We now have the details of a proposed stitch-up at Cancun. $100bn, it is intended by 2020, should be levied from the taxpayers of “rich” nations to help poor ones adjust to the manifestly and absurdly extravagant alleged effects of climate change. The outcome of any such a fund actually being collected and distributed is predictable, of course.
Unimaginably vast sums will go to enriching the dictators of such countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa but elsewhere too, no doubt, as well as the so-called environmentalist movement in the West. A few years hence there will be little, if any, measurable evidence of investment in “measures to save the planet”.
It is illuminating to recall that Kenya now acknowledges that 43% of its annual receipts of grant aid are syphoned off into sleaze. It is also salutary to recall that WWF now expects to reap revenues of $2bn plus from such a “world fund”.
Is it too fanciful to suggest that the quid pro quo for the enrichment of the third world classe politique is an undisclosed agreement for a percentage back-wash into the Lichtenstein bank accounts of our own political protagonists, amongst whose number in the UK, may well be the heir to the throne as well as individual propagandists at the BBC and not forgetting other dedicated quangos, for example?
Will they get away with it? I don’t think so – after all, where’s the money to come from? And let’s not forget that there’s an ocean of difference between promise and performance. Still, if personal enrichment is actually the real undisclosed name of the game, we may have to anticipate interesting times.
Just a thought – ignoble, I know, but then we live in a funny old world, do we not?
Views: 114
As Dr Fred Singer says ‘the money will come from the poor from the rich countries and go to the rich from the poor countries’
And I agree where’s the money to come from; at the moment Australia owes about $176 BILLION and that’s not including the NBN the new telecommunications monopoly which this Govt is building
By the way where did the info about Kenya and the WWF come from? Is there a source?
No doubt there’s a source, but I don’t know what it is. I made a brief search and found nothing.
Possible financial sources for the Green Climate Fund
From William F. Jasper, New American | 07 December 2010
Panelists from the Climate Action Network on Wednesday revealed that nations are discussing new taxes either on international monetary transactions or preferably on international shipping and aviation.
The U.N. does not currently have the authority to tax, but it is guiding negotiations to accept “monitoring, reporting and verification” from some taxing authority for money received from the new Green Fund. The new tax assessor-collector could possibly be the International Maritime Organization, which is a U.N. affiliate.
Soros Green for the Green Lobby
Enter George Soros, billionaire green activist and champion of global government. Soros was among the elite glamour contingent that swarmed into Copenhagen on private luxury jets last December and debarked from stretch limos at the climate conference to deliver harangues calling for the peoples of the developed countries to sacrifice, change their lifestyles, and decrease their consumption in order to save Mother Earth. Soros was appointed to the UN’s High Level Advisory Group on Climate Finance, which was tasked with coming up with the ways and means for reaching “the goal of mobilizing US$100 billion annually for climate actions in developing countries by 2020.”
The Advisory Group issued its report on November 5, 2010, just a little more than three weeks before the start of the Cancun conference. Among the proposals put forward by group are taxes on aviation jet fuel, airline passenger tickets, and “bunker fuel,” the heavy diesel fuel used by maritime shippers. The report states:
Revenues generated from taxes on international aviation and shipping: this would either involve some levy on maritime bunker/aviation jet fuels for international voyages or a separate emissions trading scheme for these activities, or a levy on passenger tickets of international flights;
Revenues from carbon taxes: this is based on a tax on carbon emissions in developed countries raised on a per-ton-emitted basis;
But in the current economic recession, and with a new U.S. Congress recently chastened by voters angry over huge deficits and wild spending, can the climate activists truly expect to win approval of any kind of carbon tax? Apparently so; it seems the tax on “bunker fuel” is one of the most popular proposals, perhaps because it affects the 90 percent of world trade that moves via maritime shipping and could raise hundreds of billions of dollars. However, consumers — who ultimately would pay the tax passed along by shippers — would be less likely to revolt against this kind of indirect tax spread invisibly over virtually everything they consume, as opposed to an income tax hike or an additional sales tax at the supermarket or gas pump.
Continues……..
O/T but I am sure you will comment on this in due course Richard:
December 16, 2010
NIWA releases review of NZ temperature trends
NIWA today released a report reviewing its seven station temperature series, which adds to its analysis of New Zealand’s temperature trends over the past 100 years.
The report was independently peer reviewed by Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology to ensure the ideas, methods, and conclusions stood up in terms of scientific accuracy, logic, and consistency.
http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/all/7-station-series-review
This is O/T, Andy, but yes, I’ll be commenting. It’s hysterical that NIWA arrives at the same over-stated temperature increase as before. I await comments from the scientists of the NZCSC.
First amateur observation: if our climate is moderated by the ocean by which we’re surrounded, why is our temperature increase (according to NIWA) of 91°C so much greater (123%) than the global temperature rise?
I read a description of foreign aid the other day. I think it was on Bishop Hill.
Foreign Aid – the process where poor people in rich countries give money to rich people in poor countries.
“$100bn it is intended by 2020, should be levied from the taxpayers of “rich” nations”
No, no, no.
The US$100bn PER YEAR by 2020 “Green Climate Fund” will be extracted from these sources:-
Outcome of the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention
99. Agrees that, in accordance with paragraph 1(e) of the Bali Action Plan, funds provided to developing country Parties may come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources;
http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_16/application/pdf/cop16_lca.pdf
i.e ANY source possible – financial transactions, airline levies, donations, national disbursement etc.
The fund DISBURSEMENTS will be scaled (ramped) up from whatever initial amount kicks it off (say $100m from Bill Gates in 2011). Thus the fund DISBURSEMENTS progressively increase until $100bn is being DISBURSED EVERY YEAR after 2020 in theory.
It is the $30bn Fast Start Fund (already pledged at Copenhagen) that has been sourced from taxpayers via national pledge.
COP15 Fast Start pledges US$
Australia __________500m
EU _______________10bn
Japan ____________15bn
NZ _______________0
Norway ___________357m
Switzerland ________130m
US _______________4.8bn
Total ____________31.2bn (from source above)
Also
UK _______________£1.5bn Source (probably part of EU figure – dunno for sure)
See # 91 this thread for links
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/12/waiting-for-news-of-cancun-100-billion-at-stake-by-2020/
The question remains: does the UN have the mandate to establish the “Green Climate Fund”?
i.e. Where is the document with signatories? There’s none on the above document.
