Here is what you need to know about Climate Change and your money.
1. All that stuff you’ve read and heard about “time
running out”, “deadlock” , “last minute deals” — it’s all a charade; everything
was pre-ordained.
Every COP conference there has ever been has run on
exactly the same lines. Whatever comes out of this one, it will be a fudge and
a compromise whose only certain achievement will be to ensure that there are
more such conferences next year (in sunny Marrakech, Morocco) and the one after
and the one after that…
In truth, COP is not really about saving the planet.
Rather, it’s a massive jobs fair for activists, shyster politicians,
bureaucrats, corporate scamsters, and people with otherwise worthless degrees
in “sustainability”, “conservation biology”, “ecology”, etc.
2. No serious person in the world believes in
man-made climate change any more. They just don’t.
When did the edifice finally collapse? Well there
are lots of competing candidates. But if you haven’t seen the testimony
presented by John Christy, Judith Curry, or William Happer at the Sen. Ted Cruz hearings in
Congress earlier this week, that’s a good place to start. Then, in a league of
his own, is Mark Steyn — who doesn’t mince his words…
3. If you live by fairies you will die by fairies.
So if no serious person in the world believes in
man-made climate change any more, who does? Only people like US Secretary of
State John Kerry — who, as we know, has staked the reputation of the Obama
presidency on how well it deals with this non-existent problem.
In order to do this, of course, he must somehow
engineer a global agreement on carbon dioxide emissions reductions. But for
that to happen everyone — not just the Western delegations — must pretend to
believe in climate fairies. And unfortunately, the non-Western delegations, led
by China and India, just aren’t playing ball. Hence Kerry’s reported
frustration and threatened walk-out.
The night saw an ugly brawl as US Secretary Of
State John Kerry threatened that developed countries would walk out of the
agreement if they were asked to commit to differentiation or financial
obligations. “You can take the US out of this. Take the developed world out of
this. Remember, the Earth has a problem. What will you do with the problem on
your own?” he told ministers from other countries during a closed-door
negotiation on the second revised draft of the Paris agreement.
“We can’t afford in the hours we are left with to
nit-pick every single word and to believe there is an effort here that
separates developed countries from developing countries. That’s not where we
are in 2015. Don’t think this agreement reflects that kind of differentiation,”
he added. Making a veiled threat that the agreement could fail if the US was
pushed for financial obligations, Kerry said, “At this late hour, hope we don’t
load this with differentiation… I would love to have a legally binding
agreement. But the situation in the US is such that legally binding with
respect to finance is a killer for the agreement.”
The problem here is very simple. Kerry has become a
victim of his own fantasy game. If you accept the theory that man-made carbon
dioxide produced by industry has been driving the earth’s temperatures towards
catastrophe, then it follows that the developed nations are largely to blame
for the damage done thus far. The countries of the developing world are
entirely within their rights to demand reparations for this, and Kerry has no
right to complain.
4. China and India are running this show.
We know what China thinks: tell the gwailo what
they want to hear — and go ahead with industrialization anyway. The same is
true of India: and who can blame it? If the Western nations choose to bomb
their economies back to the Dark Ages by cutting carbon dioxide emissions and
driving up energy prices, that’s their problem. But it shouldn’t become the
problem of those developing countries whose first priority, quite rightly, is
giving their people a better stand of living. And to do that, you need cheap
energy (from fossil fuels), not expensive, unreliable renewable energy which is
only viable with government subsidy.
This, as the Times reports, is the cause of the
deadlock.
Britain and other rich countries face demands for
$3.5 trillion (£2.3 trillion) in payments to developing nations to secure a
deal in Paris to curb global warming.
Developing countries have added a clause
to the latest draft of the text under which they would be paid the “full costs”
of meeting plans to cut emissions. The amount paid by rich countries is a key
unresolved issue at the climate conference in Paris.
Essentially, China and India have got the Western
nations over a barrel because, unlike the Western nations, they don’t believe
in climate fairies and therefore feel they have no moral obligation to reduce
their carbon dioxide emissions to save the world because they know it won’t
save the world.
Therefore, all they need to do is sit back, watch people like
John Kerry stew, and ramp up their demand for compensation in the full
knowledge that the West needs this climate agreement far more than the
developing world does.
5. If this doesn’t end in stalemate then you know
the West has lost.
See 3. and 4. above. China and India (and the rest
of the developing world) have nothing to gain from making concessions.
Therefore they won’t make concessions. At least not meaningful ones.
6. Never forget: this whole show is the biggest
waste of time and money in history.
In Paris, the stated aim was to prevent the earth’s
temperatures rising more than 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. To
experience a similar temperature change, simply walk from the top of the Eiffel
Tower to the bottom; or move from downtown San Francisco to Berkeley. That’s
the temperature change on which the global economy is being staked in Paris.
Remember also that we know already what difference
this conference is going to make to global temperatures because the
participating nations have already announced what their carbon dioxide
emissions are going to be.
If all the world’s leading nations stick to the
carbon-reduction commitments they will make in Paris this week, then they will
stave off “global warming” by the end of this century by 0.170 degrees C.
Oh – and that’s the optimistic scenario, calculated
by Bjorn Lomborg, assuming that countries like, say, China don’t lie or cheat
about how much CO2 they’re burning secretly.
At an annual cost to the global economy of $1.5
trillion.
Lucky we’ve all got a great sense of humor
No comments:
Post a Comment