Cancun, Mexico
The sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) will be held in Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010, together with the thirty-third sessions of the subsidiary bodies and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA.
India on Wednesday said the developing countries would find it difficult to continue climate negotiations if second commitment period for Kyoto Protocol is not ratified at the next climate summit in Mexico starting this month. India’s stand emanates from deliberations at a recent meeting of Group of 77 (G-77) countries plus China in Mexico.
The protocol of which India and China are the biggest beneficiaries expires in 2012. Either a new regime has to be in place before end of 2011 or the United Nations has to agree on extension of the protocol.
Either of the options appears difficult as the United States and Australia are opposed to differentiated responsibility as enshrined in the protocol.
“If there is no extension of Kyoto Protocol at Cancun (Mexico) developing countries would find it difficult to continue with the negotiations,” Ramesh said after a two-day ministerial dialogue on climate change technologies in Delhi, where the ministers failed to reach any consensus.
The Cancun global warming boondoggle starts on November 29.
NCEP forecasts a massive Arctic blast to cover North America, Europe and Asia that week. I don’t think I have ever seen such widespread cold forecast this early in the winter season.
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
Climate summit set for rows on flying, cash and history
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News
# India has tabled a paper arguing that the EU’s plan to include international flights in its emissions trading scheme violates the UN climate convention.
# The analysis, seen by BBC News, is that industrialised countries should become net absorbers of CO2 rather than net emitters.
[Imagine Richard Black’s surprise when he discovers that they already are]
# Japan, Russia and Canada have made it plain that they will neither negotiate on the pledges they made unilaterally at Copenhagen, nor put them inside the Kyoto Protocol.
# Norway and Australia recently proposed that a new legal agreement should be wrapped up by 2015.
# Finance-sector companies have also warned [that delaying a political agreement could] weaken low-carbon investment.
Just in time for Durban: US backs off on UN Green Climate Fund
Posted on November 24, 2011 by Anthony Watts
Thanks perhaps in part to Climategate 2, it is looking less like success and more like FAIL at Durban. The US has backed off and now refuses to agree to structure and funding of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) “Green Climate Fund”. Just the name alone juxtaposed with the UN makes you want to run from it.
FT.com reports:
The US is refusing to sign off on a flagship global climate fund, as already fraught negotiations intensify ahead of next week’s UN climate summit and carbon prices plummet to new lows.
WWF and Oxfam pushing for a shipping tax at Durban COP17 – since when do NGO’s get to write tax laws?
Posted on December 6, 2011 by Anthony Watts
[…]
I find it very very troubling that NGO’s get to write tax laws to foist on private enterprise. Nobody elected the WWF nor Oxfam. Theses NGO’s are circumventing the democratic process.
These people have no business writing tax law proposals, especially when it appears part of the larder goes back to them. This is so wrong on so many levels.
Climate change, the Big corrupt business? by Khadija Sharife
Tom Goldtooth, head of the Indigenous Environmental Network talks to The Africa Report about the manipulation of carbon trading data and the double standards assumed by richer countries.
Goldtooth expresses his misgivings about agriculture being included as part of the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD). Arguing that “REDD is going to be the largest legal land grab the world has ever seen”, the indigenous North American warns of colonialism and forced privatisation. And according to him “those with the most money and power can – by remote control, lock up the largest land areas in developing countries”. “They are happiest to work with the most corrupt because it is easiest that way,” he says. Interview.
The Africa Report: How do indigenous peoples, such as yourself, perceive REDD?
UN Climate Draft Text Demands ‘New International Climate Court’ to compel reparations for ‘climate debt’ — Also seeks ‘rights of Mother Earth’ & 2C° drop in global temps
Friday, December 9th 2011, 6:27 AM EST
UN Draft Text Demands: The West will pay ‘climate debt’ because of its ‘historical responsibility’ for causing ‘global warming’ — UN seeks end to wars to ‘protect the climate system’
Durban: what the media are not telling you
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa
DURBAN, South Africa — “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.
Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is “Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention — Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean ‘for’] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.
The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN’s skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.
UN reports released in the last month show time is running out to achieve change. They show a warming planet will amplify droughts and floods, increase crop failures and raise sea levels to the point where several island states are threatened with extinction.
The dragging talks frustrated delegates from small islands and African states, who joined a protest by green groups outside as they tried to enter the main negotiating room.
“You need to save us, the islands can’t sink. We have a right to live, you can’t decide our destiny. We will have to be saved,” Maldives’ climate negotiator Mohamed Aslam said.
Fighting Hunger & Poverty: Oxfam just a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?
UK Charity, Oxfam has emerged a key play maker at Durban Climate Summit. Oxfam reportedly has nine people in various official government delegations. This includes the Bolivian country delegation containing an Oxfam member, the Bangladeshi delegation having three Oxfam members and Belgium two! But their nine infiltrations still come a poor second to top carbon profiteer, WWF with their 14 delegates. We can understand Belgium, but why should taxpayers of poor countries like Bolivia and Bangladesh pay Oxfam staff’s first class airfares, five star hotel and other perquisites?
As the graph illustrates, NGOs out-crowded by a mile, all other sections of party goers to the Durban Climate Summit. These NGO activists who are neither representatives of the people nor climatologists are masquerading as both at Durban. The official data on the party goers is available as Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3
A historic deal to halt the mass extinction of species has finally been agreed in what conservationists see as the most important international treaty aimed at preventing the collapse of the world’s wildlife.
Delegates from more than 190 countries meeting in Nagoya, Japan, agreed at the 11th hour on an ambitious conservation programme to protect global biodiversity and the natural habitats that support the most threatened animals and plants.
Here’s another scheme stupid enough to earn the epithet ‘rubbish’ http://www.scu.edu.au/news/media.php?item_id=1641&action=show_item&type=M
Southern Cross University is set to lead a project testing the world’s first Personal Carbon Trading program conducted in a ‘closed system’ island environment on Norfolk Island commencing early next year.
This follows the announcement this week of a Linkage Projects grant by the Australian Research Council valued at $390,000.
Leading chief investigator Professor Garry Egger, a Professor of Lifestyle Medicine and Applied Health Promotion at Southern Cross University, said the main goals of the project were to test the effectiveness of a Personal Carbon Trading scheme over a three year period; reduce per capita carbon emissions and reduce obesity and obesity related behaviours
…
The principal researchers of the Norfolk island Carbon/Health Evaluation study trialling a Personal carbon Trading program are: leading chief investigator, Professor Garry Egger, a Professor of Lifestyle Medicine and Applied Health Promotion at Southern Cross University; chief investigator, Professor Boyd Swinburn, Alfred Deakin Professor and director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University; chief investigator, Professor Robyn McDermott is a public health physician and professor of Public Health at the University of South Australia; and Professor Kerin O’Dea, director of the Sansom Institute for Health Research at the University of South Australia.
Tourists will be met at the airport by the carbon adviser who will issue them with their permits. The first two weeks will be spent planting trees to offset the emissions from the air flight to get there.
Britain is already phasing out traditional bulbs as part of European regulations to save energy, with high wattage bulbs no longer on the shelves.
The scheme has been unpopular with many because compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) take longer to warm up and can give some people headaches.
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For an alternative – see
German “heatball” wheeze outwits EU light bulb ban
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German entrepreneur is bypassing a European Union ban on light bulbs of more than 60 watts by marketing his own brand as mini heaters.
Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have come up with a legal way of importing and distributing 75 and 100 watt light bulbs — by producing them in China, importing them as “small heating devices” and selling them as “heatballs.”
CANCUN – Should airline passengers pay a small tax to help out? How about global money dealers? Or perhaps governments should take what they spend on subsidising petrol prices and put it towards the climate cause.
Delegates to the United Nations climate conference hope to agree in its final days on setting up a new “green fund” to help poorer countries grapple with global warming. Then the real arguments will begin – over where the cash will come from.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon stepped into the middle of the debate earlier this year by enlisting a high-level group of international political and financial leaders to offer advice.
Ban yesterday said it would be “challenging but feasible” to raise US$100 billion ($133 billion) a year by 2020, as promised by richer nations at last year’s climate conference in Copenhagen.
Besides the green fund, the meeting of parties to the 193-nation UN climate treaty may also agree on ways to make it easier for poorer nations to obtain patented green technology.
But negotiators won’t produce a sweeping deal to succeed the relatively modest Kyoto Protocol after 2012, one that would slash greenhouse gases to curb climate change.
The US has long refused to join Kyoto, which mandates limited emissions reductions by richer nations.
The green fund would be considered a key success for Cancun, but many details would remain to be worked out later.
The financing would help developing nations buy advanced technology to reduce emissions, and to adapt to climate change, such as building seawalls against rising seas.
Behind closed doors, haggling over proposed decisions, delegates duelled over what developing nations considered an inadequate goal – the US$100 billion a year by 2020.
The developing south views such finance not as aid but as compensation for the looming damage from two centuries of northern industrial emissions, and propose that the richer countries commit 1.5 per cent of their annual gross domestic product – today roughly US$600 billion a year.
Northern delegations resisted such ambitious targets.
In the Cancun talks, northern delegations leaned towards the conclusions of Ban’s advisory group as the basis for the inevitably intense debate over funding.
The group’s final report last month said the greatest contributions should come from private investment and from “carbon pricing,” either a direct tax broadly on emissions tonnage from power plants and other industrial sources or a system of auctioning off emissions allowances that could be traded among industrial emitters.
The UN advisers also see possible revenue sources in a tax or trading system for fuel emissions of international airliners and merchant ships, or a fee on air tickets, with a potential for US$10 billion a year.
They also suggested a levy on foreign-exchange transactions, producing possibly another US$10 billion, and removal of government subsidies of fossil fuels, with the money redirected to a climate fund.
UN’s top drylands official says people must be paid via global carbon markets for preserving the soil
Desertification and land degradation is “the greatest environmental challenge of our time” and “a threat to global wellbeing”, according to the UN’s top drylands official, Luc Gnacadja, who says people must be paid via global carbon markets for preserving the soil. The executive secretary of UN’s Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), will today launch the UN decade for the fight against desertification in London.
“The top 20cm of soil is all that stands between us and extinction,” he told the Guardian. Conflicts and food price crises all stem from the degradation of land, he added.
Desertification and land degradation is “the greatest environmental challenge of our time” and “a threat to global wellbeing”, according to the UN’s top drylands official, who says people must be paid via global carbon markets for preserving the soil.
Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of UN’s Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), will today [Monday] launch the UN decade for the fight against desertification in London. “The top 20cm of soil is all that stands between us and extinction,” he told the Guardian.
Land conflicts in Somalia, dust storms in Asia and the food price crises of recent years all stem from the degradation of land, he said, due to overuse by humans and the impacts of global warming. Since the early 1980s, a quarter of the planet’s land has been despoiled and 1% a year continues to be lost.
John Hilvert
ITNews December 17, 2010
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Note: the following reprint violates copyright so please everyone – follow the above link to the source publication and give credit where it is due. Perhaps leave a comment or a Facebook recommendation (3756 recommendations so far).
——————————————————————————————————————– WikiLeaks sparks push for tighter controls.
The United Nations is considering whether to set up an inter-governmental working group to harmonise global efforts by policy makers to regulate the internet.
Establishment of such a group has the backing of several countries, spearheaded by Brazil.
At a meeting in New York on Wednesday, representatives from Brazil called for an international body made up of Government representatives that would to attempt to create global standards for policing the internet – specifically in reaction to challenges such as WikiLeaks.
The Brazilian delegate stressed, however, that this should not be seen as a call for a “takeover” of the internet.
India, South Africa, China and Saudi Arabia appeared to favour a new possible over-arching inter-government body.
However, Australia, US, UK, Belgium and Canada and attending business and community representatives argued there were risks in forming yet another working group that might isolate itself from the industry, community users and the general public.
“My concern is that if we were to make a move to form a governmental-only body then that would send a very strong signal to civil society that their valuable contribution was not required or was not being looked for,” an un-named Australian representative told the meeting.
Debate on the creation of a new inter-governmental body stemmed from a UN Economic and Social Council resolution 2010/2 of 19 July.
The resolution invited the UN Secretary-General “to convene open and inclusive consultations involving all Member States and all other stakeholders with a view to assisting the process towards enhanced cooperation in order to enable Governments on an equal footing to carry out their roles and responsibilities in respect of international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet but not of the day-to-day technical and operational matters that do not impact upon those issues.”
Much debate concerned the meaning of “enhanced cooperation” and whether a new inter-governmental body was required. Participants also debated the roles of existing organisations – such as the Internet Governance Forum, ICANN and the ITU.
The IGF – an organisation that informs the UN but makes no decisions – is running close to the end of a five-year mandate, due to expire at the end of the year.
The likes of ISOC, ICANN and more recently the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) have recently expressed concerns [PDF] that a working panel to decide on the future of the IGF has been limited to representatives from member-states.
“Australia is a very strong supporter of the Internet Governance Forum,” the unidentified Australian UN representative said at the New York meeting this week. “That is very much due to the multi-stake-holder approach of the IGF. It is an inclusive process.”
Australia’s Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said that Australian Government welcomed the resolution of the Second Committee of the United Nation General Assembly (UNGA) to extend the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) for a further five years.
The DBCDE said it would like to see the organisation retain an open and participatory membership.
“Australia has always supported the participation of civil society and the private sector in the IGF and regards their participation as being integral to the IGF’s success,” a spokesman told iTnews.
One of the more astute comments
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louis.wu
Dec 18, 2010 5:47 AM
First, I agree with much of the sentiment expressed about the UN in the previous posts. Happy to see such consensus.
As for Assange and WikiLeaks; exposing corruption is one thing, and should always be commended, but what WikiLeaks did with the wholesale and indiscriminant release of confidential cables was over the top. That, combined with the demonstration by “Anonymous” of their ability to affect internet commerce, has given the UN and other governments just the “crisis” they needed to “justify” controlling the internet. It was a very bad move.
As for any doubts that the internet can be controlled… divest yourself of those doubts right now. Access and use can be controlled easily. They can insist on installation of new routers and firewalls to monitor all traffic, everywhere, and permit only licensed devices to have access. It can be done, they will do it, and no amount of yelling and screaming about it will stop them.
If you still live in a country where you are free to elect your representatives, stop voting for people who embrace collectivism and the centralization of power, both nationally and globally. There might yet be time to turn the tide. Otherwise, you might want to invest in a shortwave radio.
“The majority of our members are on board to reform the corrupt and mismanaged U.N. and get a much better return for our dollars,” Ros-Lehtinen says. “Cutting the budget is not enough, because you need to reform the monster, you need to reform the beast, and if you don’t get fundamental reform, you are still rewarding a corrupt, mismanaged agency.”
Helen Clark’s UNDP under fire (huge report)
—————————————————————————————————————————– How Well Does a U.N. Agency Do Its Pricey ‘Green Job’? Not That Well, Study Says
EXCLUSIVE: How much money did the United Nations Development Program, the U.N.’s flagship anti-poverty agency, spend to create 5,280 “green” jobs around the world?
UNDP has said the price tag is $53.9 million—an average of $10,208 per job spent in 2010 on 135 environmental projects world-wide.
But according to documentation obtained by Fox News, the projects that generated those jobs have a total cost of about $1.68 billion—which would work out to a much more staggering average figure of about $288,700 per job.
