The 18th Conference of Parties (COP) met in Doha, Qatar from 26 November to 7 December. Initially the purpose of these COPs was to monitor the Kyoto treaty which was designed to control greenhouse gas emissions. The people who set up this treaty hoped that it would give global governance of world’s energy to the UN bureaucracy. It has failed to do that. The Kyoto Treaty expires on 31 December 2012. Undeterred, the attendees replaced it with Kyoto II. The response to Kyoto II by the COP 18 attendees was underwhelming. And this new version has even less chance of accomplishing their desired result.The COP meetings have a new raison d’etre that alleges that the developed nations have damaged or will damage the undeveloped nations and thus owe them reparations. The idea is that developed nations send money to the UN who then decide what to do with it. Surpassed only by a few despots such as Duvalier and Amin, UN bureaucrats have mastered the art of siphoning money out of similar programs into their own Swiss bank accounts. The “OIL FOR FOOD” program is an example. Do you want give your money to the UN? I don’t.
First lets review Kyoto II. The original Kyoto Treaty was designed to have the industrialized nations emit no more greenhouse gases than that which they had emitted in 1992. Until a nation could get their emissions below the 1992 standard, they would have to buy Carbon Credits or pay for offsets. Al Gore used to have someone plant trees for him every time he took an airplane ride. This was such a good deal, he set up a business arranging for the trading of credits for money, and he became a millionaire doing it. The US refused to sign Kyoto because China and other nations with large and growing greenhouse gas emissions were exempted because they were considered “developing nations”.Russia loved Kyoto because by 1992, most of the really poorly run communist government industries had collapsed following
Perestroika resulting a sizable drop in emissions. So the Russians were way under the 1992 emissions level. Russian scientists believed that the man-made global warming theory was bogus and lobbied against signing the Treaty. But the politicians saw the potential value of the sales of offsets that had resulted from the collapse, and they signed the treaty. This is important because Kyoto II uses the average emissions during the period between 2008 and 2010 thus abandoning the former standard,1992. Russia is threatening to drop out of the Kyoto II because this new emissions period wipes out all the credits that accrued from the 1992 baseline. If you had any doubt why they signed the original treaty, this dispelled that.
Only 37 of the 194 nations signed up for Kyoto II. The 37 nations that have signed up for Kyoto II represent only 15% of the annual global emissions of CO2. Not much clout here. Although the Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan did sign-up, they are threatening to drop out because they too want to sell accumulated credits from the former standard period of 1992.
Some analysts think the new Kyoto treaty is really a suicide pact for the nations that signed on–principally the EU and Australia. Those that did not sign-up want to increase their nation’s wealth and the prosperity of their citizens. Those that signed-up will sacrifice those objectives and their sacrifice will not have any significant effect on global temperatures.
The true Anthropogenic Global Warmers think Kyoto II is a big deal. On a major blog one commenter, Science Boy, when ask to tell the others what was good about COP 18, he said that Kyoto was renewed. Hummm, he certainly is easy to please.
Among the 7000 attendees, not everyone was as satisfied as Science Boy. For example Ambassador Andre Correa Do Lago, chief negotiator, Brazil shared Science Boy’s enthusiasm for renewal of Kyoto, but found that these conferences have just to much science (Considering what appears to be lack of real scientific understanding among those in attendance, I understand the Brazilian’s thinking ). Quoting: “I hope we reach the point where we are tired to negotiate the way we are negotiating this, and with the ADP we give a year of thinking so we restart the process that will involve business, civil society, because we cannot fight climate change just as governments – we have to involve everybody – we cannot have a Convention where nobody can participate because they are so complicated, so specific, so technical. All this technicism is to hide political priorities.” (Highlight is mine.)
Too technical is right. What we need are some more politics and less science in this debate over global warming. Person just can’t get enough politics.(sarc.)
In the next blog, a discussion of the reparations theme that now energized COP18.
cbdakota
Climate Change Sanity 