I’ve emailed the Office of Climate Change seeking clarification.
See
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2010/12/we-can-we-can-at-cancun-can-we/#comment-32260
For a devastating critique of Cancun outcomes, see Walter Russell Mead at http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/12/12/bureaucrats-swindle-greens-in-cancun/
Says it all.
As a Kiwi observer in the UK, I have learned a significant fact from first-hand experience here; warmer is generally safer and nicer; cold and colder are truly scary, downright nasty and dangerous. I despair, therefore, for our UK cousins for the inability of both their paid and elected officials there to do actual joined-up and proper adult thinking. Mr Hune and his fellows have failed utterly in the area of sensible planning for future affordable energy needs to be met in the UK and are hell-bent on installing windmills that are ever-larger and obviously more and more unable to fill the nations energy needs without a concurrent building programme to construct oil/coal/nuclear powered backup generating plants to enable the nation to use electricity when the wind doesn’t blow, which is most of the time in these sceptred isles, but partucularly so when the temperatures drop to below freezing, when the windmill’s blades ice up and thus cannot turn without major damage to themselves. Mr Salmond, leader of the Scottish Parliament, is even stranger than Mr Hune, in that he is vigorously demanding that Scotland returns to the Stone Age and place it’s entire energy needs in the area of ‘renewables’. Further, to this Kiwi who grew up with and is comfortable with the idea of Hydro generation as a ‘Renewable’, this is now not so. For some reason, the most inventive and practical race on earth, the Scots, no longer believe that collected rainwater running downhill into a storage lake, then being utilised to spin a turbine is ‘renewable’, but aparently this is now not so in the grand ecological scheme of things. In fact, my Green contacts tell me, it would be better if the world’s hydro dams, great and small, were recognised for the terrible ecological disasters and they are and demolished, torn dow, dispensed with. I have not yet found an intelligent Green person who can explain this somewhat puzzling new phenomenon to me, but I have observed that the very word ‘Hydorelectricity Generating Plant’ is enough to induce right-thinking Green persons to froth at the mouth and splutter.
I have learnt here in the UK that not only is ‘Hydroelectric Generaton of Electricy’ not a nice thing to say in public, but that old blokes (and blokesses) who are not exactly rolling in spare ready cash, can be expected to die from various hypothermia-induced causes this winter.
Sad that, but it seems that it is far fairer to give large tranches of non-surplus Revenue to the villainous Robert Mugabe and others of his stripe than spend that money on keeping the inconveniently no-longer-working-but-aged warm and healthy.
“Is there anybody on planet earth who thinks that $100 billion is going to be paid?
The “success” of Cancun is a best case scenario from the skeptic’s point of view. The cost of funding endless UN gabfests in exotic tourist locations (next up: South Africa in 2012) is trivial compared to the cost of any serious efforts to deal with carbon emissions on the scale current scientific theory suggests would be needed. Bureaucrats will dance, journalists will spin and carbon will spew, and the greens will be unable to escape this dysfunctional UN process for years and maybe decades to come. ”
–Walter Russell Mead,The American Interest, 12 December 2010
“Is there anybody on planet earth who thinks that $100 billion is going to be paid?
The first $10bn tranche of Fast Start didn’t get paid in 2010.
But
—————————————————————————————————————————
If UN Green Dreams came true
2011 $10.00bn Fast Start COP15
2012 $10.00bn Fast Start COP15
2013 $11.25bn Green Climate Fund COP16
2014 $32.50bn ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ” ”
2015 $43.75bn
2016 $55.00bn
2017 $66.25bn
2018 $77.50bn
2019 $88.75bn
2020 $100bn
2021 $100bn
” ” ” ” ” ”
Disbursed PER YEAR
Note that “at least 0.7% of the annual GDP of developed country Parties” is just one of the possible sources of funding for the Green Climate Fund disbursements.
# Public-sector funding
# At least 0.7% of the annual GDP of developed country Parties
# Auctioning of assigned amounts and/or emission allowances [from developed country Parties
# Levies on CO2 emissions [from Annex-I Parties
# Taxes on carbon-intensive products and services from Annex I Parties
# Levies on] [Shares of proceeds from measures to limit or reduce emissions from] international [aviation] and maritime transport
# Shares of proceeds on the clean development mechanism (CDM)
# Levies on international transactions [among Annex I Parties
# Fines for non-compliance [of Annex I Parties and] with commitments of Annex I Parties and Parties with commitments inscribed in Annex B to the Kyoto Protocol
# Additional ODA] [ODA additional to ODA targets] provided through bilateral, regional and other multilateral channels
Take a long hard look at the other “channels”
They’ve been working on this for some time with Soros et al.
It’s happening.
This article
“UN Continues Push for Global Carbon Tax at Climate Confab”
in “ADAPTION and MITIGATION LAW: INTERNATIONAL IMPOSITIONS and CONSEQUENCES”
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/economics/#comment-31556
Spells it out.
The Herald have an editorial piece
Editorial: Cancun gains worthless with Kyoto in limbo
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10694111
Comments are open.
Climate Distortions Were Achieved. National Weather Agencies Are The Trojan Horses
By Dr. Tim Ball Monday, December 13, 2010
Maurice Strong set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) through the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide a powerful vehicle for almost complete control of climate science. Each national weather office perpetuates the deception that human CO2 is causing climate change. He controlled the science through the IPCC and the political and propaganda portion under the umbrella of the Rio Conference (1992) and the ongoing Conference of the Parties (COP).
By peopling the IPCC with representatives of national weather offices, he attained control of the politics within each nation and collective global control. They’re the Trojan Horses from which funding and research emanate to deceive the politicians and public into achieving his goal of destroying the industrialized nations.