The wildly differing size of those price tags for a fairly trivial amount of employment emerged as part of a muted rebranding effort at UNDP. Top
management is trying to burnish some of its credentials in the face of internal critics who feel that when it comes to merging environmental management and economic development to solve poverty problems, UNDP is not very good at its job.
About 5000 dead, 300,000 ill, and a medical emergency that has already lasted six months. But now the people of Haiti have someone to blame for the cholera outbreak that has swept through their earthquake-ravaged country: the blue-helmeted peacekeepers of the United Nations.
A report into the epidemic, which began last October, has concluded that it was almost certainly caused by a poorly-constructed sanitation system installed at a rural camp used by several hundred UN troops who originally came from Nepal. The virulent strain of cholera bacteria began infecting locals after faecal matter from their base seeped from badly-designed septic pits into the Meye River, a tributary of the Artibonite River in the country’s central region.
[Snip}
With the rainy season approaching, health experts fear cholera could add to their woes by infecting a further 500,000 people.
That would represent a public relations disaster for the UN mission.
By JOHN HEILPRIN
The Associated Press
updated 5/12/2011 7:03:48 AM ET 2011-05-12T11:03:48
GENEVA — The global economy could reduce $100 billion a year in climate change-linked losses by providing the most vulnerable countries with “climate services” to help them prepare, a United Nations expert panel recommended Thursday.
The panel proposed creating a $75 million-a-year U.N.-administered agency, or program, to help developing nations deal with an increasing onslaught of tropical cyclones, storm surges, floods and droughts.
The World Meteorological Organization — the U.N.’s weather agency — said most of the funding would come through development aid, and then be handed out for specific projects in the most vulnerable nations.
It said in a statement that more surveillance and early warning information is needed because about 90 percent of disasters in recent decades were caused by weather or climate-related hazards. It said the findings were based on concerns raised at a 2009 world climate conference
We want to make “the best possible information available to decision-makers,” organization director Michel Jarraud said.
The WMO said that the hazards currently lead to economic losses of $100 billion per year, “are rising, and can inhibit the pace of development by years if not decades.”
The panel was co-chaired by former U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland, who now heads the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and former Egyptian water minister Mahmoud Abu Zeid.
Egeland said better flood monitoring and other early warning climate-service systems would produce “great benefits in terms of reduced disaster risks, increased food security, improved health and more effective adaptation to climate change.”
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
An AP article note – a major MSM source of CC propaganda. Along with John Heilprin, beware of Seth Borenstein. See:-
Friday, June 27, 2008
Does AP “Science” writer Seth Borenstein not have access to the Internet?
The Associated Press: This summer may see first ice-free North Pole
Last August, the Northwest Passage was open to navigation for the first time in memory.
Hey Seth–would you PLEASE read this, and then stop making that embarrassing claim?!
The Northwest Passage was successfully navigated in 1906, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, 1984, 1988, and 2000 (and probably in other years as well).
UN security council to consider climate change peacekeeping
A special meeting of the United Nations security council is due to consider whether to expand its mission to keep the peace in an era of climate change.
Small island states, which could disappear beneath rising seas, are pushing the security council to intervene to combat the threat to their existence.
There has been talk, meanwhile, of a new environmental peacekeeping force – green helmets – which could step into conflicts caused by shrinking resources.
Ban Ki-Moon now in Auckland said “climate change was a threat to humanity” (tacitly assumed to be anthropogenic of course) .. “With waves rising ever higher in this neighbourhood, the oceans are also sending a signal that something is seriously wrong with our current model of economic development.”.
For which he receives an unquestioning “rapturous welcome”. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10749930
The NZ Herald has done a sneak edit to their headline – yesterday they hilariously proclaimed “Climate change is lapping at our feet”
With the Western nations continuing their downward economic spiral, the advocates of the United Nations’ redistributionist schemes also continue to exploit the environmental agenda in their effort to fundamentally alter the global economy to serve their own ends.
Despite the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009 to achieve its goal of a treaty binding the industrialized world to an economic suicide pact, the “voluntary” agreements are still a threat to the West. The UN is engaged in an effort to use the imagined environmental crisis as the justification for a program of sweeping economic redistribution that would shift trillions of dollars from the industrialized nations to the Third World. The UN is now demanding an “investment” of $1.9 trillion per year in “green technology” to meet the goals that the internationalists have set for the nations of the world. An AFP story entitled “World needs $1.9tn a year for green technology:UN” sets forth the lament of an elite for whom “real money” is measured in tens of trillions of dollars:
United Nations boss Ban Ki-moon has urged sceptical Australians to face up to the “alarming” reality of climate change as he wrapped up a week-long tour of the Pacific.
The UN Secretary-General on Friday said his visit to the low-lying Pacific Island nation of Kiribati this week had reinforced his belief climate change is humankind’s biggest challenge.
“For those people who are still sceptical about the impact of climate change then I would invite them to visit Kiribati,” Mr Ban told journalists in Canberra.
“I would invite them to visit [Central Asia’s] Aral Sea or [Africa’s] Lake Chad.
“You will see very clearly that something is happening much, much faster than you may think. This is alarming.”
Mr Ban said he has made an effort to see first-hand the places where climate change is having the biggest impact.
He described a helicopter flight over Lake Chad – which has been reduced to a “pond” one-10th of its original size – and a plane flight of Aral Sea.
“The Aral Sea was more shocking,” he said.
“What I saw was continuing, endless seabed, now only salt. There was no single drop of water I could see.”
Mr Ban said the science of climate change was clear.
Shrinking African Lake Offers Lesson on Finite Resources
Massive irrigation projects to combat the drier climate diverted water from both the lake and the two main rivers that empty into it, the Chari and the Logone.
The situation is a “domino effect,” the researchers say. Overgrazing reduces vegetation, which in turn reduces the ecosystem’s ability to recycle moisture back into the atmosphere. That contributes to the retreat of the monsoons. The consequent drought conditions have triggered a huge increase in the use of lake water for irrigation,
The two rivers that feed it are the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, respectively reaching the Sea through the South and the North. The Soviet government decided in the 1960s to divert those rivers so that they could irrigate the desert region surrounding the Sea in order to favor agriculture rather than supply the Aral Sea basin. The reason why we decided to explore the implications up to today of this human alteration of the environment is precisely that certain characteristics of the region, from its geography to its population growth, account for dramatic consequences since the canals have been dug. Those consequences range from unexpected climate feedbacks to public health issues, affecting the lives of millions of people in and out of the region.
By establishing a program to promote agriculture and especially that of cotton, Soviet government led by Khrouchtchev in the 1950s deliberately deprived the Aral Sea of its two main sources of water income, which almost immediately led to less water arriving to the sea. Not only was all this water being diverted into canals at the expense of the Aral Sea supply, but the majority of it was being soaked up by the desert and blatantly wasted (between 25% and 75% of it, depending on the time period). The water level in the Aral Sea started drastically decreasing from the 1960s onward. In normal conditions, the Aral Sea gets approximately one fifth of its water supply through rainfall, while the rest is delivered to it by the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. Evaporation causes the water level to decrease by the same amount that flows into the Sea, making it sustainable as long as inflow is equal to evaporation on average. Therefore the diversion of rivers is at the origin of the imbalance that caused the sea to slowly desiccate over the last 4 decades.
Per Wikileaks Documents, The UN’s Climate Change Programs Are Total Failure – Looks Like Fraud
Read here. Wikileaks, the organization dedicated to exposing the dark underbelly of big government, has published documents regarding the UN’s climate program known as the “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM). In essence, the program has been an abject failure bordering on flagrant corruption.
“What has leaked just confirms our view that in its present form the CDM is basically a farce,” says Eva Filzmoser, programme director of CDM Watch, a Brussels-based watchdog organization. The revelations imply that millions of tonnes of claimed reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions are mere phantoms, she says, and potentially cast doubt over the principle of carbon trading. “In the face of these comments it is no wonder that the United States has backed away from emission trading,” Filzmoser says.”
Obviously, the CDM program had two principal functions, neither of which concerned a better environment. The first was to enhance the investment profitability of wealthy “green” investors; the second being a massive transfer of wealth from the taxpayers of advanced countries to countries incapable of producing their own prosperity without some form of subsidized theft.
The entire climate change endeavor sponsored by the United Nations is essentially a gigantic fraud, propelled by leftists and greens dedicated to no growth, no prosperity policies. The actual quotes from “elites” who support the UN’s “green” policies confirms everything that Wikileaks is now discovering.
Wikileaks: Major UN Climate Programme ‘Basically A Farce’
Today’s climate campaign embarrassment comes to us courtesy of Nature magazine once again, which has a story in the current issue about how the UN’s “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM), which was essentially a fig leaf for wealth transfers from industrialized nations to poor developing nations, isn’t working according to plan. The CDM is a prototype for a global cap and trade system, whereby industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions would pay to “offset” their emissions by paying for projects that would reduce the growth of emissions in developing nations like China and India.
There has been rampant fraud in this program since the beginning, which is a feature rather than a bug for the UN of course. Naturally the UN wants to expand this program and increase the amount of money rich nations send to poor nations, since, as one leading German climate diplomat, Ottmar Edenhoffer, put it indelicately last fall: “But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
[The CDM] allows rich countries to offset some of their carbon emissions by investing in climate-friendly projects, such as hydroelectric power and wind farms, in developing countries. Verified projects earn certified emission reductions (CERs) — carbon credits that can be bought and sold, and count towards meeting rich nations’ carbon-reduction targets.
But a diplomatic cable published last month by the WikiLeaks website reveals that most of the CDM projects in India should not have been certified because they did not reduce emissions beyond those that would have been achieved without foreign investment. Indian officials have apparently known about the problem for at least two years.
I am still unclear how this all works. Do the general public pay $12.50 for CO2 permits (via increased fuel costs etc) and then the emitters can purchase offsets from India and the like, at reduced cost, with no accountability or transparency?
As the document says:
The Panel believes that while the intention of the ETS is to change behaviour, it should also allow for flexibility as to how participants meet their obligations. If participants can meet their obligations at lower cost by purchasing emissions units from international markets then this should be allowed. This is a key measure for mitigating against excessive short‐term costs whilst also being consistent with an international framework (paragraph 63).
I think there’s at least 2 mechanisms at work in “domestic compliance”.
1) The fuel levy is an unavoidable tax prior to emission that ensures obligations are met by blanket coverage of the general public and there’s no way I know of to offset the subsequent emissions and claim a rebate.
2) Where CERs come in is for those participating in the ETS that have a reporting obligation post emission. CERs are an option “To provide participants with access to the lowest cost form of abatement” i.e. an offset (I see the EU is imposing restrictions on this).
So potential purchasers of CERs will be say a cement works (and they’re probably not fussy about the provenance if it’s a CDM approved unit) but the govt will eventually have a short-fall of units and will have to purchase units but what unit and will they buy on the primary or secondary market? Will they just accept the CDM certification or will they do a background check of the provenance especially if they’re LDC units? I doubt it unless there’s public pressure for them to do so.
The “accountability or transparency” is in the certification process. A primary market supplier (e.g. to the UN) can offer units as soon as they are certified and that certification stays with the unit once it is resold into the secondary market.
Right now it seems that the UN is not only accepting ineffective and corruptly certified CERs but they’re flooding the primary market with them. I doubt the Chinese €8 lower limit will set a price floor in that case on the secondary market. If someone wants to unload for less there will be a queue of willing buyers on the secondary market all bidding at next to nothing.
That’s my understanding, subject to change at a moments notice.
Certification looks like a bag of snakes, see GOLD STANDARD FOUNDATION (Note the WWF logo at the bottom of the page)
A little more background before moving to an to an ETS thread
————————————————————————————————————————— Forest carbon markets grow, despite uncertainty
30 September 2011
The State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2011 report, published yesterday by information provider Ecosystem Marketplace, says that 30.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) were contracted last year, valued at $178 million in total. These figures cover both primary deals – made directly with a project – and subsequent secondary market transactions in both the voluntary and regulated carbon markets.
However, the vast majority (29.0 MtCO2e) of deals were in the primary market, and about two-thirds (19.5 MtCO2e) of that was from REDD projects. Other project types tracked in the survey were improved forestry management, afforestation/reforestation and agro-forestry.
More than 90% of 2010’s deals were for voluntary carbon credits; less than 10% were done in the regulated markets of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme.
Average primary offset prices climbed to $5.5 per tCO2e in 2012, up from $4.5 in 2009 and $3.8 in 2008, the report says.
In comparison, average prices in the secondary market for certified emission reductions (CERs) from CDM projects – the most liquid offsets market in the world – also climbed, to about €12.40 ($16.74) in 2010 from around €11.80 in 2009, for the December contract on the European Climate Exchange. However, in 2008, the CER price averaged around €17.80.
Projects in Latin America supplied almost half of the forest credits, while European buyers were the largest source of demand, taking at least one-third of the volumes.
Almost half of the credits were verified to the Verified Carbon Standard [VCS] and the Climate, Community and Biodiversity standard [CCBS]. [What about the other half?]
>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.environmental-finance.com/news/view/2018
—————————————————————————————————————————
Looks like the secondary market is above the Chinese €8 “floor” at €12.40 but it’s the primary price that is well below at €4 (assuming my cross-rate calc from their $5.5 price is correct by using €12.40 = $16.74). I thought it would be the other way around.
Also surprised that less than 10% of deals were done through secondary markets (CDM and NSW GGAS), the other 90% being primary (and presumably much of that of varying regulatory status). Again I thought it would be the other way around. European voluntary demand must be setting the primary market price and compliance is setting the secondary price but that doesn’t make sense.
Why would a commercial entity requiring CERs for compliance buy on the secondary market at €12.40 when they could buy primary units at €4?
If this article has got the numbers right, it’s just a matter of sourcing €4 units from a primary supplier and immediately selling on the secondary market at €12.40 for an €8 profit but traders would see that in an instant and the margin would close just as quickly.
UN offsets for delivery in December dropped as much as 1.9 percent to a record 7.12 euros ($9.80) a ton on the ICE Futures Europe exchange and were at 7.13 euros as of 5:11 p.m. in London today.
This topic is begging for investigation, so I applaud what you’ve presented so far, Richard and Andy. I’m completely tied up in editing work right now, or I’d be at it hammer and tongs. I mean the research.
In the absence of (much) public interest in or understanding of the scientific issues, the money represents the best chance of attracting people’s attention.
Isn’t there an ETS thread? Do you want me to put up a short post on the ETS to start things off again?
Yes, agreed Richard, it’s best to move this discussion to an ETS thread.
I completely agree that the public are much more likely to show an interest if it is their money being squandered and/or lining the pockets of corporates.
Monday, 03 October 2011 09:19 Arthur Neslen, EurActiv
The reported killing of 23 Honduran farmers in a dispute with the owners of UN-accredited palm oil plantations in Honduras is forcing the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) executive board to reconsider its stakeholder consultation processes.
A recent example of a significant international loan is project 27250 by the International
Financial Corporation (IFC), an entity of the World Bank Group that co-finances the project,
providing 30 million USD of the sum total of 75 million USD to the Dinant Corporation, owned
by businessman Miguel Facussé.
