of climate variation in our solar system.
We have an early Christmas present then, do we not? For me, I plan to use the money set aside to pay for carbon credits to instead purchase Christmas presents for my loved ones!
Since the true goal of environmentalists is not to protect the environment but to wreck western economies, they won’t give a hoot whether or not Asian countries go along with these treaties.
Our environmental Stalins and Lenins will continue trying to wreck the west with or without treaties. They’ll find some other way.
Every waking moment, of every day of all their lives is completely and totally devoted to this economic wrecking.
Secretly, amongst themselves, they are saying: “Treaties? We don’t need no stinking treaties.”
Poor Algore.
The alarmists have “Jumped the Shark” me thinks
It's really their first shot at global propaganda to create, and then manipulate, a worldwide politics (which has never existed) - with the purpose of pulling down the state created by the Founders in 1787-89.
When you see how far they've gotten, based on nothing but lies and fearmongering - it's not funny at all.
I don't think their motives are primarily economic.
Their main wish is to erase national borders and to create planetary government - the economic stuff is just a means to an end.
well, something has to be done....here’s my proposal....
I PROPOSE:
a ban on the use of that carbon spewing atmospheric world poisoner...the AUTOMOBILE.....we do away with it for say 20..no 30 ok 50 years.
BOOM, problem solved...
and if none of the rest of the nations of the world want to throw in with us...i say that we, the citizens of the United suckers of america provide the earth with the global example it needs...
only the U.S. bans IT’S cars for the fifty years.
This will also allow the third world countrys whose cheap labor made the u.s. great in the first place to catch up with us economically....thus providing them with a level playing field which will be good for them until which time we again be begin to opress them....
BHWHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAAH
not to mention..
BLEECHHHHHH
No, it’s only funny in my worst of cynicism. I really had to laugh at the TV commercials asking me to fight CO2 emissions. I kept imagining walking into my home one day and Cato( from Pink Panther, Peter Sellers Inspector Clousseau movies)the diabolical house servant/ secret green environmental nutcase was going to choke me out after the night befores methane/CO2 over the top flatuence emissions. Cue, Blazing Saddles campfire scene please.
My thoughts as well. Our position should be, not now, not ever, regardless of what any other country does.
You don't get it.
Once UN authority over "global" climate (there probably is no such thing) is established, there won't be any more "we" to have "our" position.
The model is the EPA. I live on a lake in New Hampshire. My property has, over the past 20 years, become subject to such a complex web of local, state, and Federal regulation that what "we" think here in town has NOTHING to do with what happens.
It's literally the case that cutting down a fricking TREE (MY fricking tree, BTW) creates a Federal case.
THAT'S what these people are after, on a planetary scale.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
It’s a stalemate.
Democratic U.S. Senator John Kerry. Speaking to reporters at the Bali meeting, he notified the international community that a rejection by China and other emerging economies to cut their own greenhouse gases would make it almost impossible for any U.S. administration to get a new global climate treaty through the U.S. Senate — “even under a Democratic president.”
.
Can’t get much more stale. Wonder what other stalemates are there thinking they represent the US? Lead by example Democrat supporters, stop buying gasoline.
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