Continues………
It’s not as if there’s nothing being done and no funding already
——————————————————————————————————————–
New Zealand’s Fifth National Communication – Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
7 Financial resources and technology transfer
7.1 Introduction
New Zealand is committed to supporting developing country parties to meet the dual challenges of reducing emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change. New Zealand is addressing these challenges by delivering new and additional financial resources through a range of channels, primarily to its partner countries in the Pacific, but also to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Table 7.1: New Zealand’s financial contributions to the Global Environment Facility, 2005–2008
Contributions1 (NZ$ million2) to the GEF Trust Fund
2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, Total
2.78, 3.42, 3.28, 3.12, 12.6
Table 7.2: Financial contributions to multilateral institutions and programmes, 2005–2008
Institution or programme Contributions1 (NZ$ million2)
Multilateral institutions …….2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, Total
1. World Bank ……………..9.21, 20.01, 11.03, 20.37, 60.62
2. Asian Development Bank 12.83, 12.57, 12.16, 6.37, 43.93
3. United Nations Development Pr.8.00, 8.00, 8.00, 8.00, 32.00
4. United Nations Environment Pr.0.25, 0.21, 0.21, 0.35, 1.02
5. UNFCCC Trust Fund for Partic 0.10 , 0.10, 0.10, 0.50, 0.80
6. UNFCCC Least Developed Countr1.80, 1.80, 1.80, 1.40, 6.80
7. UNFCCC Trust Fund for Supplem0.12 , 0.11, 0.06, –, 0.29
8. Montreal Protocol ……..0.58, 0.53, 0.46, 0.55, 2.12
Total …………………..32.89, 43.33, 33.82, 37.54, 147.58
And so on – Kiribati, Tuvalu etc.
It strikes me that the title of this piece does a disservice to our efforts in the fight for truth and justice in that it is wrong and opens us up to the taunt of ‘conspiracy theorists’ or conspiracy nutters a la those that think the moon landings never took place.
This is not a vast conspiracy. Sure, there are conspiracies; the hockey stick team conspired to subvert the peer review process and provide disinformation regarding climatology, Maurice Strong conspired with a group of players to set up the IPCC and carbon trading, and environmentalist socialists have conspired to use the green movement to promote socialism. However, these are not ‘vast conspiracies’ but rather a number of much smaller conspiracies linked with a number of vested interests that have used the central theme of man-made global warming to further their own interests.
One can argue that most scientists involved in the field, and in the IPCC, are not part of a vast conspiracy but are genuinely working for the perceived good of the planet, or of their research funds, or for their careers. Similarly, politicians see the popular opinion as a means of getting into office to advance their own agendas.
This is a network of smaller conspiracies and agendas that have used a common delusion to further their perpetrators’, individual, aims. Not only is this closer to the truth but it is more palatable to the public and harder to deride.
The word “vast” in the title is simply a matter of opinion. I would say the COP has a vast sphere of influence, a vast membership, a vast number of contributing scientists, but that’s just my opinion. Where the conspiracies begin and end is impossible to determine. It is a wonderful web they weave. The positive feedback built into the climate science environment (with respect to CAGW) is due to peer pressure, consensus pressure, funding pressure, career pressure, bullying, shunning, disinvitations etc, and may be viewed overall as a conspiracy imo. At the very least it is a conspiracy of silence, subconscious or conscious. But at the Hockey Team end of the spectrum there is definitely conscious manipulation of people, data and policies to suit a political or ideological agenda. Journals, societies and governments have demonstrated a bias for CAGW, and against hypotheses which refute aspects of CAGW. In fact some have made sure that the CAGW agenda is pushed by appointing biased board members (e.g. the AGU).
So I don’t know, Huub, how you define a conspiracy. But the Free Dictionary gives one definition as “A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design”, another as “An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.”
Frankly, I don’t care if I am labelled a conspiracy nutter by members of the group accused of conspiracy. Perhaps Joe Public may be put off my point of view when I submit there are powers at play behind closed doors that wish to fundamentally change our lifestyles and income levels to their own advantage, and that their vested interests compel them to continue shouting “the science is settled” from every rooftop. However, Joe Public will nevertheless probably be of the opinion that CAGW is a crock and my conspiracy theory won’t change that. On the other hand, Joe may want to write to his MP and voice his concern over the conspiring COP16 countries.
Mike, I noticed your “too prolific” comment – here’s a solution.
Subscribe to CCG comments via Google Reader (Admin, right-hand side).
It’s hands down THE BEST way to follow comments. In “List” view you can scan 1000+ comments easy. In “Expanded” view you can read the comments directly and by clicking on the header, open the comment for reply in a new tab. It’s also a good way to access the topical posts and categories at CCG.
Reader is far better than RSS or email as in JoNova (doesn’t clog up your Inbox and you can view at your leasure) and should be an option on every blog IMO..
Thanks for the tip, Richard. Unfortunately I can’t see a Google Reader in the Admin section of this blog. In Google Reader itself I have subscribed to https://www.climateconversation.org.nz and get a list of all the articles, but not comments. Maybe I’m doing something wrong. Maybe I need a WordPress login ID to access the right part of Admin. It does look like a pretty neat way to do things though, so thanks. I’ll keep playing…..
Aha! Just sorted it – brilliant!
Need to subscribe to https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/comments/feed/
Yew bewdy!
Huub, you may have to revise your outlook on this depending on the response to the following..
Up-thread I linked to a request I made to NZ Office of Climate Change which I duplicate here.
——————————————————————————————————————————
UN mandate to establish a “Green Climate Fund”
To the Minister of Climate Change Dr Smith or representative,
I am trying to access the formal contract by which the 194 nations (as per news reports) agreed to give the UN the mandate to establish a $100bn per year by 2020 “Green Climate Fund”.
The details of the fund are found in the UN document:-
“Outcome of the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention”
http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_16/application/pdf/cop16_lca.pdf
There are no signatories listed in the Advance unedited version Draft decision [-/CP.16]
Please provide, if it exists:-
1) A link to the document other than the above that was signed by the representatives of the 194 nations that agreed to provide the mandate to the UN to pursue “a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources” to establish a “Green Climate Fund”.
2) A list of countries that disagreed or abstained from agreeing to the establishment of a “Green Climate Fund” by the UN..
Or,
Is the agreement by the 194 nations to establish a “Green Climate Fund”. a verbal agreement to the written document above?
Or,
Is there no obligation yet for any country and no mandate for UN implementation of the “Green Climate Fund” until signing of an agreement at COP17 Durban?
Sincerely,
Richard Cumming
—————————————————————————————————————————-
Response so far …………..crickets………………birds chirping…………….
My to-do today is to make the same request to Dr Smith directly and I hope that others do the same here http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/Email.htm?id=7c8ffef6-b7fd-4a93-959e-7ab935bdd549
Well my to-do is done, isn’t anyone else curious?
