Climate conference approves landmark deal
Associated Press
via USA Today
12/10/2011
DURBAN, South Africa (AP) – A U.N. climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement Sunday on a complex and far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change for the coming decades.
The 194-party conference agreed to start negotiations on a new accord that would put all countries under the same legal regime enforcing commitments to control greenhouse gases. It would take effect by 2020 at the latest.
The deal also set up the bodies that will collect, govern and distribute tens of billions of dollars a year for poor countries. Other documents in the package lay out rules for monitoring and verifying emissions reductions, protecting forests, transferring clean technologies to developing countries and scores of technical issues.
Currently, only industrial countries have legally binding emissions targets under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Those commitments expire next year, but they will be extended for another five years under the accord adopted Sunday — a key demand by developing countries seeking to preserve the only existing treaty regulating carbon emissions…
…The United States was a reluctant supporter, concerned about agreeing to join an international climate system that likely would find much opposition in the U.S. Congress.
“This is a very significant package. None of us likes everything in it. Believe me, there is plenty the United States is not thrilled about,” said U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern. But the package captured important advances that would be undone if it is rejected, he told the delegates…
The complete article, with video, is at USA Today.
But, gee, let’s not drill. It could contribute to warmal colding. The Institute for Energy Research … has the bad news for the climate crime gang…
Read the whole thing!
Update 2: Obama Fools CBS, Says: “I’m Not Redistributing the Wealth”
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Barack Obama told Joe the Plumber back in 2008 that he wanted to “spread the wealth around.”
That’s exactly what Obama did. That’s all he’s ever done. “Spreading the wealth around” is all he knows how to day. Even his #Occupy Wall Street movement is based on “spreading the wealth around.”
This week Barack Obama told “60 Minutes” that he is not redistributing the wealth…
Update 3: No Climate Debt Owed to Developing Countries: International Climate Science Coalition
Ottawa, Canada, December 11, 2011: “Developed nations are not guilty of causing the climate change that developing nations claim they are suffering,” said Tom Harris, executive director of ICSC which is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada. “Climate changes all the time—both warming and cooling—due to natural causes and there is nothing that we can do to stop it. However, to the degree possible, and considering our economic circumstances, developed nations still have a moral obligation to devote a proportion of their foreign aid to helping the world’s most vulnerable people adapt to natural climate events.”
ICSC chief science advisor, Professor Bob Carter of James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, and author of the best selling book, “Climate: the Counter Consensus” says, “Science has yet to provide unambiguous evidence that problematic, or even measurable, human-caused global warming is occurring. Consequently, any agreements—Durban, Cancun, Copenhagen or Kyoto—to reduce humanity’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are utterly futile. Governments need to recognize that the really dangerous climate hazards are natural events and change, and to prepare more fully to adapt to them when they occur.”
New Zealand-based Terry Dunleavy, ICSC founding chairman and strategic advisor, expands on this point…
H/T Weasel Zippers
Also, at BBC News, “We have made history.”