30 However, on the 11 April 2011, the German Investment and Development Society (DEG)
decided to suspend their contractual relationship with the Dinant Corporation and not grant the agreed upon loan. DEG received the preliminary report and began a dialogue with the international fact finding mission. After analysing the situation, the public bank that manages German development funds, decided to withdraw their final support from the project. Furthermore, the Clean Development Mechanism´s Executive Board (CDM) and the British government are reviewing their authorisation of controversial carbon offsetting project in the Bajo Aguán: Due to the reported human rights situation, EDF Trading, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Electricité de France SA and one of the biggest CDM investors, pulled out of a contract to buy carbon credits of around 2.8 million dollar from the project.
See “Forced evictions in Bajo Aguán” and “The transfer of lands to the MUCA communities” and “The transference of CREM lands to the MCA communities”
An official with the European Commission’s directorate-general for Energy told EurActiv that including human rights in the criteria for assessing CDM projects would be “very difficult”.
“You can say that ‘human rights’ means the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and check every project for compliance, but I think that takes us very far and the practicalities of it would be very difficult,” he said.
PANAMA CITY — With just weeks to go before UN talks on climate change open in South Africa, negotiators have shifted their goal from striking a historic deal to ensuring that the global system survives.
Participants have long billed the conference opening on November 28 in Durban as a last chance to find a way forward on fighting climate change, with the Kyoto Protocol’s commitments to cut carbon emissions expiring after 2012.
Officials from key nations reported progress in preparatory talks that closed Friday in Panama City — not in resolving the most knotty issues, but in starting to work out a technical framework for the future.
[…]
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said that one solution would be for some economies to recommit under Kyoto “to uphold the rules-based system,” with other nations making pledges that are “rigorous” but outside the treaty.
“Governments are exploring precisely those middle-ground solutions,” she said. “That is going to be the crux of Durban.”
Here’s hoping that negotiators opt for “very loose” pledges “outside the treaty” and by “very loose” I mean: yeah, we might look at that after we’ve dealt with our collapsing financial and economic situation.
I’ll start a thread header under “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)” up-thread (see link) once the Durban gabfest gets going.
Annual joint conference of the UN and NGO’s concludes in Germany with calls for sustainable development with public engagement
By fundsforngos, on September 13th, 2011
Recently concluded annual joint conference of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Bonn, Germany has called the civil society to encourage people that they must realize that their local concerns were connected to the larger global issues.
This year’s conference was on the theme “Sustainable Societies Responsive Citizens” and it provided an opportunity for NGOs and civil society to interact as they prepare for next year’s UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Brazil.
The three-day 64th annual conference of the UN and NGOs was organized by the Department of Public Information (DPI), in partnership with the DPI/NGO Executive Committee, Germany and the UN Volunteers (UNV) program. The delegates at conference were of the view that the dots between civil society groups dealing with various issues for greater impact on global problems need to be connected.
I did a case study of Invensys plc (2002 revenues $22.9b) as part of an NZIM mgt intro assignment back in 2002. Invensys were then about production mgt and energy mgt and had embraced sustainable development as their core customer offering with part of the environmental intent being a reduction of GHGs under the 1997 Kyoto agreement. The sustainable development concept seemed to me then to be best corporate practice and especially in the case of Invensys but I now see that companies like Invensys can never implement the UN, NGO, WWF or Civil Society version of it even though they are signatories to the UN Global Compact and sustainable development is an executive implementation.
Industry is incompatible with the underlying anti-industry anti-capital conception of sustainable development that pervades the aims of the NGOs that align with and live off the UN so there’s an inevitable clash of interests like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that companies like Invensys will face eventually despite their attempts to create an acceptable corporate ethos.
Industry is incompatible with the underlying anti-industry anti-capital conception
Bingo!
This is why I posted to “Pure Advantage” after they embraced Greenpeace:
“Why does an organisation that supposedly represents business interests support an organisation (Greenpeace) that according to its co-founder Dr Patrick Moore, had become “anti-intellectual, anti-science, and ultimately anti-human”?
I’ve just been looking into what the UN terms “Flow of Funds” and in this respect Greenpeace is something of an outsider i.e. they collect donations and use them in their own spheres of activism – no gifting or sharing with others.
From what I can gather, Greenpeace is not a participant (in flow-of-funds terms) in philanthropic grants, projects and initiatives such as the UN Green Climate Fund so although they are activists they make no financial contribution to reducing poverty and achieving sustainable development in underdeveloped countries. All the more reason for Pure Advantage not to embrace Greenpeace because they’re about saving the planet, they don’t give a toss about humanitarian issues hence the “anti-human” tag – that’s the point of difference.
It has occurred to me while trying to unravel the competition for funding by NGOs that the UNDP (Helen Clark’s group) has set NGOs that work in the interests of underdeveloped countries in conflict and competition with the governments of those same countries. Here it is in:-
Blending Climate Finance Through National Climate Funds
A Guidebook for the Design and Establishment of National Funds to Achieve Climate Change Priorities (September 2011)
The UNDP is advising national governments how to design and establish National Climate Funds (NCFs) with the aim: “to support countries to collect, coordinate, blend and account for climate finance”. Problem being that Figure 1: shows Climate Change Finance: Sources, Agents and Channels. CSOs/NGOs obtain funding from Govt and Private Cooperation but NCFs also tap those sources so there’s a lopsided fight over funding sources. Read more here:-
UNDP initiates guidebook to address issues on climate change
On the other hand, it has been an eye-opener to see that a limited liability company in that link (fundsforngos LLC) is the middleman in a massive marketplace for NGO funding. Latest climate funding is under Latest Funds for NGOs >> By Theme >> Environment and fund sources are under Foundation Funds for NGOs, see >> Bilaterals for NZAID and AUSAID.
The big tickets though are under Foundation Funds for NGOs >> Foundations e.g.:-
World Vision to undertake $200 Million Clinton Global Initiative
USAID Commits $127 Million to support Development in Ghana
$40,000 awarded in environmental grants by Ford
Grant Worth $136 million Awarded by USDA
Foreign Minister announces $64 million for health in Papua New Guinea
USAID grants $65 m to Nepal for development projects
Local NGOs receive World Bank 2011 Civil Society Fund Grants
AECF awards US$ 9.2 m to 11 E. Africa firms
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Save the Children honors corporate partners at first Awards
EU gives EUR 7,200,000 to Support Rural Electrification in Tanzania
BHP Billiton gives US$25 million grant for African women’s and children’s health initiatives
China enters into agreement with 200 NGOs from 19 African countries to work together towards development in their countries
So that’s the existing “Flow of Funds” (with all its attendant ulterior motives) but now there’s a complication, or as the UNDP puts it:-
“Climate change is one of the most pressing threats to development today. Addressing climate change requires that countries transform their economies and grow in a di#erent way — climate and development planning must be integrated so that policies and actions across multiple sectors and scales lower greenhouse gas emissions, reduce vulnerability to climate shocks and deliver poverty reduction gains.
The good news is that countries have new and expanded opportunities to finance climate change actions — billions from the public and private sectors will be channeled toward climate activities”.
And,
“By pledging $30 billion in climate change finance by 2012 and up to $100 billion annually by 2020, governments have ushered in a new era of funding for climate change. Only ten years ago, climate finance was managed by a small number of large funds associated with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. Today, there has been an explosion of public, private, bilateral and multilateral sources that o#er countries new opportunities to address their climate and development needs”.
In Australia there’s another competitor for govt allocated aid funds – corporates. The Australian aid pie is analyzed here:-
Who profits from our foreign aid?: carving up the pie, where the little-known dominate
# Corporations get the majority of Australian aid contracts and nearly 85% of the value of those contracts
# Six corporations get between them more than half of the value of the contracts
# A dramatic shift from NGOs to corporates took place over the Howard years — before 2003, NGOs got a larger share of contracts
Financially the NGO sector is tiny, out of Australia’s $4.3 billion 2010/2011 aid budget, only $135 million is allocated to NGOs and community engagement programs, this amounts to a mere 2.5%
Given that the existing flow-of-funds addresses many diverse issues and climate issues being just one issue that is already being addressed (e.g. NZAID, AUSAID – Tuvalu) and the major donors are already active, I cannot see that “billions from the public and private sectors will be channeled toward climate activities”. The fund source pie is about as big now as it will ever get and the marketplace is already established.
Donor corporates will immediately switch to more receptive avenues too if the dog they feed bites the hand that feeds it (the sustainable development conflict of interest).
The UN’s prospect of “billions” does still have a small but vocal fan base even though the funding sources are doubtful:-
Small nations push climate at Commonwealth talks
Pacific island and other small countries being punished by global warming will use a Commonwealth summit this week to ramp up pressure on powerful nations in the climate change debate. Setting the stage for the three-day event, Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi hit out at major polluters the United States and China for not doing enough to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
[…]
He also called for rich nations to fulfill their promises to provide small countries with billions of dollars in funds so they can adapt to rising sea waters and extreme weather events that scientists blame on climate change.
UN climate talks that begin next month in coincide with a global financial crisis hurting efforts to raise money to fight climate change, the UN’s climate chief said on Wednesday.
“This is not the best time to be talking about finance, because all developed countries are in a financial crisis,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told a press briefing ahead of the November 28 to December 9 talks in Durban.
[…]
Negotiators are trying to raise money for a Green Climate Fund that would give $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing countries to help fight climate change and its effects.
The fund was agreed at the 2010 climate talks in Cancun, but negotiators still have to hammer out where the money will come from and how it will be managed.
EXCLUSIVE: UN Chief, Aides Plot ‘green Economy’ Agenda At Upcoming Summit | Fox News
At a closed-door retreat in a Long Island mansion late last October, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his topmost aides brainstormed about how the global organization could benefit from a “unique opportunity” to reshape the world, starting with the Rio + 20 Summit on Sustainable Development, which takes place in Brazil in June.
A copy of the confidential minutes of the meeting was obtained by Fox News. According to that document, the 29-member group, known as the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB), discussed bold ambitions that stretch for years beyond the Rio conclave to consolidate a radical new global green economy, promote a spectrum of sweeping new social policies and build an even more important role for U.N. institutions “ to manage the process of globalization better.”
At the same time, the gathering acknowledged that their ambitions were on extremely shaky ground, starting with the fact that, as Ban’s chief organizer for the Rio gathering put it, “there was still no agreement on the definition of the green economy, the main theme of the [Rio] conference.”
Peter Gleick’s Actions Exposes “End Justifies Means” Mentality: Poses Problem for UN Agenda 21
Written by Dr. Tim Ball, guest post | February 25 2012
[…]
Gleick’s activities apparently manifest a groupthink mentality of several faculty at Stanford University. The late faculty member and grandfather of IPCC, Stephen Schneider, delineated it in Discover magazine in 1989.
“On the one hand we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but, which means that we must include all the doubts, caveats, ifs and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists, but human beings as well. And like most people, wed like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we have to get some broad-based support, to capture the publics imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This double ethical bind which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.”
UN scientists warn of increased groundwater demands due to climate change
SAN FRANCISCO, March 1, 2012 — Climate change has been studied extensively, but a new body of research guided by a San Francisco State University hydrologist looks beneath the surface of the phenomenon and finds that climate change will put particular strain on one of our most important natural resources: groundwater.
SF State Assistant Professor of Geosciences Jason Gurdak says that as precipitation becomes less frequent due to climate change, lake and reservoir levels will drop and people will increasingly turn to groundwater for agricultural, industrial, and drinking water needs. The resource accounts for nearly half of all drinking water worldwide, but recharges at a much slower rate than aboveground water sources and in many cases is nonrenewable.
2012/3/22
I want to thank the organizers of this conference, ‘The Perils of Global Intolerance.’ It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today’s distinguished speakers.
I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this ‘Durban Conference’ which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kind of oppression.
It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel .
The UN has itself become a tool against Israel . For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state – Israel . Hitler couldn’t have been made happier!
The ‘Durban Conference’ is an outrage. All decent people will know that. But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.
Please hear me out.
By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.
For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan — Christians and Muslims alike — have been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum .
In South Sudan , my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.
The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them, and they are treated with a special privilege.
Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan ‘s conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur ? It is not a “tribal conflict.”
[…]
The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish – led American Anti-Slavery Group — sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.
But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.
My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League!
1. We, the heads of State and Government and high level representatives, having met at Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil, from 20-22 June 2012, with full participation of civil society, renew our
commitment to sustainable development, and to ensure the promotion of economically,
socially and environmentally sustainable future for our planet and for present and future
generations.
2. Eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an
indispensable requirement for sustainable development. In this regard we are committed to
free humanity from poverty and hunger as a matter of urgency.
3. We therefore acknowledge the need to further mainstream sustainable development at all
levels integrating economic, social and environmental aspects and recognizing their
interlinkages, so as to achieve sustainable development in all its dimensions.
4. We recognize that poverty eradication, changing unsustainable and promoting sustainable
patterns of consumption and production, and protecting and managing the natural resource
base of economic and social development are the overarching objectives of and essential
requirements for sustainable development. We also reaffirm the need to achieve sustainable
development by: promoting sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth, creating
greater opportunities for all, reducing inequalities, raising basic standards of living; fostering
equitable social development and inclusion; and promoting integrated and sustainable
management of natural resources and ecosystems that supports inter alia economic, social and
human development while facilitating ecosystem conservation, regeneration and restoration
and resilience in the face of new and emerging challenges.
And so on. Apparently (1) sustainable development (2) morphs (3) into (4) “reducing inequalities” by (3) “interlinkages”.
Then it gets tricky.
VI. Means of implementation
252. We reaffirm that the means of implementation identified in Agenda 21, the Programme
for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21, Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, the
Monterrey Consensus of the International Conference on Financing for Development and the
Doha Declaration on Financing for Development are indispensable for achieving full and
effective translation of sustainable development commitments into tangible sustainable
development outcomes. We reiterate that each country has primary responsibility for its own
economic and social development and that the role of national policies, domestic resources
and development strategies cannot be overemphasized. We reaffirm that developing countries
need additional resources for sustainable development. We recognize the need for significant
mobilization of resources from a variety of sources and effective use of financing, in order to
promote sustainable development. We acknowledge that good governance and the rule of law
at the national and international levels are essential for sustained, inclusive and equitable
economic growth, sustainable development and the eradication of poverty and hunger.
A. Finance
253. We call on all countries to prioritize sustainable development in the allocation of
resources in accordance with national priorities and needs, and we recognize the crucial
importance of enhancing financial support from all sources for sustainable development for
all countries, in particular developing countries. We recognize the importance of international,
regional and national financial mechanisms including those accessible to sub-national and
local authorities to implement sustainable development programmes and call for their
strengthening and implementation. New partnerships and innovative sources of financing can
play a role in complementing sources of financing for sustainable development. We encourage
their further exploration and use, alongside the traditional means of implementation.
254. We recognize the need for significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources
and effective use of financing, to give strong support to developing countries in their efforts to
promote sustainable development, including through actions undertaken according to the
outcome of UN Conference on Sustainable Development and for achieving sustainable
development goals.
255. We agree to establish an intergovernmental process under the United Nations General
Assembly, with technical support from the UN System, and in open and broad consultation
with relevant international and regional financial institutions and other relevant stakeholders.
