Archives for December 11, 2005

About 10,000 climate experts, diplomats, politicians and groupies met in Montreal over the last two weeks to put in place global policies for ‘climate control’ post the Kyoto agreement which will expire in 2012.

Before the conference, and some way into the second week of the event, Benny Peiser predicted the end of Kyoto-type agreements. The Financial Post published the following opinion on 8 December:

As the UN’s climate convention in Montreal draws to a close, it is becoming apparent that, despite the usual rhetoric, all attempts will fail to extend the Kyoto Treaty beyond its expiration in 2012. No one will be surprised about this outcome. After all, the U.S. administration has insisted time and again that it would not budge.

… The driving-force behind this seismic shift of the political landscape is one man and one man only: Tony Blair.

No other world leader has raised the issue of climate change as high on the international agenda as the British Prime Minister. No other person has tried harder, longer and more doggedly to sway the Bush administration. For years, he was the acclaimed champion of environmental activists throughout the world. No wonder then that Blair stunned incredulous observers and green campaigners by his conversion from advocate of command and control ecology to crusader of a more sensible environmentalism.

Alert political observers had spotted the first signs of a conspicuous change of tone earlier this year. Already in January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, and then even more so at the G8 meeting in Gleneagles, Blair highlighted the key issue of his new line of reasoning: “No-one is going to damage their economy in trying to tackle this problem of the environment. There are ways that we can tackle climate change fully consistent with growing our economies.” He dropped the real bombshell a couple of months ago at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York when the fall-out of Blair’s new thinking blew apart the green consensus: “I don’t think people are going to start negotiating another major treaty like Kyoto.”

… The reasons for Blair’s radical transformation are not difficult to discern. Europe is in turmoil as an enlarged EU is struggling both politically and economically. Worryingly, there is a growing realization that the Kyoto Protocol, contrary to the assurances of its advocates, is having a deleterious effect on Europe’s already sluggish economy. While the implementation of Kyoto and the myriad of other environmental regulations are strangling Europe’s lethargic economies, the economies of its international competitors (that is the U.S., India and China) are enjoying boom times unrestricted by self-imposed limits of growth. Besides, most European countries have been unable to achieve their Kyoto targets and will be forced to pay huge amounts of corrective payments that are mandated under the Kyoto treaty.

Even a small country like Ireland is currently facing a bill of 300 million pounds to 400 million pounds for failing to meet its Kyoto targets. The cost that Britain will incur by 2050 as a result of its current emission targets are estimated to range from 60 billion pounds to 400 billion pounds.

Benny Peiser is British and a global warming skeptic.

Perhaps, sensing the talk were not going to deliver the type of agreement that so many global warming believers wanted … well an environmental group organised for Bill Clinton to speak.

According to CNN:

Clinton, a champion of the Kyoto Protocol, the existing emissions-controls agreement opposed by the Bush administration, spoke in the final hours of a two-week U.N. climate conference at which Washington has come under heavy criticism for its stand.

“There’s no longer any serious doubt that climate change is real, acclerating and caused by human activities,” said Clinton, whose address was interrupted repeatedly by enthusiastic applause.

“We are uncertain about how deep and the time of arrival of the consequences, but we are quite clear they will not be good.”

Canadian officials said the U.S. delegation was displeased with the last-minute scheduling of the Clinton speech.

According to The Courier Mail:

Mr Clinton stoutly defended the Kyoto Protocol, whose framework was approved by his administration in 1997, but which was ditched by Bush in March 2001, in one of his first acts in office.

…To loud cheers from an audience of thousands of delegates and green activists, Mr Clinton said: “I liked the Kyoto Protocol. I helped to write it. And I signed it.”

Mr Clinton was invited by the Canadian branch of the Sierra Club environment group to speak at the final day of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the treaty that oversees Kyoto.

Because it was not an official UNFCCC event, all UN logos and backdrops were carefully removed from the podium.

Negotiations were going to the wire on Friday on how to further greenhouse gas cuts beyond Kyoto’s present commitment, which runs out in 2012.

So what was finally decided? According to ABC Online :

A landmark UN conference agreed on Saturday to extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and launch a dialogue between Kyoto members and the United States on long-term action on greenhouse gases.

“We have completed our Montreal marathon, although the road before us remains so long. We are going to reconcile humanity with its planet,” Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion said as he brought down the gavel on a meeting high on drama, and long on exhaustion.

The meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was tasked with charting the next steps in tackling the emissions from fossil fuel gases that scientists say are trapping heat from the Sun and disrupting Earth’s fragile climate system.

After often-bitter negotiations, members of the Kyoto Protocol agreed to start talks on how to cut their emissions beyond 2012, when the treaty’s present “commitment period” expires.

That agreement was a crucial show of support for a treaty that has been in deep trouble since March 2001 when the United States, the world’s biggest carbon polluter, walked away from it.

Australia is only other industrialised country that has refused to ratify Kyoto.

The accord also gave a powerful boost to the fledgling market in carbon emissions, a key mechanism set up under Kyoto to encourage cuts.

The market has been beset by fears that Kyoto could die after 2012.
“Kyoto is alive and kicking,” declared European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.

It is interesting to ponder that Bill Clinton, an American, apparenlty stole the show, delivered for the global warming believers and socialists, but they will presumably continue hating America.

Where to next for Tony Blair?