Yes, well I am very curious.
If the people we pay are off in a holiday resort, at our expense, organising to redistribute our money to other countries without our consent, then I am very interested indeed.
I have received a response from Paul Eastwood | Senior Advisor – Environment and Climate Change New Zealand Aid Programme / Environment Division Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to my inquiry.
This response was from the Office of Climate Change (I have since made an identical inquiry to the Minister of Climate Change and am waiting for the reply).
The internal re-direction
——————————————————————————————————————–
—–Original Message—–
From: Kay Harrison [mailto:Kay.Harrison@mfe.govt.nz]
Sent: Friday, 17 December 2010 8:41 a.m.
To: EASTWOOD, Paul (IDG, SAE)
Cc: Fiona Montgomery
Subject: FW: UN mandate to establish a “Green Climate Fund”
Importance: High
Hi Paul
We’ve received the inquiry below concerning the Green Fund.
Would you mind dealing with it and copying us into the reply please? We can then use your considered response for any others that come in.
Regards
Kay
——————————————————————————————————————–
Paul’s response.
——————————————————————————————————————–
Dear Richard,
Your query concerning the Green Climate Fund has been passed to me.
The decision to establish the Fund is contained within the UNFCCC decision document -/CP.16. This document, and hence all decisions contained therein, was adopted by consensus by the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC at its sixteenth session in Cancun, Mexico. The COP comprises all UN Member States, hence when a COP decision is adopted there is no need for an annex containing signatories, nor is there a separate document. When the document was discussed by the COP, Bolivia voiced its concerns. These were of a general nature and not specific to the Fund. As is normal practice, any concerns raised by Parties are noted by the Chair and included in the meeting report (not yet available).
Once the Fund is established and operational, all developed countries will be expected to contribute.
I hope this answers your questions.
Best wishes,
Paul
Paul Eastwood | Senior Advisor – Environment and Climate Change New Zealand Aid Programme / Environment Division Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Tel: +64 4 4398729
Mob: + 64 21 2257765
http://www.aid.govt.nz http://www.mfat.govt.nz
New Zealand Aid Programme…towards a more secure, equitable, and prosperous world
Thus we see our democracy disappear in front of us, just like in the EU
“I hope this answers your questions.
Best wishes,
Paul”
Well, actually it raises a whole bunch of questions. And thanks for the Best Wishes – do they include the wish that us tax payers can afford the arbitrary levels of the new International Green Tax, on top of increased GST, $15b deficits, and a struggling economy? I’m sure that must be one of your Best Wishes, or maybe you just don’t give a damn about affordability by the great unwashed.
Andy, Brian Fallow has this in the NZH – some comments along the same lines as yours here (mine included).
“Cancun talks highlight climate dilemma”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10694569
Comments are open but I haven’t seen your barb.
Gandalf’s taken up residence and we’re not allowed to call people “alarmists” – apparently.
Also, there’s a great opportunity to bring up James Renwicks “drier air”, “cloudless skies”, “dry conditions” 2010 summer forecast via TV3 here;-
Humidity set to continue
By Philip Duncan
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10694441
Philip Duncan forecast rain BTW – see “Meteorology”
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/meteorology-001/#comment-31431
I just added my piece to the Herald. Something along the lines that “the UK has just condemned a lot of grannies to death”
I spoke to a workmate in Scotland this morning. He says the country is the coldest and snowiest he has ever experienced. Just getting anywhere is a major logistical exercise.
Chris Huhne’s new energy policies are so appalling that it is hard to believe all this madness is actually real. Surely someone will tell me this is a bad dream.
Dellers covers it pretty well here,
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100068571/huhne-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-camerons-lousy-coalition/
This truly is a nightmare.
When a Scot says it’s cold – it’s cold.
I note from Dellers article that
“Thatcher created Europe’s most competitive electricity and gas markets, privatizing state-owned businesses including British Gas, British Energy, National Power and PowerGen. By 1997, the change had driven down consumer prices by as much as 20 percent, compared with pre-privatization costs”
20% down! – had the opposite effect in NZ.
574 comments so far. Hopefully that article along with others will be a rallying point. Even the most ardent Greens must come to the realization eventually that “Huhne’s and Cameron’s insane proposals to “decarbonise” the British economy at a cost conservatively estimated at £18 billion a year” are indescribably daft in the face of freezing weather (and economic) conditions..
Andy, great comment – very powerful.
I see GixxerBoy struck a chord – 34 “Likes” so far.
I’ve just received a response from
Phil Gumsey
Private Secretary Climate Change
Office of Hon Dr Nick Smith
Minister for Environment, Issues and ACC
Informing me that Officials at the Ministry of the Environment will be responding to my questions.
So there you have it.
Have now received this from the NZ Ministry for the Environment (much different report)
——————————————————————————————————————–
Hi Richard,
I refer to your email regarding the Cancun climate change meetings. You’ve asked about the Green Climate Fund. There is no obligation yet for any country but note that a standing committee has been established to work through implementation details for the fund. The fund idea was born out of the Copenhagen Accord last year – as part of a balanced package of decisions on mitigation, finance, technology and adaptation.
It’s also worth noting that the Cancun Agreements do not constitute a draft treaty. Thus New Zealand, and 193 other countries have pledged support for the continuation of efforts to reach a global treaty rather than ‘signing up’ to a legally binding agreement. The government would need to carefully and cautiously consider the implications for New Zealand before deciding whether to sign and ratify any treaty that may come out of future negotiations. As occurred with previous agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty needs to undergo a thorough National Interest Analysis, public consultation and be approved by both Cabinet and Parliament in order to become legally binding on New Zealand.
The only country to disagree with the Cancun Agreements was Bolivia.
Regards. Roger
Roger Lincoln – Senior Policy Analyst, International Climate & Environment
Ministry for the Environment – Manatu Mo Te Taiao
DDI: 04 439 7633 Mob: 027 290 7625 Website: http://www.mfe.govt.nz
23 Kate Sheppard Place, PO Box 10362, Wellington 6143
——————————————————————————————————————–
Replied
Thank you Roger,
I am very much encouraged by this:-
[quote]
There were indications from my investigations so far that New
Zealand’s national interest was being circumvented.
Regards
Richard
“a green true believer’s point of view” of the Cancun outcome.