The process will assess financing needs, consider the effectiveness, consistency and synergies
44 of existing instruments and frameworks, and evaluate additional initiatives, with a view to
prepare a report proposing options on an effective Sustainable Development Financing
Strategy to facilitate the mobilization of resources and their effective use in achieving
sustainable development objectives.
256. An intergovernmental committee, comprising thirty experts nominated by regional
groups, with equitable geographical representation, will implement this process, concluding
its work by 2014.
Of course! Brilliant! “…..an intergovernmental process under the United Nations General
Assembly, with technical support from the UN System”
Woo hooo, looks like the UN’s been sidelined (for a while).
Rio+20 ends with weak text
(Reuters) – Global leaders ended a U.N. development summit on Friday with what was widely considered a lackluster agreement, leaving many attendees convinced that individuals and companies, rather than governments, must lead efforts to improve the environment.
UN emission credits fall to record low on supply jump
United Nations emission credits dropped to a record as the regulator defended allowing supplies of offsets from more-efficient coal plants in emerging nations.
Certified Emission Reduction credits for December fell 8.9 per cent to close at 1.53 euros ($1.90) a metric ton on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London, an all-time low.
Superstorm Sandy shows climate change isn’t science fiction, top U.N. official tells Stanford audience
Helen Clark, the administrator of the United Nations Development Program, visited Stanford to set the stage for international climate talks taking place in Doha, Qatar, later this month.
“Until recently, climate change seemed like a science fiction scenario,” Helen Clark told a Stanford audience recently.
Clark, the administrator of the United Nations Development Program and former prime minister of New Zealand, argued that a lack of coordinated global action on the issue is undermining efforts to alleviate extreme poverty. Climate change is damaging agriculture, driving up food prices, creating water insecurity, destroying coral reef fishing grounds and exposing millions to diseases such as diarrhea, dengue fever and malaria, she said.
[…]
In an interview following her lecture, Clark stressed the need for President Obama to use the momentum of his re-election to act quickly on climate change. “There is a window of opportunity to see the U.S. take a strong position,” Clark told ClimateWire. “This is the hour for moving on climate change. I think it’s time to mobilize, and not just the U.S., but worldwide.”
“t is the most inspiring job in the world because what we are doing here is we are inspiring government, private sector, and civil society to [make] the biggest transformation that they have ever undertaken. The Industrial Revolution was also a transformation, but it wasn’t a guided transformation from a centralized policy perspective. This is a centralized transformation that is taking place because governments have decided that they need to listen to science. So it’s a very, very different transformation and one that is going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different.”
OPEN CLIMATE LETTER TO UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists.
“Based upon these considerations, we ask that you desist from exploiting the misery of the families of those who lost their lives or properties in tropical storm Sandy by making unsupportable claims that human influences caused that storm. They did not. We also ask that you acknowledge that policy actions by the U.N., or by the signatory nations to the UNFCCC, that aim to reduce CO2 emissions are unlikely to exercise any significant influence on future climate. Climate policies therefore need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events however caused.”
Some merit re “some countries were supporting a change to the economic model that would have Google, Facebook and others pay for at least some of the costs of internet transmission” but the thin edge of the wedge is this “The 147-year-old ITU, which is now under the auspices of the United Nations, historically has set technology standards and established payment customs for international phone calls. But under Secretary-General Hamadoun Tour, it has inched toward cyber-security and electronic content issues, arguing that internet traffic goes over phone lines and is therefore within its purview”.
“In a referendum among the world’s two billion Internet users, how many would vote to transfer control of the Internet to the United Nations? Perhaps 100,000, an estimate based on the number of top officials ruling the most authoritarian countries, whose power is threatened by the open Web.
Under the one country, one vote rule of the U.N., these 100,000 people trump the rest of the two billion. It only takes a majority of the 193 countries in the U.N. to hijack the Internet”.
[…]
“Instead, authoritarian governments want to legitimize government censorship, tax Internet traffic that crosses national boundaries and mandate that ITU bureaucrats replace the nongovernmental engineering groups now smoothly running the Internet”
[…]
“Mr. McLaughlin cited the “soft corruption” of the ITU, where regulators and the monopoly telecommunications companies from many countries “get to take nice trips to Geneva on a regular basis, and people build their careers around the ITU as a gravy train” “.
Secret UN ‘ZOD’ climate deliberations: UK battles to suppress details
Lone engineer battles climate science Omertà
By Andrew Orlowski
[…] The case for transparency
The IPCC is the United Nations organisation’s process for providing climate advice to policy makers. Every few years it updates this advice, which takes the form of three gigantic reports: one assessing the physical basis (called Working Group 1, or WG1); another considering the impacts (WG2); and the third the mitigation options (WG3).
None of the groups does any original science. They’re supposed to write fair summaries of the state of the science – although you’ll notice that WG3 already plays with loaded dice: it is about “mitigation”, not “adaptation” nor “economic costs” or even “low carbon technological innovation”. Each of these groups writes three drafts in a rolling process before they’re signed off as official UN policy.
What Holland is seeking the “zero order draft” – aka Draft No. 1 – of Working Group 1. He couldn’t care less what’s in it, but wants to establish the principle that citizens can see it. As it happens, much of this material is already all over the web. But as Judge Dhanji pointed out, that’s by-the-by.
Holland justified his request on the twofold basis that the WG1 zero draft must, and should, be publicly available.
The “must” is the statutory obligation of the UK as a signatory to the Aarhus Convention, or to give it its full title, the “UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters” and by signing up to EC directive 2003/4/EC (PDF) the UK has obliged all of its environmental regulations to be consistent with the Convention. (Not every EU country is a signatory, but the UK is: perhaps a case of civil servants’ Euro-enthusiasm coming back to bite them.)
[Tom Nelson] UN climate hoax chief: Did we say we needed $100 billion per year? We meant $1,000 billion per year (and our Green Climate Fund has only raised .0075 billion)
‘UN climate chief underlines Green Climate Fund concerns’ [link]
“That $100bn, the only thing that that is going to do is take the dog and point it in the direction that we must move because we know that the financing we need is not $100bn per year—it is $1tr per year, and that is what needs to be mobilised,” she said.
Much of this money is supposed to be channelled through the UN backed Green Climate Fund (GCF), but so far this has only raised $7.5million.
‘UN’s Top Climate Diplomat: Communism Is Key to “Doing It Right” on Global Warming’
by William Yeatman on January 14, 2014
The People’s Republic of China is the #1 greenhouse gas emitter (having only recently raced past the U.S. to the top of this list), and last week the country’s government ordered a huge increase in coal production. Nonetheless, the Middle Kingdom is “doing it right” when it comes to climate change, according to Christiana Figueres, the top climate diplomat at the United Nations.
You might think to yourself: “What’s China’s secret for ‘doing it right’ (despite all those emissions)?” The answer, according to Figueres, is the absence of civil liberties.
Having been to China a couple of times (most recently last November) it is pretty hard to see that China is doing anything right on environmental issues.
Maybe putting people in “re-education camps” is what tickles Figueres’ fancy
I think she has a particular fondness for the idea of bypassing “legislative hurdles”. Obama’s White House and the EPA have embraced it enthusiastically too but she doesn’t highlight that.
But holding up China’s legislature that produced it’s new economic order complete with the attendant but ineffectively regulated pollution as a model of progress isn’t that smart.
Figueres:
“They actually want to breathe air that they don’t have to look at”
“They’re not doing this because they want to save the planet. They’re doing it because it’s in their national interest.”
Duh, they’re doing it because they got very wealthy very quickly the same way every other wealthy country has by industrialisation except now it’s caught up with them and they have to grapple with the same old problems as everyone else but magnified many fold and squeezed into a much shorter timeframe.
Figueres again,
“Its efforts to promote energy efficiency and renewable power stem from the realization that doing so will pay off in the long term”
More like, it’s ineffective and misplaced pollution control efforts stem from the realization that doing so will make China look good in the eyes of outsiders like Figueres.
‘El Niño is not a one-off event,’ UN says, calling for action to address phenomenon’s impacts
Noting that El Niño is a good example of climate change affecting the livelihood of people, the ECOSOC President said that Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau have all declared states of emergency due to drought conditions from El Niño, while Malawi has declared “a state of disaster.”
UNsilenced: Whistleblower Exposes UN Culture of Corruption
When she stumbled across massive corruption and made-up statistics in her job at the United Nations, Rasna Warah knew she needed to act. But when she tried to blow the whistle, she was viciously attacked, publicly humiliated, threatened, intimidated, and more. Unfortunately, though, as Warah explains in her new book UNsilenced: UNmasking the United Nations’ Culture of Cover-ups, Corruption and Impunity, her case is far from unique.
In fact, the corruption and lawlessness across the UN appears to be systemic. Some of the cases described in the book and the pages of The New American magazine make the scandals she exposed and the retaliation she suffered seem mild by comparison. Indeed, in her book, she actually spends very little time dwelling on her own case, but delves instead into some of the many other known and unknown scandals to rock the global organization.
[…]
It got so bad that in 2015, as Warah explains, a coalition of nine UN whistleblowers got together to raise the matter with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. “Each of us has blown the whistle on serious wrongdoing, gross misconduct, and even criminal acts at the United Nations,” the group wrote in the letter, which is quoted in the book. “Our collective experience of reporting misconduct in the UN covers sexual exploitation, abuse of power, corruption, and other criminals activity over a period of more than a decade and a half.”
Instead of the UN scrambling to make things right, though, it responded in every case by attacking the whistleblower instead of the crimes, abuse, and the people behind the problems. “Each of us has faced retaliation for reporting the wrongdoing,” the whistleblowers continued. “Our cases are well-known, and sadly, deter others from reporting wrongdoing. This must change.” Unfortunately for humanity, despite threats from Congress to cut funding, and increasingly widespread media attention, nothing has changed, as the book documents extensively.
New UNFCCC climate chief no worse than the old
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2010/09/new-unfccc-climate-chief-no-worse-than-the-old/
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
http://unfccc.int/2860.php
United Nations Climate Change Conference Cancun – COP 16 & CMP 6
29 November-10 December 2010
Cancun, Mexico
The sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP) and the sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) will be held in Cancun, Mexico, from 29 November to 10 December 2010, together with the thirty-third sessions of the subsidiary bodies and the fifteenth session of the AWG-KP and thirteenth session of the AWG-LCA.
‘No climate talks in future if Cancun fails’
Hindustan Times
November 10, 2010
India on Wednesday said the developing countries would find it difficult to continue climate negotiations if second commitment period for Kyoto Protocol is not ratified at the next climate summit in Mexico starting this month. India’s stand emanates from deliberations at a recent meeting of Group of 77 (G-77) countries plus China in Mexico.
The protocol of which India and China are the biggest beneficiaries expires in 2012. Either a new regime has to be in place before end of 2011 or the United Nations has to agree on extension of the protocol.
Either of the options appears difficult as the United States and Australia are opposed to differentiated responsibility as enshrined in the protocol.
“If there is no extension of Kyoto Protocol at Cancun (Mexico) developing countries would find it difficult to continue with the negotiations,” Ramesh said after a two-day ministerial dialogue on climate change technologies in Delhi, where the ministers failed to reach any consensus.
trong>Nature Mother Sending A Message To Cancun?
Posted on November 16, 2010 by stevengoddard
The Cancun global warming boondoggle starts on November 29.
NCEP forecasts a massive Arctic blast to cover North America, Europe and Asia that week. I don’t think I have ever seen such widespread cold forecast this early in the winter season.
(NH weather forecast)
COP 17/MOP 7, Durban, South Africa
November 28 to December 9, 2011.
Agenda 21
RIO DECLARATION ON ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT
Principle 15
In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.
Acknowledged in Article 3.3 of the UNFCCC
Climate summit set for rows on flying, cash and history
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News
# India has tabled a paper arguing that the EU’s plan to include international flights in its emissions trading scheme violates the UN climate convention.
# The analysis, seen by BBC News, is that industrialised countries should become net absorbers of CO2 rather than net emitters.
[Imagine Richard Black’s surprise when he discovers that they already are]
# Japan, Russia and Canada have made it plain that they will neither negotiate on the pledges they made unilaterally at Copenhagen, nor put them inside the Kyoto Protocol.
# Norway and Australia recently proposed that a new legal agreement should be wrapped up by 2015.
# Finance-sector companies have also warned [that delaying a political agreement could] weaken low-carbon investment.
>>>>>>>>>
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15591309
Just in time for Durban: US backs off on UN Green Climate Fund
Posted on November 24, 2011 by Anthony Watts
Thanks perhaps in part to Climategate 2, it is looking less like success and more like FAIL at Durban. The US has backed off and now refuses to agree to structure and funding of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) “Green Climate Fund”. Just the name alone juxtaposed with the UN makes you want to run from it.
FT.com reports:
The US is refusing to sign off on a flagship global climate fund, as already fraught negotiations intensify ahead of next week’s UN climate summit and carbon prices plummet to new lows.
>>>>>>>>>
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/11/24/juts-in-time-for-durban-us-backs-off-on-un-green-climate-fund/
WWF and Oxfam pushing for a shipping tax at Durban COP17 – since when do NGO’s get to write tax laws?
Posted on December 6, 2011 by Anthony Watts
[…]
I find it very very troubling that NGO’s get to write tax laws to foist on private enterprise. Nobody elected the WWF nor Oxfam. Theses NGO’s are circumventing the democratic process.
These people have no business writing tax law proposals, especially when it appears part of the larder goes back to them. This is so wrong on so many levels.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/12/06/wwf-and-oxfam-pushing-for-a-shipping-tax-at-durban-cop17-since-when-do-ngos-get-to-write-tax-laws/#more-52601
Climate change, the Big corrupt business? by Khadija Sharife
Tom Goldtooth, head of the Indigenous Environmental Network talks to The Africa Report about the manipulation of carbon trading data and the double standards assumed by richer countries.
Goldtooth expresses his misgivings about agriculture being included as part of the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD). Arguing that “REDD is going to be the largest legal land grab the world has ever seen”, the indigenous North American warns of colonialism and forced privatisation. And according to him “those with the most money and power can – by remote control, lock up the largest land areas in developing countries”. “They are happiest to work with the most corrupt because it is easiest that way,” he says. Interview.
The Africa Report: How do indigenous peoples, such as yourself, perceive REDD?
>>>>>>>>
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8786
This will be fun – Harrison Ford has gone to the Temple of Doom.
http://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/royals-back-in-durban-1.1193973
UN Climate Draft Text Demands ‘New International Climate Court’ to compel reparations for ‘climate debt’ — Also seeks ‘rights of Mother Earth’ & 2C° drop in global temps
Friday, December 9th 2011, 6:27 AM EST
UN Draft Text Demands: The West will pay ‘climate debt’ because of its ‘historical responsibility’ for causing ‘global warming’ — UN seeks end to wars to ‘protect the climate system’
Durban: what the media are not telling you
By Christopher Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa
DURBAN, South Africa — “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework convention on climate change are being asked to approve.
Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its catchy title is “Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention — Update of the amalgamation of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean ‘for’] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.
The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN’s skill at what the former head of its documentation center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.
