The COP18 Doha conference of the United Nations has been the best polluter’s party to date…
All Business and Industry wet dreams were crowned here.
The industrial polluters and the nations selling fossil fuels along with the global dirty energy companies and the oil majors saw their lobby paying off handsomely in Doha.
The Oil Minister of Qatar was the executive in charge of the COP18 conference of the UN in Doha and as such was overjoyed with the results. If you think the oil minister leading the Climate Change negotiations is an oxymoron – You are not alone. The UN has been failing the basic intelligence tests lately all over the place.
“We achieved something great here” he is quoted as saying…
Surely we achieved something here.
A mirage.
A fucking mirage for morons and innocents alike…
We have a post card from Hell.
A Polluter’s Charter from Doha…
Once again we failed to come together and act responsibly.
And what bedevils me is that we failed to ask WHY?
Because if we ask WHY, then all kinds of simple honest thoughts come to mind.
Yet we failed….
We failed to take into account even the most basic arithmetic for our future. The CO2 climate debt…
But why we are such a sorry bunch of unintelligent monkeys when it comes to our own survival?
Here’s why:
Countries working towards a new global agreement on climate change, unlike the Kyoto protocol, require cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from both developed and developing countries.
That much is clear. We all share the atmosphere,without national borders.
The new Kyoto, is just an extension. And the new Memorandum hopes to be negotiated into being, and signed sometime around 2015 and then may come into force from 2020 onwards. If it sounds like benevolent wishing, it is. because at Doha, the delegates only managed to clear away some of the obstacles to the proposed new treaty, including starting on a new period of the Kyoto protocol that will last until 2020, reorganising the negotiations into a single unified set of talks, and setting out a work programme of negotiations up to 2015.
This was what was broadly achieved.
A Big Fat Nothing.
In diplomatic doublespeak here is Connie:
Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate chief, said: “In Doha, we have crossed the bridge from the old climate regime to the new system. We are now our way to the 2015 global deal. It was not an easy and comfortable ride. It was not a very fast ride either. But we have managed to cross the bridge. Very intense negotiations lie ahead of us. What we need now is more ambition and more speed.”
And here is Todd:
USA’s special envoy for climate change, Todd Stern, said: “Before we started, I said that this would be a transitional conference. There will be growing pains in this process of negotiating a new treaty but it’s very important, I think, that we will move forward.”
He said that combining the two negotiating tracks – one on the Kyoto protocol, the other on “long-term co-operative actions”, which were separated after the Kyoto protocol came into force in 2005, at the behest of the US which refused to ratify the protocol – was essential to making progress in the new talks. He also gave a clue as to the focus of the new talks, which is likely to be China, as the world’s biggest emitter. “You can’t cut a deal unless you have got all the big players in the room,” he said.
On the other hand all the members of the Environmental Parliament and all the green groups and anti-poverty campaigners blasted the Doha round of talks as poison pill the world has to swallow…
Here is Asad from the Friends of the Earth: “A weak and dangerously ineffectual agreement is nothing but a polluters charter – it legitimises a do-nothing approach whilst creating a mirage that governments are acting in the interests of the planet and its people,” said Asad Rehman, head of climate and energy at Friends of the Earth.
“Doha was a disaster zone where poor developing countries were forced to capitulate to the interests of wealthy countries, effectively condemning their own citizens to the climate crisis. The blame for the disaster in Doha can be laid squarely at the foot of countries like the USA who have blocked and bullied those who are serious about tackling climate change. Our only hope lies in people being inspired to take action.”
And here is Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace International, who said that recent extreme weather events showed the urgency of taking swift action on greenhouse gas emissions. “Just three days after Typhoon Bopha hit the Philippines and showed the human cost of extreme weather in vulnerable countries, the decision by politicians not to speed up efforts to cut carbon pollution is unforgiveable. The international process limps on, while the crisis accelerates.”
Kumi accused delegates at the conference of being out of touch. “We ask the negotiators in Doha: Which planet are you on? Clearly not the planet where people are dying from storms, floods and droughts. Nor the planet where renewable energy is growing rapidly and increasing constraints are being placed on the use of dirty fuels such as coal. The politicians and negotiators have lost touch with climate reality – sadly their failure will be paid for in lives and livelihoods,” he said.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Doha…
What a titanic failure…
Seems that only the Businesses of Fossil Fuels and Industry in general along with the nations in the business of polluting our planet’s atmosphere, benefited from the stalled Climate Change talks in Doha. Maybe the talks served their purpose as they had been designed to begin with. Achieve Nothing. maintain the Status Quo. Keep the business involvement with the UN cozy and hide the usurping of the COP process as a way to stymie progress.
And thus the nefarious baddies, prevent us once again from getting a fair and just deal that would have industrial polluters account for their externalities. Externalities being those costs that businesses are pushing off their plate and onto the society at large. It’s the tragedy of the Commons once again when the polluters externalize the costs of their pollution and toxic CO2 emission releases. Thus they enjoy the profits to the shareholders while the world eats up the angry air, the toxic waters and the nasty food. Not bad for a days work, from smart executives who cause the greenhouse effect of this dangerously warming planet experiencing Climate Change leading to Chaos and Dystopia…
After all its people doing this to people, because companies are made up of people and not robots….
And the financiers who see long term value loss are also thrilled as new insurance and wealth transfer opportunities arise…
Here is Bindu Lohani, vice president at the Asian Development Bank, who said that the Doha esult had provided a “gateway” to a new agreement, or at least “kept the door open for a possible robust and ambitious future” deal.
But he also stressed that extreme weather events were a particular problem for Asia. “There is increasing evidence that Asia is more vulnerable to the impact of natural disaster due to climate change. Typhoon Bopha which recently hit the Philippines and has impacted about 200,000 people is yet another example of the devastation that such events cause,” he said. “Regardless of the pace of international negotiations, Asia must act now – as neglecting these threats will put millions of the region’s most vulnerable people at increased risk of increased poverty, ill health and premature death. Among other measures, we need to mobilise massive funds for climate change adaptation – around $40bn a year for Asia and the Pacific would be a very conservative estimate.”