———————————————————————————————————————-
Bureaucrats Swindle Greens In Cancun
Walter Russell Mead
December 12, 2010 – THE AMERICAN INTEREST
The climate conference in Cancun was a turning point for the world’s greens. There were two possible outcomes. One was a total political meltdown in Cancun that would have been hideously embarrassing in the short run but that in the long term would have cleared the way for more hopeful approaches to carbon issues. The other was a cobbled together pseudo-deal of some kind that would have avoided short term embarrassment but over the long run would doom the greens to a future of frustration and futility.
Outcome one would have helped the planet; outcome two helps the bureaucratic rent seekers and process junkies of the world’s diplomatic establishment.
Guess who won?
As green negotiators in Cancun ended their embarrassing two-week junket (videos of partying bureaucrats did not go down well with voters in a northern hemisphere freezing in an early winter), it’s clear that the bureaucrats did what bureaucrats do: they kept a ‘process’ (job-creating bureaucratic gravy train) alive while doing little or nothing about the problem they were supposed to solve.
The essence of the non-deal deal reached at Cancun: Japan, Russia and other countries sick and tired of the idiocies of the Kyoto Protocol agree to say nothing that prevents other countries from pretending that the Kyoto Protocol lives; advanced industrial countries agree to keep discussing the fantasy that by 2020 they will be collectively shipping $100 billion a year to developing countries; developing countries agree to pretend to believe this will happen; countries agree to continue making laughably inadequate and also non-binding ‘pledges’ on carbon emissions; and everyone agrees not to think about the reality that pigs will fly before a treaty embodying any of these ideas will be ratified by the US Senate.
From a green true believer’s point of view this is less than zero. If everybody lives up to the pledges made to date, the earth will, according to the scientists involved in the process, warm by more than 4 degrees centigrade instead of the 2 degree target. And the pledges, weak and symbolic as they are, have unsustainable conditions attached to them. Without that $100 billion in aid, no developing country will feel bound by its pledge and there is no shadow of an agreement on which rich countries will stump up how much, how this mythical pie will be divided, much less on ways to keep international bad actors and rogue states (North Korea, Iran, Sudan, you name it) from getting their hands on the cash.
But no matter: for the bureaucrats and NGO staff it’s a clear and resounding win. The mice have unanimously voted to keep meeting at taxpayers’ expense until someone bells that pesky cat. The UN process has kept just enough diplomatic credibility to make several new rounds of vast, unfocused global gabfests of bureaucrats and NGO administrators inevitable. More pre-meeting meetings will be held; more secretariats will employ new staff; more non-papers will be circulated, marked up and revised. Paychecks will be mailed; travel vouchers issued. Life will be good.
It’s probably a win for the Obama administration, too. For now, the President got the green monkey off his back. President Obama hasn’t delivered cap and trade or a carbon tax to his green backers, and the early signs are that the EPA is backing off from fights with the Republicans in Congress — but Cancun didn’t collapse into complete and utter chaos, so the President can, just, argue that his administration is keeping green hopes alive.
Next to the bureaucrats and the White House, the real winners are the climate change skeptics. If you think that climate change is a myth or a naturally occurring phenomenon, Cancun helped you out. The UN process of endlessly negotiating a treaty which will either be so weak it is pointless or so controversial the US Senate will never ratify it (and will quite possibly be both) consumes time, money, energy and political capital that would otherwise go towards green efforts that might actually accomplish something.
The “success” of Cancun is a best case scenario from the skeptic’s point of view. The cost of funding endless UN gabfests in exotic tourist locations (next up: South Africa in 2012) is trivial compared to the cost of any serious efforts to deal with carbon emissions on the scale current scientific theory suggests would be needed. Bureaucrats will dance, journalists will spin and carbon will spew, and the greens will be unable to escape this dysfunctional UN process for years and maybe decades to come. More, the fact that axis of ankle-biter countries like Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia use these conferences to flaunt their anti-American credentials — and seek to maximize their influence by threatening to veto the proceedings — ensures that both this process and anything it produces will be unpopular in the US. The more that the radical anti-American gasbags get mixed up in this process, the easier it will be to find 34 senators ready to kill a climate treaty. If you are a climate skeptic, a global warming hand-off to the UN is the best thing since the Hummer.
No sane green would want this result, but the greens have run up against a force stronger than climate change, more insidious than the desertification of the Sahel, more inexorable than the rising of the seas: the bureaucratic instinct for process. Processes and institutions once initiated cannot be allowed to die.
The news reports on the conference are visibly torn. On the one hand, reporters know that at the level of substance this is a complete travesty and a rout. A facade of agreement was carefully constructed by relentlessly sacrificing substance from the various texts. And as loyal spear carriers for the movement, many reporters want to make this point.
But too much emphasis on the utterly empty nature of the ‘accords’ would be, well, defeatist. It would suggest that the noble greens are failing to save the planet, that their chosen course is disastrous and that the entire global green agenda is utopian. That cannot be allowed.
Also, even the most servile lapdogs of the press are bound by certain narrative conventions. There has to be a story. “Thousands of bureaucrats swill canapes, agree to swill more next year” is not news. “Greens fobbed off with empty words,” would be a story, but not the kind of story the press wants to tell.
So what we have now is a rash of stories to tell us first that a great victory has been won. Agreement has been snatched from the jaws of failure; creative diplomats resolve seemingly unbridgeable gaps! Delegates applaud chair as harmony reigns! All those naysayers and prophets of doom were wrong: the process worked!
As the AP headline puts it, “UN Climate Meeting OKs Green Fund in New Accord.” Only in the body of the story do we learn that “The Cancun Agreements created institutions for delivering technology and funding to poorer countries, though they did not say where the funding would come from.” [Italics added by your humble blogger] The lack of specificity on funding is no doubt a minor detail: with mobs rioting in half the capitals of Europe against government funding cutbacks and Tea Party Republicans fixing to take over the US House of Representatives as our deficits skyrocket, funding large new foreign aid programs should not be a problem.
The New York Times turns up the volume: it is more critical than the AP about the lack of substance, but hails these confessedly vapid agreements as glorious vindications of the wisdom of the greens and pours scorn on those foolish critics who prophesied that nothing serious would come from Cancun.