>>>>>>>>
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=8807&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClimaterealistsNewsBlog+%28ClimateRealists+News+Blog%29
My goodness this mans pen is a sword – any chance this article can be re-posted at CCG Richard T?
He’s got Jason and Envisat mixed up I think but we get the picture.
http://tvnz.co.nz/world-news/small-states-rebel-against-un-climate-deal-4625022
Small states rebel against UN climate deal
Hysteric claptrap.
Fighting Hunger & Poverty: Oxfam just a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing?
UK Charity, Oxfam has emerged a key play maker at Durban Climate Summit. Oxfam reportedly has nine people in various official government delegations. This includes the Bolivian country delegation containing an Oxfam member, the Bangladeshi delegation having three Oxfam members and Belgium two! But their nine infiltrations still come a poor second to top carbon profiteer, WWF with their 14 delegates. We can understand Belgium, but why should taxpayers of poor countries like Bolivia and Bangladesh pay Oxfam staff’s first class airfares, five star hotel and other perquisites?
As the graph illustrates, NGOs out-crowded by a mile, all other sections of party goers to the Durban Climate Summit. These NGO activists who are neither representatives of the people nor climatologists are masquerading as both at Durban. The official data on the party goers is available as Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3
>>>>>>>>
http://devconsultancygroup.blogspot.com/2011/12/fighting-hunger-poverty-oxfam-just-wolf.html
‘We Are Destroying Life on Earth,’ UN Conference Claims
A giant leap for the natural world
By Steve Connor – NZ Herald
Oct 30, 2010
A historic deal to halt the mass extinction of species has finally been agreed in what conservationists see as the most important international treaty aimed at preventing the collapse of the world’s wildlife.
Delegates from more than 190 countries meeting in Nagoya, Japan, agreed at the 11th hour on an ambitious conservation programme to protect global biodiversity and the natural habitats that support the most threatened animals and plants.
Steven Budiansky has an excellent piece on this theme
http://budiansky.blogspot.com/2010/10/species-extinctions-and-question.html
He explores some of the circular reasoning in the biodiversity movement.
(Circular reasoning – where have I heard that before?)
Budiansky’s blog is excellent, by the way.
Subtitled:
“Liberal Curmudgeon – you don’t have to be conservative to be pissed off”
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/climate/scene/asia/#comment-26811
Rubbish
A Classic Case of the UN contradicting itself
UN plans expanding influence on world agenda
See “Controversy and scandal”
UN totalitarians want your money and your life
Discuss here “Controversy and scandal”
Austria Retreat: Strategic Planning – Background Papers
Lima Declaration
See “Controversy and scandal” UN chief uses climate hoax to promote global governance
Here’s another scheme stupid enough to earn the epithet ‘rubbish’
http://www.scu.edu.au/news/media.php?item_id=1641&action=show_item&type=M
Southern Cross University is set to lead a project testing the world’s first Personal Carbon Trading program conducted in a ‘closed system’ island environment on Norfolk Island commencing early next year.
This follows the announcement this week of a Linkage Projects grant by the Australian Research Council valued at $390,000.
Leading chief investigator Professor Garry Egger, a Professor of Lifestyle Medicine and Applied Health Promotion at Southern Cross University, said the main goals of the project were to test the effectiveness of a Personal Carbon Trading scheme over a three year period; reduce per capita carbon emissions and reduce obesity and obesity related behaviours
…
The principal researchers of the Norfolk island Carbon/Health Evaluation study trialling a Personal carbon Trading program are: leading chief investigator, Professor Garry Egger, a Professor of Lifestyle Medicine and Applied Health Promotion at Southern Cross University; chief investigator, Professor Boyd Swinburn, Alfred Deakin Professor and director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University; chief investigator, Professor Robyn McDermott is a public health physician and professor of Public Health at the University of South Australia; and Professor Kerin O’Dea, director of the Sansom Institute for Health Research at the University of South Australia.
Talk about weird …
Andrew Bolt has an article today ‘Warmist Puts Norfold Island on Rations – he interviewed Prof Egger this morning
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/
I’ve put this in “Australia”
Richard I understand why but it’s sort of relevant to us all (well not me but the politically correct all) wanting to be good global citizens
Andy you are so correct; don’t forget it covers tourists as well; you might like to visit
Visit Norfolk Island?
Tourists will be met at the airport by the carbon adviser who will issue them with their permits. The first two weeks will be spent planting trees to offset the emissions from the air flight to get there.
/spoof
Andy, it’s a good idea to put some stories in more than one thread. He’s not moving it, just duplicating it.
According to the Norfolk Island promo website, around a third of the population of Norfolk Island descend from the rebellious Bounty crew
So we can see thinly disguised eugenicists at work now, can’t we?
Cancun climate summit: UN calls for worldwide phase out of incandescent bulbs
Traditional light bulbs should be banned across the world as part of plans to help tackle climate change, according to a new United Nations report.
01 Dec 2010 – Telegraph UK
Britain is already phasing out traditional bulbs as part of European regulations to save energy, with high wattage bulbs no longer on the shelves.
The scheme has been unpopular with many because compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) take longer to warm up and can give some people headaches.
——————————————————————————————————————–
For an alternative – see
German “heatball” wheeze outwits EU light bulb ban
BERLIN | Fri Oct 15, 2010 11:51am EDT
BERLIN (Reuters) – A German entrepreneur is bypassing a European Union ban on light bulbs of more than 60 watts by marketing his own brand as mini heaters.
Siegfried Rotthaeuser and his brother-in-law have come up with a legal way of importing and distributing 75 and 100 watt light bulbs — by producing them in China, importing them as “small heating devices” and selling them as “heatballs.”
LIVESTOCK’S LONG SHADOW
environmental issues and options
FOOD AND AGRICULTURE ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED NATIONS
Rome, 2006
[Note: enter Methane in the pdf search box and click Find Next]
Screeds on emissions.
“Globally, livestock are the most important source of methane emissions”
“Livestock account for 35-40% of anthropogenic emissions”
Page 80
Anthropogenic climate change “well established fact”
And
“A part of the heat flow is absorbed by so-called greenhouse gases, trapping it in the atmosphere”.
Green fund for poor nations major focus of climate talks
5:30 AM Friday Dec 10, 2010 – NZH
CANCUN – Should airline passengers pay a small tax to help out? How about global money dealers? Or perhaps governments should take what they spend on subsidising petrol prices and put it towards the climate cause.
Delegates to the United Nations climate conference hope to agree in its final days on setting up a new “green fund” to help poorer countries grapple with global warming. Then the real arguments will begin – over where the cash will come from.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon stepped into the middle of the debate earlier this year by enlisting a high-level group of international political and financial leaders to offer advice.
Ban yesterday said it would be “challenging but feasible” to raise US$100 billion ($133 billion) a year by 2020, as promised by richer nations at last year’s climate conference in Copenhagen.
Besides the green fund, the meeting of parties to the 193-nation UN climate treaty may also agree on ways to make it easier for poorer nations to obtain patented green technology.
But negotiators won’t produce a sweeping deal to succeed the relatively modest Kyoto Protocol after 2012, one that would slash greenhouse gases to curb climate change.
The US has long refused to join Kyoto, which mandates limited emissions reductions by richer nations.
The green fund would be considered a key success for Cancun, but many details would remain to be worked out later.
The financing would help developing nations buy advanced technology to reduce emissions, and to adapt to climate change, such as building seawalls against rising seas.
Behind closed doors, haggling over proposed decisions, delegates duelled over what developing nations considered an inadequate goal – the US$100 billion a year by 2020.
The developing south views such finance not as aid but as compensation for the looming damage from two centuries of northern industrial emissions, and propose that the richer countries commit 1.5 per cent of their annual gross domestic product – today roughly US$600 billion a year.
Northern delegations resisted such ambitious targets.
In the Cancun talks, northern delegations leaned towards the conclusions of Ban’s advisory group as the basis for the inevitably intense debate over funding.
The group’s final report last month said the greatest contributions should come from private investment and from “carbon pricing,” either a direct tax broadly on emissions tonnage from power plants and other industrial sources or a system of auctioning off emissions allowances that could be traded among industrial emitters.
The UN advisers also see possible revenue sources in a tax or trading system for fuel emissions of international airliners and merchant ships, or a fee on air tickets, with a potential for US$10 billion a year.
They also suggested a levy on foreign-exchange transactions, producing possibly another US$10 billion, and removal of government subsidies of fossil fuels, with the money redirected to a climate fund.
– AP
By Charles Hanley
Desertification is greatest threat to planet, expert warns
# The Guardian, Thursday 16 December 2010
UN’s top drylands official says people must be paid via global carbon markets for preserving the soil
Desertification and land degradation is “the greatest environmental challenge of our time” and “a threat to global wellbeing”, according to the UN’s top drylands official, Luc Gnacadja, who says people must be paid via global carbon markets for preserving the soil. The executive secretary of UN’s Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), will today launch the UN decade for the fight against desertification in London.
“The top 20cm of soil is all that stands between us and extinction,” he told the Guardian. Conflicts and food price crises all stem from the degradation of land, he added.
Desertification and land degradation is “the greatest environmental challenge of our time” and “a threat to global wellbeing”, according to the UN’s top drylands official, who says people must be paid via global carbon markets for preserving the soil.
Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of UN’s Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), will today [Monday] launch the UN decade for the fight against desertification in London. “The top 20cm of soil is all that stands between us and extinction,” he told the Guardian.
Land conflicts in Somalia, dust storms in Asia and the food price crises of recent years all stem from the degradation of land, he said, due to overuse by humans and the impacts of global warming. Since the early 1980s, a quarter of the planet’s land has been despoiled and 1% a year continues to be lost.
Continues……..
UN mulls internet regulation options
John Hilvert
ITNews
December 17, 2010
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Note: the following reprint violates copyright so please everyone – follow the above link to the source publication and give credit where it is due. Perhaps leave a comment or a Facebook recommendation (3756 recommendations so far).
——————————————————————————————————————–
WikiLeaks sparks push for tighter controls.
The United Nations is considering whether to set up an inter-governmental working group to harmonise global efforts by policy makers to regulate the internet.
Establishment of such a group has the backing of several countries, spearheaded by Brazil.
At a meeting in New York on Wednesday, representatives from Brazil called for an international body made up of Government representatives that would to attempt to create global standards for policing the internet – specifically in reaction to challenges such as WikiLeaks.
The Brazilian delegate stressed, however, that this should not be seen as a call for a “takeover” of the internet.
India, South Africa, China and Saudi Arabia appeared to favour a new possible over-arching inter-government body.
However, Australia, US, UK, Belgium and Canada and attending business and community representatives argued there were risks in forming yet another working group that might isolate itself from the industry, community users and the general public.
“My concern is that if we were to make a move to form a governmental-only body then that would send a very strong signal to civil society that their valuable contribution was not required or was not being looked for,” an un-named Australian representative told the meeting.
Debate on the creation of a new inter-governmental body stemmed from a UN Economic and Social Council resolution 2010/2 of 19 July.
The resolution invited the UN Secretary-General “to convene open and inclusive consultations involving all Member States and all other stakeholders with a view to assisting the process towards enhanced cooperation in order to enable Governments on an equal footing to carry out their roles and responsibilities in respect of international public policy issues pertaining to the Internet but not of the day-to-day technical and operational matters that do not impact upon those issues.”
Much debate concerned the meaning of “enhanced cooperation” and whether a new inter-governmental body was required. Participants also debated the roles of existing organisations – such as the Internet Governance Forum, ICANN and the ITU.
The IGF – an organisation that informs the UN but makes no decisions – is running close to the end of a five-year mandate, due to expire at the end of the year.
The likes of ISOC, ICANN and more recently the World Information Technology and Services Alliance (WITSA) have recently expressed concerns [PDF] that a working panel to decide on the future of the IGF has been limited to representatives from member-states.
“Australia is a very strong supporter of the Internet Governance Forum,” the unidentified Australian UN representative said at the New York meeting this week. “That is very much due to the multi-stake-holder approach of the IGF. It is an inclusive process.”
Australia’s Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy said that Australian Government welcomed the resolution of the Second Committee of the United Nation General Assembly (UNGA) to extend the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) for a further five years.
The DBCDE said it would like to see the organisation retain an open and participatory membership.
“Australia has always supported the participation of civil society and the private sector in the IGF and regards their participation as being integral to the IGF’s success,” a spokesman told iTnews.
Copyright © iTnews.com.au . All rights reserved.
One of the more astute comments
——————————————————————————————————————————
louis.wu
Dec 18, 2010 5:47 AM
First, I agree with much of the sentiment expressed about the UN in the previous posts. Happy to see such consensus.
As for Assange and WikiLeaks; exposing corruption is one thing, and should always be commended, but what WikiLeaks did with the wholesale and indiscriminant release of confidential cables was over the top. That, combined with the demonstration by “Anonymous” of their ability to affect internet commerce, has given the UN and other governments just the “crisis” they needed to “justify” controlling the internet. It was a very bad move.
As for any doubts that the internet can be controlled… divest yourself of those doubts right now. Access and use can be controlled easily. They can insist on installation of new routers and firewalls to monitor all traffic, everywhere, and permit only licensed devices to have access. It can be done, they will do it, and no amount of yelling and screaming about it will stop them.
If you still live in a country where you are free to elect your representatives, stop voting for people who embrace collectivism and the centralization of power, both nationally and globally. There might yet be time to turn the tide. Otherwise, you might want to invest in a shortwave radio.
House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Proposes Major UN Reforms
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/usnews/foreign-policy/5947-house-foreign-affairs-chairwoman-proposes-major-un-reforms
“The majority of our members are on board to reform the corrupt and mismanaged U.N. and get a much better return for our dollars,” Ros-Lehtinen says. “Cutting the budget is not enough, because you need to reform the monster, you need to reform the beast, and if you don’t get fundamental reform, you are still rewarding a corrupt, mismanaged agency.”
Helen Clark’s UNDP under fire (huge report)
—————————————————————————————————————————–
How Well Does a U.N. Agency Do Its Pricey ‘Green Job’? Not That Well, Study Says
Published January 27, 2011 | FoxNews.com
EXCLUSIVE: How much money did the United Nations Development Program, the U.N.’s flagship anti-poverty agency, spend to create 5,280 “green” jobs around the world?
UNDP has said the price tag is $53.9 million—an average of $10,208 per job spent in 2010 on 135 environmental projects world-wide.
But according to documentation obtained by Fox News, the projects that generated those jobs have a total cost of about $1.68 billion—which would work out to a much more staggering average figure of about $288,700 per job.
The wildly differing size of those price tags for a fairly trivial amount of employment emerged as part of a muted rebranding effort at UNDP. Top
management is trying to burnish some of its credentials in the face of internal critics who feel that when it comes to merging environmental management and economic development to solve poverty problems, UNDP is not very good at its job.
Continues………
This project sounds interesting (and expensive):-
“Integrated conservation of priority globally significant migratory bird wetland habitat” in Kazahkstan ($38.4 million).
Cholera catastrophe blamed on UN construction
By Guy Adams – Independent – NZ Herald
5:30 AM Saturday May 7, 2011
About 5000 dead, 300,000 ill, and a medical emergency that has already lasted six months. But now the people of Haiti have someone to blame for the cholera outbreak that has swept through their earthquake-ravaged country: the blue-helmeted peacekeepers of the United Nations.
A report into the epidemic, which began last October, has concluded that it was almost certainly caused by a poorly-constructed sanitation system installed at a rural camp used by several hundred UN troops who originally came from Nepal. The virulent strain of cholera bacteria began infecting locals after faecal matter from their base seeped from badly-designed septic pits into the Meye River, a tributary of the Artibonite River in the country’s central region.
[Snip}
With the rainy season approaching, health experts fear cholera could add to their woes by infecting a further 500,000 people.
That would represent a public relations disaster for the UN mission.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10723949
UN climate services eyed for vulnerable nations
By JOHN HEILPRIN
The Associated Press
updated 5/12/2011 7:03:48 AM ET 2011-05-12T11:03:48
GENEVA — The global economy could reduce $100 billion a year in climate change-linked losses by providing the most vulnerable countries with “climate services” to help them prepare, a United Nations expert panel recommended Thursday.
The panel proposed creating a $75 million-a-year U.N.-administered agency, or program, to help developing nations deal with an increasing onslaught of tropical cyclones, storm surges, floods and droughts.
The World Meteorological Organization — the U.N.’s weather agency — said most of the funding would come through development aid, and then be handed out for specific projects in the most vulnerable nations.
It said in a statement that more surveillance and early warning information is needed because about 90 percent of disasters in recent decades were caused by weather or climate-related hazards. It said the findings were based on concerns raised at a 2009 world climate conference
We want to make “the best possible information available to decision-makers,” organization director Michel Jarraud said.
The WMO said that the hazards currently lead to economic losses of $100 billion per year, “are rising, and can inhibit the pace of development by years if not decades.”
The panel was co-chaired by former U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland, who now heads the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, and former Egyptian water minister Mahmoud Abu Zeid.
Egeland said better flood monitoring and other early warning climate-service systems would produce “great benefits in terms of reduced disaster risks, increased food security, improved health and more effective adaptation to climate change.”
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43002175
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So now it’s “climate change-linked” i.e. weather.
An AP article note – a major MSM source of CC propaganda. Along with John Heilprin, beware of Seth Borenstein. See:-
Friday, June 27, 2008
Does AP “Science” writer Seth Borenstein not have access to the Internet?
Hey Seth–would you PLEASE read this, and then stop making that embarrassing claim?!
The Northwest Passage was successfully navigated in 1906, 1940, 1941, 1942, 1944, 1957, 1969, 1977, 1984, 1988, and 2000 (and probably in other years as well).
http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/2008/06/does-ap-writer-seth-borenstein-not-have.html
From the “you couldn’t make this up department”
UN security council to consider climate change peacekeeping
A special meeting of the United Nations security council is due to consider whether to expand its mission to keep the peace in an era of climate change.
Small island states, which could disappear beneath rising seas, are pushing the security council to intervene to combat the threat to their existence.
There has been talk, meanwhile, of a new environmental peacekeeping force – green helmets – which could step into conflicts caused by shrinking resources.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/20/un-climate-change-peacekeeping
Ban Ki-Moon now in Auckland said “climate change was a threat to humanity” (tacitly assumed to be anthropogenic of course) .. “With waves rising ever higher in this neighbourhood, the oceans are also sending a signal that something is seriously wrong with our current model of economic development.”.
For which he receives an unquestioning “rapturous welcome”.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10749930
The NZ Herald has done a sneak edit to their headline – yesterday they hilariously proclaimed “Climate change is lapping at our feet”
sorry, I see the original article is here:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10749749
“Climate change is real and is quite literally lapping at our feet”
In another Herald article (Barry Coates: Our neighbours need help with tackling poverty) I saw this:-
“Our neighbours in the Pacific are among the world’s most vulnerable to the devastating effects of climate change.”
Suggested in comments that it would be more realistic if phrased:-
“Our neighbours in the Pacific are among the world’s most vulnerable to the devastating effects of dynamite fishing.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10749629
This would be Barry Coates of Oxfam, the warmist NGO that has already booked his air ticket and executive apartment in Durban?
I left my 2c on the Herald site, if it gets published.
UN Demands $76 Trillion for “Green Technology”
With the Western nations continuing their downward economic spiral, the advocates of the United Nations’ redistributionist schemes also continue to exploit the environmental agenda in their effort to fundamentally alter the global economy to serve their own ends.
Despite the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009 to achieve its goal of a treaty binding the industrialized world to an economic suicide pact, the “voluntary” agreements are still a threat to the West. The UN is engaged in an effort to use the imagined environmental crisis as the justification for a program of sweeping economic redistribution that would shift trillions of dollars from the industrialized nations to the Third World. The UN is now demanding an “investment” of $1.9 trillion per year in “green technology” to meet the goals that the internationalists have set for the nations of the world. An AFP story entitled “World needs $1.9tn a year for green technology:UN” sets forth the lament of an elite for whom “real money” is measured in tens of trillions of dollars:
>>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech-mainmenu-30/environment/8128-un-demands-76-trillion-for-green-technology
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Agenda 21 needs some cash for the kitty.
UN boss urges climate sceptics to wake up
September 9, 2011
United Nations boss Ban Ki-moon has urged sceptical Australians to face up to the “alarming” reality of climate change as he wrapped up a week-long tour of the Pacific.
The UN Secretary-General on Friday said his visit to the low-lying Pacific Island nation of Kiribati this week had reinforced his belief climate change is humankind’s biggest challenge.
“For those people who are still sceptical about the impact of climate change then I would invite them to visit Kiribati,” Mr Ban told journalists in Canberra.
“I would invite them to visit [Central Asia’s] Aral Sea or [Africa’s] Lake Chad.
“You will see very clearly that something is happening much, much faster than you may think. This is alarming.”
Mr Ban said he has made an effort to see first-hand the places where climate change is having the biggest impact.
He described a helicopter flight over Lake Chad – which has been reduced to a “pond” one-10th of its original size – and a plane flight of Aral Sea.
“The Aral Sea was more shocking,” he said.
“What I saw was continuing, endless seabed, now only salt. There was no single drop of water I could see.”
Mr Ban said the science of climate change was clear.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/un-boss-urges-climate-sceptics-to-wake-up-20110909-1k1lh.html#ixzz1ZZThDbyv
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Okay, perhaps Ban could “invite” himself to consult the tide guage MSL record for Kiribati.
And Lake Chad?
Aral Sea?
Ban Ban I say.
Per Wikileaks Documents, The UN’s Climate Change Programs Are Total Failure – Looks Like Fraud
Read here. Wikileaks, the organization dedicated to exposing the dark underbelly of big government, has published documents regarding the UN’s climate program known as the “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM). In essence, the program has been an abject failure bordering on flagrant corruption.
Obviously, the CDM program had two principal functions, neither of which concerned a better environment. The first was to enhance the investment profitability of wealthy “green” investors; the second being a massive transfer of wealth from the taxpayers of advanced countries to countries incapable of producing their own prosperity without some form of subsidized theft.
The entire climate change endeavor sponsored by the United Nations is essentially a gigantic fraud, propelled by leftists and greens dedicated to no growth, no prosperity policies. The actual quotes from “elites” who support the UN’s “green” policies confirms everything that Wikileaks is now discovering.
[See links]
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/09/per-wikileaks-documents-the-uns-climate-change-programs-are-total-failure-looks-like-fraud.html
Wikileaks: Major UN Climate Programme ‘Basically A Farce’
Today’s climate campaign embarrassment comes to us courtesy of Nature magazine once again, which has a story in the current issue about how the UN’s “Clean Development Mechanism” (CDM), which was essentially a fig leaf for wealth transfers from industrialized nations to poor developing nations, isn’t working according to plan. The CDM is a prototype for a global cap and trade system, whereby industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions would pay to “offset” their emissions by paying for projects that would reduce the growth of emissions in developing nations like China and India.
There has been rampant fraud in this program since the beginning, which is a feature rather than a bug for the UN of course. Naturally the UN wants to expand this program and increase the amount of money rich nations send to poor nations, since, as one leading German climate diplomat, Ottmar Edenhoffer, put it indelicately last fall: “But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore.”
http://thegwpf.org/the-climate-record/3990-wikileaks-major-un-climate-programme-basically-a-farce.html
NZ’s relationship with the CER mechanism is described here
http://www.climatechange.govt.nz/emissions-trading-scheme/ets-review-2011/supporting-info/import-of-cers-into-the-ets.pdf
I am still unclear how this all works. Do the general public pay $12.50 for CO2 permits (via increased fuel costs etc) and then the emitters can purchase offsets from India and the like, at reduced cost, with no accountability or transparency?
As the document says:
The Panel believes that while the intention of the ETS is to change behaviour, it should also allow for flexibility as to how participants meet their obligations. If participants can meet their obligations at lower cost by purchasing emissions units from international markets then this should be allowed. This is a key measure for mitigating against excessive short‐term costs whilst also being consistent with an international framework (paragraph 63).
I think there’s at least 2 mechanisms at work in “domestic compliance”.
1) The fuel levy is an unavoidable tax prior to emission that ensures obligations are met by blanket coverage of the general public and there’s no way I know of to offset the subsequent emissions and claim a rebate.
2) Where CERs come in is for those participating in the ETS that have a reporting obligation post emission. CERs are an option “To provide participants with access to the lowest cost form of abatement” i.e. an offset (I see the EU is imposing restrictions on this).
So potential purchasers of CERs will be say a cement works (and they’re probably not fussy about the provenance if it’s a CDM approved unit) but the govt will eventually have a short-fall of units and will have to purchase units but what unit and will they buy on the primary or secondary market? Will they just accept the CDM certification or will they do a background check of the provenance especially if they’re LDC units? I doubt it unless there’s public pressure for them to do so.
The “accountability or transparency” is in the certification process. A primary market supplier (e.g. to the UN) can offer units as soon as they are certified and that certification stays with the unit once it is resold into the secondary market.
Right now it seems that the UN is not only accepting ineffective and corruptly certified CERs but they’re flooding the primary market with them. I doubt the Chinese €8 lower limit will set a price floor in that case on the secondary market. If someone wants to unload for less there will be a queue of willing buyers on the secondary market all bidding at next to nothing.
That’s my understanding, subject to change at a moments notice.
Certification looks like a bag of snakes, see GOLD STANDARD FOUNDATION (Note the WWF logo at the bottom of the page)
http://www.cdmgoldstandard.org/Home.80.0.html
Monitoring, Verification and Certification of Carbon Credits
http://www.cdmgoldstandard.org/Monitoring-Verification-and-C.334.0.html
I tried to get some information from MfE last year when inquiring about the ETS, but information was not forthcoming.
It appears that we, the public, pay an amount X for our indulgences. Emitters can opt to pay Y for offshore CER certificates, where Y <= X.
The question is, where does the difference, X – Y, go to? The same could be said for Y, too.
Why are the public not baying for blood? It is hundreds of millions at stake here.
A little more background before moving to an to an ETS thread
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Forest carbon markets grow, despite uncertainty
30 September 2011
The State of the Forest Carbon Markets 2011 report, published yesterday by information provider Ecosystem Marketplace, says that 30.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) were contracted last year, valued at $178 million in total. These figures cover both primary deals – made directly with a project – and subsequent secondary market transactions in both the voluntary and regulated carbon markets.
However, the vast majority (29.0 MtCO2e) of deals were in the primary market, and about two-thirds (19.5 MtCO2e) of that was from REDD projects. Other project types tracked in the survey were improved forestry management, afforestation/reforestation and agro-forestry.
More than 90% of 2010’s deals were for voluntary carbon credits; less than 10% were done in the regulated markets of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme.
Average primary offset prices climbed to $5.5 per tCO2e in 2012, up from $4.5 in 2009 and $3.8 in 2008, the report says.
In comparison, average prices in the secondary market for certified emission reductions (CERs) from CDM projects – the most liquid offsets market in the world – also climbed, to about €12.40 ($16.74) in 2010 from around €11.80 in 2009, for the December contract on the European Climate Exchange. However, in 2008, the CER price averaged around €17.80.
Projects in Latin America supplied almost half of the forest credits, while European buyers were the largest source of demand, taking at least one-third of the volumes.
Almost half of the credits were verified to the Verified Carbon Standard [VCS] and the Climate, Community and Biodiversity standard [CCBS]. [What about the other half?]
>>>>>>>>>>
http://www.environmental-finance.com/news/view/2018
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Looks like the secondary market is above the Chinese €8 “floor” at €12.40 but it’s the primary price that is well below at €4 (assuming my cross-rate calc from their $5.5 price is correct by using €12.40 = $16.74). I thought it would be the other way around.
Also surprised that less than 10% of deals were done through secondary markets (CDM and NSW GGAS), the other 90% being primary (and presumably much of that of varying regulatory status). Again I thought it would be the other way around. European voluntary demand must be setting the primary market price and compliance is setting the secondary price but that doesn’t make sense.
Why would a commercial entity requiring CERs for compliance buy on the secondary market at €12.40 when they could buy primary units at €4?
If this article has got the numbers right, it’s just a matter of sourcing €4 units from a primary supplier and immediately selling on the secondary market at €12.40 for an €8 profit but traders would see that in an instant and the margin would close just as quickly.
Have to read the report myself obviously (sigh).
UN offsets for delivery in December dropped as much as 1.9 percent to a record 7.12 euros ($9.80) a ton on the ICE Futures Europe exchange and were at 7.13 euros as of 5:11 p.m. in London today.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-17/-ambitious-climate-targets-needed-to-rescue-un-market-eu-says.html
This topic is begging for investigation, so I applaud what you’ve presented so far, Richard and Andy. I’m completely tied up in editing work right now, or I’d be at it hammer and tongs. I mean the research.
In the absence of (much) public interest in or understanding of the scientific issues, the money represents the best chance of attracting people’s attention.
Isn’t there an ETS thread? Do you want me to put up a short post on the ETS to start things off again?
Yes, agreed Richard, it’s best to move this discussion to an ETS thread.
I completely agree that the public are much more likely to show an interest if it is their money being squandered and/or lining the pockets of corporates.
EU Carbon Trading Rocked By Mass Killings
Monday, 03 October 2011 09:19 Arthur Neslen, EurActiv
The reported killing of 23 Honduran farmers in a dispute with the owners of UN-accredited palm oil plantations in Honduras is forcing the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) executive board to reconsider its stakeholder consultation processes.
http://www.thegwpf.org/international-news/4009-eu-carbon-trading-rocked-by-mass-killings.html
EU carbon trading scheme pays for murder of 23 farmers in Honduras
http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/10/eu-carbon-trading-scheme-pays-for.html
Murdering Peasant Farmers For Fun And AGW Profit
http://cbullitt.wordpress.com/2011/10/03/murdering-peasant-farmers-for-fun-and-agw-profit/
Honduras: Human Rights Violations in Bajo Aguán
International Fact Finding Mission Report
A recent example of a significant international loan is project 27250 by the International
Financial Corporation (IFC), an entity of the World Bank Group that co-finances the project,
providing 30 million USD of the sum total of 75 million USD to the Dinant Corporation, owned
by businessman Miguel Facussé.