“In all, the success of the talks was a breath of life for a process that many had declared too cumbersome and contentious to achieve meaningful progress,” asserted the Times, citing the head of climate and energy programs at the World Resources Institute who said: “‘This agreement was a remarkable turnaround for a multilateral approach to address climate change, including commitments on emissions from all the world’s major economies.”
Yet the Times did better than many of its colleagues; although the second graph of the story is heavy on the official optimism, a sharp eyed reader can infer what actually happened behind the veil: “Although the steps were fairly modest and do not require the broad changes that scientists say are needed to avoid dangerous climate change, the result was a major step forward for a process that has stumbled badly in recent years.” Further below, it allows Jennifer Morgan, the WRI official quoted in the story, to make a couple more crucial points: “But she said the nations left many issues unresolved, including whether to seek to enshrine the goals into a legally-binding agreement and the sources of the $100 billion in annual climate-related aid that the wealthy nations have promised to provide.”
A genuinely journalistic account of the conference would have highlighted the way Cancun tied the green agenda ever more firmly to a dysfunctional process, and noted more clearly that the $100 billion aid pledge is one of a long list of aid pledges that the rich countries keep making — but which are almost never kept. It would have compared this pledge, for example, to the solemn and frequently repeated pledges made starting in 1970 to raise foreign aid to 0.7% of GDP among rich countries and to the declarations of various summits on aid for Africa and the much ballyhooed UN Millennium Development Goals.
Forty years after that historic pledge to pay 0.7% of GDP for ODA (Overseas Development Assistance) only 5 (small) members of the rich-nation OECD club have reached this goal. The big economies — Japan, the US, Germany — are nowhere near.
More recently, at the Gleneagles Summit of the G-8 countries in 2005, the attendees swore an oath of mickle might to double their aid by 2010 including $25 billion per year in new aid to sub-Saharan Africa. The invaluable Financial Times reports on how that had worked out by the time the target date came around:
The Gleneagles declaration by the Group of Eight in July 2005 to double aid to Africa by 2010 shows the dangers of making specific pledges, writes Chris Giles in London.Now the deadline is due, aid to Africa has not doubled from $25bn in 2004 to $50bn in 2010 and the OECD estimates donor nations will fall $14bn short.
For years after 2005 the G8 ritually repeated the Gleneagles pledge. Even in 2009, when the target was almost certain to be missed, the G8 leaders reiterated “the importance of fulfilling our commitments to increase aid made at Gleneagles”.
But once it became clear the target was going to be missed, the G8 had to backtrack. At the Muskoka summit in June, any mention of Gleneagles was deleted, to the disgust of aid agencies. After this, a new focus without specific targets will be warmly received in many quarters.
Is there anybody on planet earth who thinks that $100 billion is going to be paid? The point is that all the “concessions” by developing countries are contingent on the satisfactory payment of the full $100 billion in “pledges” by the rich ones
The news at Cancun is that the global green agenda has now turned into one of these endlessly running UN catfights in which developing countries try to guilt-trip rich countries out of money which their corrupt and inefficient bureaucracies often squander (if the corrupt leaders don’t steal it first). The rich countries fob off the third world guilt trippers and their clueless but noisy NGO allies in the advanced countries with hollow promises. These processes usually grind on pointlessly for decades (keeping NGO staff and diplomats gainfully if not usefully employed) with astonishingly little impact on real world events.
That is the big news out of Cancun; the green agenda has fallen into a UN black hole and for now at least it cannot get out.
Not much difference between Green and MMCC sceptic perspectives of the UN bureaucratic manipulation of the Cancun outcome going by this article.
In a similar vein – a very grumpy Green.
Note the call for “radically abandoning the flush toilet”
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The arrogance of Cancún
The lesson of this feeble climate deal? Governments have played God and failed. It is up to the activists now
Wednesday 15 December 2010 22.00 GMT – Guardian
In the efforts to protect our planet from ourselves, the high level talks at Cancún were our last chance … and they failed. But we can learn from this sad episode: we must stop asking governments and international organisations for solutions that they don’t want to – and can’t – implement. And we must stop pretending to be God, thinking we can “fix” the planet.
Eighteen years ago pressure from the environmental movement forced the UN to convene the Earth summit: 120 heads of state, 8,000 officials and innumerable environmentalists gathered in Rio; an image of the orchestra playing while the Titanic sank comes to mind.
The conference, as the Ecologist reported at the time, merely reinforced predominant mythology and highlighted the powerful vested interests working against a solution. In effect, the lambs were put under the care of the wolves. “After reaching the summit, every path goes down,” observed the leading Mexican environmentalist Juan José Consejo. He warned environmentalists that their cause had been co-opted and that policies and actions taken in the name of ecology were in fact very damaging for the environment.
But we did not learn enough. We continued looking to the powerful to solve things. The Kyoto summit in 1997 was a timid step in the right direction, but it never fulfilled its promise. This year, at the People’s summit in Cochabamba, Bolivia, interesting proposals were presented; but Cancún did not take them into consideration, and the feeble deal it eventually cobbled together could not overcome last year’s failure at Copenhagen. As Vía Campesina, the International Peasant Movement, observed: no agreement would have been better than such a poor one.
Meanwhile, the International Forum for Climate Justice, convened by hundreds of organisations from many countries, made an alternative and more valuable Cancún declaration. Under the slogan “Let’s change the system, not the planet”, the declaration revealed the true counter-productive nature of the official proposals, which are trapped in “market environmentalism”. It argues that we should abandon developmentalism, establish limits, concentrate in local spaces, and reclaim valid traditions. All this, however, falls into the intellectual and political trap of the dominant mentality by still hanging on to institutions and their abstract slogans.
To affirm or to deny climate change supposes that we understand our planet well, that we know how it reacts – both now and for the next hundred years – and that we have the appropriate technological fix. This is plain and simple nonsense, and intolerably arrogant.
To continue putting our trust and hope in institutions to put things right goes against all our experience and focuses our energy in the wrong place. Yes, we still need to fight some institutional battles. For example, we can celebrate the agreement just signed in Nagoya, where 193 UN member states created a de facto moratorium on geoengineering projects, condemning any attempt to manipulate the “planet thermostat”. But we must do that without surrendering our will to the government administrators of capital, who will continue protecting the major players in environmental destruction.