30 However, on the 11 April 2011, the German Investment and Development Society (DEG)
decided to suspend their contractual relationship with the Dinant Corporation and not grant the agreed upon loan. DEG received the preliminary report and began a dialogue with the international fact finding mission. After analysing the situation, the public bank that manages German development funds, decided to withdraw their final support from the project. Furthermore, the Clean Development Mechanism´s Executive Board (CDM) and the British government are reviewing their authorisation of controversial carbon offsetting project in the Bajo Aguán: Due to the reported human rights situation, EDF Trading, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Electricité de France SA and one of the biggest CDM investors, pulled out of a contract to buy carbon credits of around 2.8 million dollar from the project.
See “Forced evictions in Bajo Aguán” and “The transfer of lands to the MUCA communities” and “The transference of CREM lands to the MCA communities”
http://www.fian.org/resources/documents/others/honduras-human-rights-violations-in-bajo-aguan/pdf
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NZ Govt take note, but then as the GWPF reports:-
An official with the European Commission’s directorate-general for Energy told EurActiv that including human rights in the criteria for assessing CDM projects would be “very difficult”.
“You can say that ‘human rights’ means the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and check every project for compliance, but I think that takes us very far and the practicalities of it would be very difficult,” he said.
Ambitions in check on global climate deal
PANAMA CITY — With just weeks to go before UN talks on climate change open in South Africa, negotiators have shifted their goal from striking a historic deal to ensuring that the global system survives.
Participants have long billed the conference opening on November 28 in Durban as a last chance to find a way forward on fighting climate change, with the Kyoto Protocol’s commitments to cut carbon emissions expiring after 2012.
Officials from key nations reported progress in preparatory talks that closed Friday in Panama City — not in resolving the most knotty issues, but in starting to work out a technical framework for the future.
[…]
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said that one solution would be for some economies to recommit under Kyoto “to uphold the rules-based system,” with other nations making pledges that are “rigorous” but outside the treaty.
“Governments are exploring precisely those middle-ground solutions,” she said. “That is going to be the crux of Durban.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jAcwC0Qpgk5mwHFAdif5oLrO3o_Q?docId=CNG.35938e723ad2fcbcb70c6292de0e98b4.731
Here’s hoping that negotiators opt for “very loose” pledges “outside the treaty” and by “very loose” I mean: yeah, we might look at that after we’ve dealt with our collapsing financial and economic situation.
I’ll start a thread header under “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)” up-thread (see link) once the Durban gabfest gets going.
https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/open-threads/un/#comment-25991
Annual joint conference of the UN and NGO’s concludes in Germany with calls for sustainable development with public engagement
By fundsforngos, on September 13th, 2011
Recently concluded annual joint conference of the United Nations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Bonn, Germany has called the civil society to encourage people that they must realize that their local concerns were connected to the larger global issues.
This year’s conference was on the theme “Sustainable Societies Responsive Citizens” and it provided an opportunity for NGOs and civil society to interact as they prepare for next year’s UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Brazil.
The three-day 64th annual conference of the UN and NGOs was organized by the Department of Public Information (DPI), in partnership with the DPI/NGO Executive Committee, Germany and the UN Volunteers (UNV) program. The delegates at conference were of the view that the dots between civil society groups dealing with various issues for greater impact on global problems need to be connected.
>>>>>>>
http://www.fundsforngos.org/donor-updates/annual-joint-conference-ngos-concludes-germany-calls-sustainable-development-public-engagement/
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I think I see where this is heading: hijack a reasonable voluntary concept; control it; impose it globally; and, milk it for all it’s worth to create the impression that the UN is the benevolent planetary master with a status elevated beyond what it can achieve by just being an international intermediary.
I did a case study of Invensys plc (2002 revenues $22.9b) as part of an NZIM mgt intro assignment back in 2002. Invensys were then about production mgt and energy mgt and had embraced sustainable development as their core customer offering with part of the environmental intent being a reduction of GHGs under the 1997 Kyoto agreement. The sustainable development concept seemed to me then to be best corporate practice and especially in the case of Invensys but I now see that companies like Invensys can never implement the UN, NGO, WWF or Civil Society version of it even though they are signatories to the UN Global Compact and sustainable development is an executive implementation.
Industry is incompatible with the underlying anti-industry anti-capital conception of sustainable development that pervades the aims of the NGOs that align with and live off the UN so there’s an inevitable clash of interests like the “Occupy Wall Street” movement that companies like Invensys will face eventually despite their attempts to create an acceptable corporate ethos.
Industry is incompatible with the underlying anti-industry anti-capital conception
Bingo!
This is why I posted to “Pure Advantage” after they embraced Greenpeace:
“Why does an organisation that supposedly represents business interests support an organisation (Greenpeace) that according to its co-founder Dr Patrick Moore, had become “anti-intellectual, anti-science, and ultimately anti-human”?
I’ve just been looking into what the UN terms “Flow of Funds” and in this respect Greenpeace is something of an outsider i.e. they collect donations and use them in their own spheres of activism – no gifting or sharing with others.
From what I can gather, Greenpeace is not a participant (in flow-of-funds terms) in philanthropic grants, projects and initiatives such as the UN Green Climate Fund so although they are activists they make no financial contribution to reducing poverty and achieving sustainable development in underdeveloped countries. All the more reason for Pure Advantage not to embrace Greenpeace because they’re about saving the planet, they don’t give a toss about humanitarian issues hence the “anti-human” tag – that’s the point of difference.
It has occurred to me while trying to unravel the competition for funding by NGOs that the UNDP (Helen Clark’s group) has set NGOs that work in the interests of underdeveloped countries in conflict and competition with the governments of those same countries. Here it is in:-
Blending Climate Finance Through National Climate Funds
A Guidebook for the Design and Establishment of National Funds to Achieve Climate Change Priorities (September 2011)
http://asia-pacific.undp.org/documents/Blending_Climate_Finance_Through_National_Climate_Funds.pdf
The UNDP is advising national governments how to design and establish National Climate Funds (NCFs) with the aim: “to support countries to collect, coordinate, blend and account for climate finance”. Problem being that Figure 1: shows Climate Change Finance: Sources, Agents and Channels. CSOs/NGOs obtain funding from Govt and Private Cooperation but NCFs also tap those sources so there’s a lopsided fight over funding sources. Read more here:-
UNDP initiates guidebook to address issues on climate change
http://www.fundsforngos.org/guides/undp-initiates-guidebook-address-issues-climate-change/
On the other hand, it has been an eye-opener to see that a limited liability company in that link (fundsforngos LLC) is the middleman in a massive marketplace for NGO funding. Latest climate funding is under Latest Funds for NGOs >> By Theme >> Environment and fund sources are under Foundation Funds for NGOs, see >> Bilaterals for NZAID and AUSAID.
The big tickets though are under Foundation Funds for NGOs >> Foundations e.g.:-
World Vision to undertake $200 Million Clinton Global Initiative
USAID Commits $127 Million to support Development in Ghana
$40,000 awarded in environmental grants by Ford
Grant Worth $136 million Awarded by USDA
Foreign Minister announces $64 million for health in Papua New Guinea
USAID grants $65 m to Nepal for development projects
Local NGOs receive World Bank 2011 Civil Society Fund Grants
AECF awards US$ 9.2 m to 11 E. Africa firms
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Save the Children honors corporate partners at first Awards
EU gives EUR 7,200,000 to Support Rural Electrification in Tanzania
BHP Billiton gives US$25 million grant for African women’s and children’s health initiatives
China enters into agreement with 200 NGOs from 19 African countries to work together towards development in their countries
http://www.fundsforngos.org/category/donor-updates/
So that’s the existing “Flow of Funds” (with all its attendant ulterior motives) but now there’s a complication, or as the UNDP puts it:-
“Climate change is one of the most pressing threats to development today. Addressing climate change requires that countries transform their economies and grow in a di#erent way — climate and development planning must be integrated so that policies and actions across multiple sectors and scales lower greenhouse gas emissions, reduce vulnerability to climate shocks and deliver poverty reduction gains.
The good news is that countries have new and expanded opportunities to finance climate change actions — billions from the public and private sectors will be channeled toward climate activities”.
And,
“By pledging $30 billion in climate change finance by 2012 and up to $100 billion annually by 2020, governments have ushered in a new era of funding for climate change. Only ten years ago, climate finance was managed by a small number of large funds associated with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. Today, there has been an explosion of public, private, bilateral and multilateral sources that o#er countries new opportunities to address their climate and development needs”.
In Australia there’s another competitor for govt allocated aid funds – corporates. The Australian aid pie is analyzed here:-
Who profits from our foreign aid?: carving up the pie, where the little-known dominate
# Corporations get the majority of Australian aid contracts and nearly 85% of the value of those contracts
# Six corporations get between them more than half of the value of the contracts
# A dramatic shift from NGOs to corporates took place over the Howard years — before 2003, NGOs got a larger share of contracts
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/07/23/who-profits-from-our-foreign-aid-carving-up-the-pie-where-the-little-known-dominate/
Australian Development NGOs
Financially the NGO sector is tiny, out of Australia’s $4.3 billion 2010/2011 aid budget, only $135 million is allocated to NGOs and community engagement programs, this amounts to a mere 2.5%
http://www.aidwatch.org.au/where-is-your-aid-money-going/non-government-organisations/australian-development-ngos
Given that the existing flow-of-funds addresses many diverse issues and climate issues being just one issue that is already being addressed (e.g. NZAID, AUSAID – Tuvalu) and the major donors are already active, I cannot see that “billions from the public and private sectors will be channeled toward climate activities”. The fund source pie is about as big now as it will ever get and the marketplace is already established.
Donor corporates will immediately switch to more receptive avenues too if the dog they feed bites the hand that feeds it (the sustainable development conflict of interest).
The UN’s prospect of “billions” does still have a small but vocal fan base even though the funding sources are doubtful:-
Small nations push climate at Commonwealth talks
Pacific island and other small countries being punished by global warming will use a Commonwealth summit this week to ramp up pressure on powerful nations in the climate change debate. Setting the stage for the three-day event, Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi hit out at major polluters the United States and China for not doing enough to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.
[…]
He also called for rich nations to fulfill their promises to provide small countries with billions of dollars in funds so they can adapt to rising sea waters and extreme weather events that scientists blame on climate change.
>>>>>>>>>
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.64f335a63a0a239e61cf0891c65a0c44.151&show_article=1
Figueres has figuered it out:-
Durban talks come at bad time: UN climate chief
UN climate talks that begin next month in coincide with a global financial crisis hurting efforts to raise money to fight climate change, the UN’s climate chief said on Wednesday.
“This is not the best time to be talking about finance, because all developed countries are in a financial crisis,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, told a press briefing ahead of the November 28 to December 9 talks in Durban.
[…]
Negotiators are trying to raise money for a Green Climate Fund that would give $100 billion a year by 2020 to developing countries to help fight climate change and its effects.
The fund was agreed at the 2010 climate talks in Cancun, but negotiators still have to hammer out where the money will come from and how it will be managed.
>>>>>>>
http://www.thenewage.co.za/33210-1020-53-Durban_talks_come_at_bad_time_UN_climate_chief
EXCLUSIVE: UN Chief, Aides Plot ‘green Economy’ Agenda At Upcoming Summit | Fox News
At a closed-door retreat in a Long Island mansion late last October, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his topmost aides brainstormed about how the global organization could benefit from a “unique opportunity” to reshape the world, starting with the Rio + 20 Summit on Sustainable Development, which takes place in Brazil in June.
A copy of the confidential minutes of the meeting was obtained by Fox News. According to that document, the 29-member group, known as the United Nations System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB), discussed bold ambitions that stretch for years beyond the Rio conclave to consolidate a radical new global green economy, promote a spectrum of sweeping new social policies and build an even more important role for U.N. institutions “ to manage the process of globalization better.”
At the same time, the gathering acknowledged that their ambitions were on extremely shaky ground, starting with the fact that, as Ban’s chief organizer for the Rio gathering put it, “there was still no agreement on the definition of the green economy, the main theme of the [Rio] conference.”
http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/european-death-toll-rises-to-480-and.html
“Unique Business Opportunity”
I get a lot of those emails from Nigeria too
I have to ask. Why did the UN choose….
RIO+20 the future we don’t want
?
Looks like a fish jumping over a staircase with a man drowning underneath.
Here is the answer to everything.
The Climate Change
Peter Gleick’s Actions Exposes “End Justifies Means” Mentality: Poses Problem for UN Agenda 21
Written by Dr. Tim Ball, guest post | February 25 2012
[…]
Gleick’s activities apparently manifest a groupthink mentality of several faculty at Stanford University. The late faculty member and grandfather of IPCC, Stephen Schneider, delineated it in Discover magazine in 1989.
>>>>>>>>>
http://climatechangedispatch.com/home/9994-peter-gleicks-actions-exposes-end-justifies-means-mentality-poses-problem-for-un-agenda-21
Good news Australia!
UN scientists warn of increased groundwater demands due to climate change
SAN FRANCISCO, March 1, 2012 — Climate change has been studied extensively, but a new body of research guided by a San Francisco State University hydrologist looks beneath the surface of the phenomenon and finds that climate change will put particular strain on one of our most important natural resources: groundwater.
SF State Assistant Professor of Geosciences Jason Gurdak says that as precipitation becomes less frequent due to climate change, lake and reservoir levels will drop and people will increasingly turn to groundwater for agricultural, industrial, and drinking water needs. The resource accounts for nearly half of all drinking water worldwide, but recharges at a much slower rate than aboveground water sources and in many cases is nonrenewable.
>>>>>>>>
http://www.sciencecodex.com/un_scientists_warn_of_increased_groundwater_demands_due_to_climate_change-87224
The UN is pushing the water meme as a new front for control – they should get out more though.
2 snippets from a remarkable address to the recent conference organised as a counter to the ” Durban Conference” (not the climate one) in New York:-
These are the words of Simon Deng, once a Sudanese slave. It can be viewed on the Youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kbsA7HRsoo
2012/3/22
I want to thank the organizers of this conference, ‘The Perils of Global Intolerance.’ It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today’s distinguished speakers.
I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this ‘Durban Conference’ which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kind of oppression.
It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel .
The UN has itself become a tool against Israel . For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state – Israel . Hitler couldn’t have been made happier!
The ‘Durban Conference’ is an outrage. All decent people will know that. But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.
Please hear me out.
By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.
For over fifty years the indigenous black population of Sudan — Christians and Muslims alike — have been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum .
In South Sudan , my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005. Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II.
The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees. They dedicated a separate agency for them, and they are treated with a special privilege.
Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored. The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan ‘s conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur ? It is not a “tribal conflict.”
[…]
The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish – led American Anti-Slavery Group — sixteen years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.
But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.
My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League!
[…]
Just skimmed ‘The Future We Want’ available here http://www.cfact.tv/rio20-resources/
I. Our Common Vision
1. We, the heads of State and Government and high level representatives, having met at Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil, from 20-22 June 2012, with full participation of civil society, renew our
commitment to sustainable development, and to ensure the promotion of economically,
socially and environmentally sustainable future for our planet and for present and future
generations.
2. Eradicating poverty is the greatest global challenge facing the world today and an
indispensable requirement for sustainable development. In this regard we are committed to
free humanity from poverty and hunger as a matter of urgency.