All governments, even the most majestic, are composed of ordinary mortals, trapped in bureaucratic labyrinths and fighting vested interests that tie their hands, heads and wills. Even if Evo Morales governed the entire planet we would not be able to “fix” the current environmental problems.
We must look down and to the left, as the Zapatistas of Mexico say: to the people, and what we can do ourselves. For example, stop producing waste, rather than recycling it. This requires a lot of things, from rejecting plastic bags and packaging to radically abandoning the flush toilet – one of the world’s most destructive habits, absorbing 40% of water available for domestic consumption and contaminating everything in its way. And instead of overusing polluting vehicles, let’s reclaim auto-mobility, on foot or bikes. Just as we strive to eat and drink sensibly, let us live our whole lives in a different way.
If we define the issues in those terms, dealing with them will be in our own hands, not in those of global institutional creatures that will never do what is needed. They cannot play God, no matter how much they pretend to.
The time has come to change the system, not the planet. That depends on us, not on those who gain status and income from the system. As the Brazilian writer Leonard Boff observed, activists leaving Cancún were very disappointed with the outcome; but they are determined to finally take control of the whole issue and to live their lives their own way, not in the way dictated by the market or the state.
Hahoo Xtra News announces Australian Bureau of Meteorology concludes that NIWA’s seven station series is just fine: http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/top-stories/8526068/niwa-releases-review-on-warming-analysis/
No details and couldn’t find any detail on NIWA’s website at this stage.
NIWA Seven Station Series Review here: http://www.niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/news/all/7-station-series-review
Haven’t read it yet.
Greg Combet in The Australian
He suggested that the definition of developed countries that was incorporated into the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was based on which countries were members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1992 and was now outmoded.
“In the 18 years since, additional countries have joined the OECD, and others have witnessed significant economic growth. However, the UNFCCC’s list of Annex I Parties – ie, developed countries – has remained static, stuck in a 1992 time warp, far from current economic realities,” he told the Investor Group on Climate Change in Sydney’s luxurious Four Seasons Hotel on Circular Quay
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/climate-talks-back-on-track-greg-combet-believes/story-fn59niix-1225972771413
Nice to see the faceless Kiwicrats drinking pinacoladas in Mexico on the NZ taxpayer voted unanamously to stitch us up even tighter. Bastards, all of them, and I’m being very moderate.
I am sitting in my workroom in a nice warm house with gas-fired centrall heating in London, about 10 minutes from Heathrow, a relatively warm part of the UK, watching the snow fall very heavily and prettily. Spare a thought for the Brits further North who rely on fuel oil for heating which has gone from 40 to 70 P per litre in the last couple of months and the authorities now say the stuff must be rationed because (a) many deliveries to houses can’t happen because of snowbound roads and (b) the local authorities were so sure the Met Office forecasts for a mild winter would be correct they didn’t order enough salt for the roads or fuel oil for schools and hospitals. Absolutely clueless!
That’s exactly what happened last year. Unbelievable. It’s beyond clueless and becoming distinctly negligent. People shortly (perhaps already?) will be calling for the Met Office to be sued for compensation because their forecasts are no better than wish lists. Meanwhile, wind farms continue their useless march across the landscape and the coastal waters — ‘Great’ Britain no more. I’m so sorry.
Now NIWA are predicting NZ snow levels out to 2090 based on “emission scenarios”
http://www.niwa.co.nz/news-and-publications/news/new-zealand-snow-areas-confident-they-will-adapt-to-any-risks-from-climate-change
The model is based on the one that the UK Met Office uses, just modified for NZ (but still forced by CO2).
See “Meteorology” https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/meteorology-001/#comment-32621
For those that follow the stoushes between Monbiot and Richard North (vis-a-vis the “Jungle Bunny theme), the new moniker for the absolutely clueless is:
“Bungle Johnnies”
Hum, you are casting blame that somehow the GW fund will shovel money from the poor to the rich…. ? If you believe this story line, then why are you so upset?
Wasn’t that the whole point of the free market agenda Seitz, Singer at. , the ACT party here and all have been fighting for all their lives? The right of corporations to privatize profits and assets but to socialize the ‘inconvenient externalities’ of the market such as pollution?
In the US it worked a treat where now the top few % of the people own the lion share of the wealth. http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
and the inequality is getting worse year by year.
So how come you are now pushing the conspiracy button?
“somehow the GW fund will shovel money from the poor to the rich…. ?”
I’ll assume you meant “rich to poor”.
The free market approach was a complete failure in the NZ electricity sector but a success in the UK as you can see up-thread.
The externalities are the responsibility of relevant authorities to enforce RMA and local ordinances – if a corporate pollutes, it should get pinged. No argument from me.
However, CO2 is not a pollutant and neither are CO2 levels an excuse to “shovel money from the rich to the poor” to remove the inequalities of an ideological perception.
The Green Climate Fund has nothing to do with the environment but everything to do with wealth re-distribution but no-one in NZ was able to vote on NZs consent to it at Cancun.
Therefore, New Zealanders rights have been overridden by dictatorial UN socialism in the guise of “climate change adaption and mitigation’.
Inequalities are an unfortunate fact of life. De-industrialization of wealthy countries is a brain-dead approach to what is the normal responsibility of those better off to assist those in adverse circumstances. Normal aid is already being undertaken through aid channels all over the world and NZ has been doing its fair share for decades and that includes Kiribati and Tuvalu. There is no need for a “Green Climate Fund” to supersede aid programmes and there’s no better example than the aid to earthquake stricken Haiti (except for the cholera spread by UN troops).
Samoht,
Re your addled analysis.
“Hum, you are casting blame that somehow the GW fund will shovel money from the poor to the rich…. ?”
I hope in light of your confusion (and for your sake) that your comment below found at Global Warming Inc’s NZ Head Office is not a self diagnosis.
“Madness is a refuge of the bewildered”
Thomas’ true colours = anti-corporate, anti-capitalism, anti-profit, anti-wealth. A perfect candidate for believing the CAGW claptrap. A perfect candidate for pushing socialism in his CAGW wheelbarrow.
Cancun, as Richard C rightly alluded to, had little to do with the environment. I would put it to Thomas that so does his agenda.
The report is in to Global Warming Inc’s NZ Head Office
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david winter December 17, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Just popped over to Treadgold’s site to see if he’d worked up a reply yet and… wow… those guys seem even more crazy than usual.
Like or Dislike: Thumb up 5 Thumb down 0
Reply
RW December 17, 2010 at 6:22 pm
I’m sure there will be more Treadgold lies and distortions aired in the media soon.
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Gareth December 17, 2010 at 6:54 pm
They’ve been letting their conspiratorial leanings show — Treadgold seems very taken with Monckton’s fantasies about climate change ushering in world government. Tin foil hat time, to be sure.
I’d guess that Treadgold is waiting for one of the senior C”S”C cranks to come up with a plausible-sounding complaint about the new series. Good luck with that, all they’ve ever had was the implausible and unreasonable…
Reply
laurence December 17, 2010 at 11:59 pm
“those guys seem even more crazy than usual.”
What! both of them?
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Thomas December 18, 2010 at 10:05 am
Definitely both the Richards over there are getting desperate. Madness is a refuge of the bewildered
Madness is a refuge of the bewildered
Sounds like a good example of psychological projection to me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
New Zealand Sovereignty: 1857, 1907, 1947, or 1987? [or 2010?]
August 2007
Parliamentary support, Research papers
SUMMARY
Introduction
Sovereignty
First Independent Steps
A Seventh Australian State?
1907
Trade Treaty
The Balfour Declaration
De Facto, Not De Jure, Independence
Statute Of Westminster
An “Unnecessary Legal Complication”
Wartime Necessities
New Zealand Day?
1947
Two Footnotes
1987
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2010 The Cancun Agreements
Turns out that the 2010 Cancun Agreements wont be written into NZs sovereignty history after all. The latest communication from the Ministry for the Environment up-thread casts a different light than that previous.
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2010/12/vast-political-conspiracy/#comment-32949
This part seems to indicate an opportunity to present a non-ratification case:-
“The government would need to carefully and cautiously consider the implications for New Zealand before deciding whether to sign and ratify any treaty that may come out of future negotiations.”
In this process:-
“a treaty needs to undergo a thorough National Interest Analysis, public consultation and be approved by both Cabinet and Parliament in order to become legally binding on New Zealand.”
Maybe democracy is not yet dead in New Zealand.
One hopes that Richard C is right.
The advice from the Ministry for the Environment is interesting. But these are the same folks who have advocated the waste of millions of dollars on this AGW cult and who pushed the crazy ETS.
Frankly, I prefer Monckton’s cautionary tale, and my own sources inside the Government caucus.
The latter warn of continuing departmental pressure to approve “Cancun” and the like.
Monckton, of course, has had the experience of the European Union ‘crats and their seizure of power to back his views. Capture by stealth, Monckton calls it. His recent analysis of Cancun is a masterpiece to which even the esteemed Rupert Wyndham would defer. Vigilence is essential.
Flipper, did you notice the difference between the TWO reports up-thread?
1) Paul Eastwood | Senior Advisor – Environment and Climate Change New Zealand Aid Programme / Environment Division Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
2) Roger Lincoln – Senior Policy Analyst, International Climate & Environment
Ministry for the Environment
The first that the Green Climate Fund and the Cancun Agreements were a done deal (1), the second that they were anything but (2).
Surprisingly, it’s the Environment Ministry report that says no deal yet.
A similar inquiry is being made to the equivalent Australian Climate Ministry by Wendy at JoNova, comment # 123 here:-
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/12/cancun-in-a-nutshell-nothing-achieved-but-its-a-big-pr-success/#comments
So we will be able to compare reports NZ-AU.
There’s already a difference in reports between those two NZ Ministries.
“done-deal” at the UN
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UN Urges Nations to Act on Cancún Agreements
Tuesday, 21 December 2010, 11:09 am
Press Release: United Nations
The United Nations climate change chief today called on countries to follow up on the recent conference in Cancún with higher global emissions cuts and the rapid launch of new institutions and funds.
…
“Cancún was a big step, bigger than many imagined might be possible. But the time has come for all of us to exceed our own expectations because nothing less will do,” said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres.
She stressed that the ‘Cancún Agreements’ needs to be implemented as quickly as possible, and be accompanied by “credible accountability systems that will help in measuring real progress.”
…
“All countries, but particularly industrialized nations, need to deepen their emission reduction efforts and to do so quickly,” said Ms. Figueres.
…
Ms. Figueres stressed that these institutions must be launched quickly, noting that millions of poor and vulnerable people around the world have been waiting years to get the full level of assistance they need.
…
“I expect in particular to see rapid decisions on appointing the board of the new Green Fund and the Committee of the Technology Mechanism. I also look forward to receiving the details of fast-start financing from industrialized countries so the secretariat can compile the information that shows clearly the amounts that have been raised and are being disbursed,” she said.
…
“Cancún has significantly expanded the menu of climate implementation and resources available to countries under the United Nations,” said Ms. Figures. “The imperative to act is now.”
…
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also highlighted the achievements of the Cancún conference in a message to the closing ceremony for the International Year of Biodiversity, held in the Japanese city of Kanazawa on Saturday.
In particular, he noted the important agreement reached on REDD Plus, backed by the financial resources to implement it. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is an effort to create a financial value for the carbon stored in forests, offering incentives for developing countries to reduce emissions from forested lands and invest in low-carbon paths to sustainable development.
…
Continues…….
Placed this comment under “Editorial: Cancun gains worthless with Kyoto in limbo”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/climate-change/news/article.cfm?c_id=26&objectid=10694111&pnum=4
Comments are still open
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Cancun Agreements
.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade – done deal
.
“This document, and hence all decisions contained therein, was adopted by consensus by the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC at its sixteenth session in Cancun, Mexico. The COP comprises all UN Member States, hence when a COP decision is adopted there is no need for an annex containing signatories, nor is there a separate document.”
.
Ministry for the Environment – no deal
.
“It’s also worth noting that the Cancun Agreements do not constitute a draft treaty. Thus New Zealand, and 193 other countries have pledged support for the continuation of efforts to reach a global treaty rather than ‘signing up’ to a legally binding agreement. The government would need to carefully and cautiously consider the implications for New Zealand before deciding whether to sign and ratify any treaty that may come out of future negotiations. As occurred with previous agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty needs to undergo a thorough National Interest Analysis, public consultation and be approved by both Cabinet and Parliament in order to become legally binding on New Zealand.”
.
Trade or Environment?
.
Hmmm