3. We therefore acknowledge the need to further mainstream sustainable development at all
levels integrating economic, social and environmental aspects and recognizing their
interlinkages, so as to achieve sustainable development in all its dimensions.
4. We recognize that poverty eradication, changing unsustainable and promoting sustainable
patterns of consumption and production, and protecting and managing the natural resource
base of economic and social development are the overarching objectives of and essential
requirements for sustainable development. We also reaffirm the need to achieve sustainable
development by: promoting sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth, creating
greater opportunities for all, reducing inequalities, raising basic standards of living; fostering
equitable social development and inclusion; and promoting integrated and sustainable
management of natural resources and ecosystems that supports inter alia economic, social and
human development while facilitating ecosystem conservation, regeneration and restoration
and resilience in the face of new and emerging challenges.
And so on. Apparently (1) sustainable development (2) morphs (3) into (4) “reducing inequalities” by (3) “interlinkages”.
Then it gets tricky.
VI. Means of implementation
252. We reaffirm that the means of implementation identified in Agenda 21, the Programme
for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21, Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, the
Monterrey Consensus of the International Conference on Financing for Development and the
Doha Declaration on Financing for Development are indispensable for achieving full and
effective translation of sustainable development commitments into tangible sustainable
development outcomes. We reiterate that each country has primary responsibility for its own
economic and social development and that the role of national policies, domestic resources
and development strategies cannot be overemphasized. We reaffirm that developing countries
need additional resources for sustainable development. We recognize the need for significant
mobilization of resources from a variety of sources and effective use of financing, in order to
promote sustainable development. We acknowledge that good governance and the rule of law
at the national and international levels are essential for sustained, inclusive and equitable
economic growth, sustainable development and the eradication of poverty and hunger.
A. Finance
253. We call on all countries to prioritize sustainable development in the allocation of
resources in accordance with national priorities and needs, and we recognize the crucial
importance of enhancing financial support from all sources for sustainable development for
all countries, in particular developing countries. We recognize the importance of international,
regional and national financial mechanisms including those accessible to sub-national and
local authorities to implement sustainable development programmes and call for their
strengthening and implementation. New partnerships and innovative sources of financing can
play a role in complementing sources of financing for sustainable development. We encourage
their further exploration and use, alongside the traditional means of implementation.
254. We recognize the need for significant mobilization of resources from a variety of sources
and effective use of financing, to give strong support to developing countries in their efforts to
promote sustainable development, including through actions undertaken according to the
outcome of UN Conference on Sustainable Development and for achieving sustainable
development goals.
255. We agree to establish an intergovernmental process under the United Nations General
Assembly, with technical support from the UN System, and in open and broad consultation
with relevant international and regional financial institutions and other relevant stakeholders.
The process will assess financing needs, consider the effectiveness, consistency and synergies
44 of existing instruments and frameworks, and evaluate additional initiatives, with a view to
prepare a report proposing options on an effective Sustainable Development Financing
Strategy to facilitate the mobilization of resources and their effective use in achieving
sustainable development objectives.
256. An intergovernmental committee, comprising thirty experts nominated by regional
groups, with equitable geographical representation, will implement this process, concluding
its work by 2014.
Of course! Brilliant! “…..an intergovernmental process under the United Nations General
Assembly, with technical support from the UN System”
What could possibly go wrong?
Woo hooo, looks like the UN’s been sidelined (for a while).
Rio+20 ends with weak text
(Reuters) – Global leaders ended a U.N. development summit on Friday with what was widely considered a lackluster agreement, leaving many attendees convinced that individuals and companies, rather than governments, must lead efforts to improve the environment.
>>>>>>>
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/22/us-un-climate-idUSBRE85H19320120622
Well duh!
BTW, take a look in “Editors choice” on the left, Greenpeace’s inflatable polar bear cub at Rio. There because….ummm….
UN emission credits fall to record low on supply jump
United Nations emission credits dropped to a record as the regulator defended allowing supplies of offsets from more-efficient coal plants in emerging nations.
Certified Emission Reduction credits for December fell 8.9 per cent to close at 1.53 euros ($1.90) a metric ton on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London, an all-time low.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/un-emission-credits-fall-to-record-low-on-supply-jump-20120918-2631n.html#ixzz26nrBRj35
Superstorm Sandy shows climate change isn’t science fiction, top U.N. official tells Stanford audience
Helen Clark, the administrator of the United Nations Development Program, visited Stanford to set the stage for international climate talks taking place in Doha, Qatar, later this month.
“Until recently, climate change seemed like a science fiction scenario,” Helen Clark told a Stanford audience recently.
Clark, the administrator of the United Nations Development Program and former prime minister of New Zealand, argued that a lack of coordinated global action on the issue is undermining efforts to alleviate extreme poverty. Climate change is damaging agriculture, driving up food prices, creating water insecurity, destroying coral reef fishing grounds and exposing millions to diseases such as diarrhea, dengue fever and malaria, she said.
[…]
In an interview following her lecture, Clark stressed the need for President Obama to use the momentum of his re-election to act quickly on climate change. “There is a window of opportunity to see the U.S. take a strong position,” Clark told ClimateWire. “This is the hour for moving on climate change. I think it’s time to mobilize, and not just the U.S., but worldwide.”
Read the full text of Clark’s speech.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/november/clark-climate-change-111212.html
For the record:-
“t is the most inspiring job in the world because what we are doing here is we are inspiring government, private sector, and civil society to [make] the biggest transformation that they have ever undertaken. The Industrial Revolution was also a transformation, but it wasn’t a guided transformation from a centralized policy perspective. This is a centralized transformation that is taking place because governments have decided that they need to listen to science. So it’s a very, very different transformation and one that is going to make the life of everyone on the planet very different.”
– Christiana Figueres, UNFCCC
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/21/global-warming-talks-progress-un-climate-chief
OPEN CLIMATE LETTER TO UN SECRETARY-GENERAL: Current scientific knowledge does not substantiate Ban Ki-Moon assertions on weather and climate, say 125-plus scientists.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2012/11/29/open-climate-letter-to-un-secretary-general-current-scientific-knowledge-does-not-substantiate-ban-ki-moon-assertions-on-weather-and-climate-say-125-scientists/
“Based upon these considerations, we ask that you desist from exploiting the misery of the families of those who lost their lives or properties in tropical storm Sandy by making unsupportable claims that human influences caused that storm. They did not. We also ask that you acknowledge that policy actions by the U.N., or by the signatory nations to the UNFCCC, that aim to reduce CO2 emissions are unlikely to exercise any significant influence on future climate. Climate policies therefore need to focus on preparation for, and adaptation to, all dangerous climatic events however caused.”
Signed by: [an impressive international list]
# # #
This has not gone done well in certain quarters.
Now it’s the internet:-
Internet governance talks in jeopardy
http://tvnz.co.nz/technology-news/internet-governance-talks-in-jeopardy-5273818
Some merit re “some countries were supporting a change to the economic model that would have Google, Facebook and others pay for at least some of the costs of internet transmission” but the thin edge of the wedge is this “The 147-year-old ITU, which is now under the auspices of the United Nations, historically has set technology standards and established payment customs for international phone calls. But under Secretary-General Hamadoun Tour, it has inched toward cyber-security and electronic content issues, arguing that internet traffic goes over phone lines and is therefore within its purview”.
+ + +
Would-Be Internet Regulators Need Deleting
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324001104578167242735088684.html
“In a referendum among the world’s two billion Internet users, how many would vote to transfer control of the Internet to the United Nations? Perhaps 100,000, an estimate based on the number of top officials ruling the most authoritarian countries, whose power is threatened by the open Web.
Under the one country, one vote rule of the U.N., these 100,000 people trump the rest of the two billion. It only takes a majority of the 193 countries in the U.N. to hijack the Internet”.
[…]
“Instead, authoritarian governments want to legitimize government censorship, tax Internet traffic that crosses national boundaries and mandate that ITU bureaucrats replace the nongovernmental engineering groups now smoothly running the Internet”
[…]
“Mr. McLaughlin cited the “soft corruption” of the ITU, where regulators and the monopoly telecommunications companies from many countries “get to take nice trips to Geneva on a regular basis, and people build their careers around the ITU as a gravy train” “.
Not specifically climate-related, but a report is very critical of the UNDP under Helen Clark
http://www.stuff.co.nz/world/8180500/Report-slams-Clarks-UN-programme
Secret UN ‘ZOD’ climate deliberations: UK battles to suppress details
Lone engineer battles climate science Omertà
By Andrew Orlowski
[…] The case for transparency
The IPCC is the United Nations organisation’s process for providing climate advice to policy makers. Every few years it updates this advice, which takes the form of three gigantic reports: one assessing the physical basis (called Working Group 1, or WG1); another considering the impacts (WG2); and the third the mitigation options (WG3).
None of the groups does any original science. They’re supposed to write fair summaries of the state of the science – although you’ll notice that WG3 already plays with loaded dice: it is about “mitigation”, not “adaptation” nor “economic costs” or even “low carbon technological innovation”. Each of these groups writes three drafts in a rolling process before they’re signed off as official UN policy.
What Holland is seeking the “zero order draft” – aka Draft No. 1 – of Working Group 1. He couldn’t care less what’s in it, but wants to establish the principle that citizens can see it. As it happens, much of this material is already all over the web. But as Judge Dhanji pointed out, that’s by-the-by.
Holland justified his request on the twofold basis that the WG1 zero draft must, and should, be publicly available.
The “must” is the statutory obligation of the UK as a signatory to the Aarhus Convention, or to give it its full title, the “UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters” and by signing up to EC directive 2003/4/EC (PDF) the UK has obliged all of its environmental regulations to be consistent with the Convention. (Not every EU country is a signatory, but the UK is: perhaps a case of civil servants’ Euro-enthusiasm coming back to bite them.)
>>>>>>>>
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/08/ipcc_vs_holland_foi/
[Tom Nelson] UN climate hoax chief: Did we say we needed $100 billion per year? We meant $1,000 billion per year (and our Green Climate Fund has only raised .0075 billion)
‘UN climate chief underlines Green Climate Fund concerns’ [link]
“That $100bn, the only thing that that is going to do is take the dog and point it in the direction that we must move because we know that the financing we need is not $100bn per year—it is $1tr per year, and that is what needs to be mobilised,” she said.
Much of this money is supposed to be channelled through the UN backed Green Climate Fund (GCF), but so far this has only raised $7.5million.
http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/un-climate-hoax-chief-did-we-say-we.html
UNFCCC @UN_ClimateTalks 11 Nov
.@Figueres: We will need one trillion dollars a year to completely transform the energery sector towards low-carbon
https://twitter.com/UN_ClimateTalks/status/399896436357074944
Joe Bastardi @BigJoeBastardi 6h
@UN_ClimateTalks @figueres I will take half that, and there will be no global warming for at least the next 25 years. Send me the check
Check out Jo Nova’s revised UN logo here:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/photos/logos/UN-Logo-Communist.jpg
From: ‘Australia says “No” to UN wish list of billions – will “not support socialism masquerading as environmentalism”
http://joannenova.com.au/2013/11/australia-says-no-to-un-wish-list-of-billions-will-not-support-socialism-masquerading-as-environmentalism/#more-31686
‘UN’s Top Climate Diplomat: Communism Is Key to “Doing It Right” on Global Warming’
by William Yeatman on January 14, 2014
The People’s Republic of China is the #1 greenhouse gas emitter (having only recently raced past the U.S. to the top of this list), and last week the country’s government ordered a huge increase in coal production. Nonetheless, the Middle Kingdom is “doing it right” when it comes to climate change, according to Christiana Figueres, the top climate diplomat at the United Nations.
You might think to yourself: “What’s China’s secret for ‘doing it right’ (despite all those emissions)?” The answer, according to Figueres, is the absence of civil liberties.
More>>>>>>
http://www.globalwarming.org/2014/01/14/uns-top-climate-diplomat-communism-is-key-to-doing-it-right-on-global-warming/
Having been to China a couple of times (most recently last November) it is pretty hard to see that China is doing anything right on environmental issues.
Maybe putting people in “re-education camps” is what tickles Figueres’ fancy
I think she has a particular fondness for the idea of bypassing “legislative hurdles”. Obama’s White House and the EPA have embraced it enthusiastically too but she doesn’t highlight that.
But holding up China’s legislature that produced it’s new economic order complete with the attendant but ineffectively regulated pollution as a model of progress isn’t that smart.
Figueres:
“They actually want to breathe air that they don’t have to look at”
“They’re not doing this because they want to save the planet. They’re doing it because it’s in their national interest.”
Duh, they’re doing it because they got very wealthy very quickly the same way every other wealthy country has by industrialisation except now it’s caught up with them and they have to grapple with the same old problems as everyone else but magnified many fold and squeezed into a much shorter timeframe.
Figueres again,
“Its efforts to promote energy efficiency and renewable power stem from the realization that doing so will pay off in the long term”
More like, it’s ineffective and misplaced pollution control efforts stem from the realization that doing so will make China look good in the eyes of outsiders like Figueres.
Paris draft negotiating text:
https://junksciencecom.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/negotiating_text_120220152200.pdf
Term “Mother Earth” on pages 4, 6, 8, 9, and 13.
UN conflating El Nino with “climate change”:
‘El Niño is not a one-off event,’ UN says, calling for action to address phenomenon’s impacts
Noting that El Niño is a good example of climate change affecting the livelihood of people, the ECOSOC President said that Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau have all declared states of emergency due to drought conditions from El Niño, while Malawi has declared “a state of disaster.”
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=53877#.Vy9IAvkrKUk
UNsilenced: Whistleblower Exposes UN Culture of Corruption
When she stumbled across massive corruption and made-up statistics in her job at the United Nations, Rasna Warah knew she needed to act. But when she tried to blow the whistle, she was viciously attacked, publicly humiliated, threatened, intimidated, and more. Unfortunately, though, as Warah explains in her new book UNsilenced: UNmasking the United Nations’ Culture of Cover-ups, Corruption and Impunity, her case is far from unique.
In fact, the corruption and lawlessness across the UN appears to be systemic. Some of the cases described in the book and the pages of The New American magazine make the scandals she exposed and the retaliation she suffered seem mild by comparison. Indeed, in her book, she actually spends very little time dwelling on her own case, but delves instead into some of the many other known and unknown scandals to rock the global organization.
[…]
It got so bad that in 2015, as Warah explains, a coalition of nine UN whistleblowers got together to raise the matter with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon. “Each of us has blown the whistle on serious wrongdoing, gross misconduct, and even criminal acts at the United Nations,” the group wrote in the letter, which is quoted in the book. “Our collective experience of reporting misconduct in the UN covers sexual exploitation, abuse of power, corruption, and other criminals activity over a period of more than a decade and a half.”
Instead of the UN scrambling to make things right, though, it responded in every case by attacking the whistleblower instead of the crimes, abuse, and the people behind the problems. “Each of us has faced retaliation for reporting the wrongdoing,” the whistleblowers continued. “Our cases are well-known, and sadly, deter others from reporting wrongdoing. This must change.” Unfortunately for humanity, despite threats from Congress to cut funding, and increasingly widespread media attention, nothing has changed, as the book documents extensively.
Continues at length >>>>>
http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/africa/item/24524-unsilenced-whistleblower-exposes-un-culture-of-corruption