Copenhagen FAIL

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BCO

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Wasn't really expecting it not to fail, TBH. There's far too much invested in business as usual.

Copenhagen Negotiators Bicker and Filibuster While the Biosphere Burns
George Monbiot despairs at the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous climate summit

by George Monbiot



First they put the planet in square brackets, now they have deleted it from the text. This is no longer about saving the biosphere: now it's just a matter of saving face. As the talks melt down, everything that might have made a new treaty worthwhile is being scratched out. Any deal will do, as long as the negotiators can pretend they have achieved something. A clearer and less destructive treaty than the texts currently being discussed would be a sheaf of blank paper, which every negotiating party solemnly sits down to sign.



This is the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous summit. The event has been attended by historic levels of incompetence. Delegates arriving from the tropics spent 10 hours queueing in sub-zero temperatures without shelter, food or drink, let alone any explanation or announcement, before being turned away. Some people fainted from exposure; it's surprising that no one died. The process of negotiation is just as obtuse: there's no evidence here of the innovative methods of dispute resolution developed recently by mediators and coaches, just the same old pig-headed wrestling.



Watching this stupid summit via webcam (I wasn't allowed in either), it strikes me that the treaty-making system has scarcely changed in 130 years. There's a wider range of faces, fewer handlebar moustaches, frock coats or pickelhaubes, but otherwise, as the world's governments try to decide how to carve up the atmosphere, they might have been attending the conference of Berlin in 1884. It's as if democratisation and the flowering of civil society, advocacy and self-determination had never happened. Governments, whether elected or not, without reference to their own citizens let alone those of other nations, assert their right to draw lines across the global commons and decide who gets what. This is a scramble for the atmosphere comparable in style and intent to the scramble for Africa.



At no point has the injustice at the heart of multilateralism been addressed or even acknowledged: the interests of states and the interests of the world's people are not the same. Often they are diametrically opposed. In this case, most rich and rapidly developing states have sought through these talks to seize as great a chunk of the atmosphere for themselves as they can - to grab bigger rights to pollute than their competitors. The process couldn't have been better designed to produce the wrong results.



I have spent most of my time at the Klimaforum, the alternative conference set up by just four paid staff, which 50,000 people attended without a hitch. (I know which team I would put in charge of saving the planet.) There the barrister Polly Higgins laid out a different approach. Her declaration of planetary rights invests ecosystems with similar legal safeguards to those won by humans after the second world war. It changes the legal relationship between humans, the atmosphere and the biosphere from ownership to stewardship. It creates a global framework for negotiation which gives nation states less discretion to dispose of ecosystems and the people who depend on them.



Even before this new farce began it was beginning to look as if it might be too late to prevent two or more degrees of global warming. The nation states, pursuing their own interests, have each been passing the parcel of responsibility since they decided to take action in 1992. We have now lost 17 precious years, possibly the only years in which climate breakdown could have been prevented. This has not happened by accident: it is the result of a systematic campaign of sabotage by certain states, driven and promoted by the energy industries. This idiocy has been aided and abetted by the nations characterised, until now, as the good guys: those that have made firm commitments, only to invalidate them with loopholes, false accounting and outsourcing. In all cases immediate self-interest has trumped the long-term welfare of humankind. Corporate profits and political expediency have proved more urgent considerations than either the natural world or human civilisation. Our political systems are incapable of discharging the main function of government: to protect us from each other.



Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.
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Well what do you expect when you got liberal western populists and tinpot socialist tyrants peddling MMGW?

If MMGW is indeed happening the poor planet has got that scum on it's side politically speaking.
 
After Copenhagen it's painfully evident that the environment has got nobody on its side, politically speaking.
 
Exactly. Anybody who thought Obama, Gore, {insert hollywood celeb here} along with Chavez, Mugabe etc were actually motivated by the plight of the planet have now hopefully seen the light.
 
Business as usual, screw the environment :sick:

Copenhagen is more about population control behind the scenes, climate control is but smoke and mirrors.
 
Aqua_lung said:
Oil companies and corporates are protecting their interests as usual.
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This is exactly the problem. Ideologues hijacking the movement to get at the corporations, capitalism, west etc blah, blah :rolleyes:


Environmentalists, scientists must work with/through the system to improve the environment. Make it worthwhile through research and tech instead of trying populist ideological grandstanding and points scoring
 
Alan said:
This is exactly the problem. Ideologues hijacking the movement to get at the corporations, capitalism, west etc blah, blah :rolleyes:


Environmentalists, scientists must work with/through the system to improve the environment. Make it worthwhile through research and tech instead of trying populist ideological grandstanding and points scoring
Click to expand...

Got to agree with Alan. The green movement has been more anti capitalist than pro environment for a long time. Reminds me of the cartoon Lancelot posted yesterday or whenever. All it said to me was: if we've been fudging surely thats ok if it was for a good cause?
 
What unadultered trash.

Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.
Click to expand...

Was this written by a whining twelve year old brat?

Not only does it sound more like a pretentious, alarmist, melodramatic moan for attention and pity than anything else (which really, really rapes their chances on having the world take them seriously), it also focuses on the wrong things.

Just a correction or two:

1. We do not "NOT" care for the environment. It's just that we might care a bit more about alleviating poverty and economic stability than a scientist's Nobel prize and corporate wet dream that may or may not be of any significance in the next century/millenium. The climate is changing, with or without our pollution or assistance. The only constant in nature is change. The entire AGW argument is based on the assumption that our "forecast" is correct, in the sense that the earth should be cooling at this time. If that simple concept is inaccurate, we have already wasted a massive amount of resources.

2. Corporates, especially energy companies, have infinitely more to gain from pushing the global warming agenda than most other moves. Carbon credits traded like coins? The UN asking OPEC to raise oil prices to promote lower oil consumption and more spending on greentech? Billions of dollars of government money spent on green research?

I don't understand how it can be so hard for rational, scientifically minded people to understand such basic truths just because it flies in the face of everything they base their lives on.

Oh, wait...
 
Arbiter said:
What unadultered trash.

Was this written by a whining twelve year old brat?

Not only does it sound more like a pretentious, alarmist, melodramatic moan for attention and pity than anything else
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No. That would better describe your anti-semitic rants on this forum, even those not mod-deleted.
 
All the fat cats care about is lining their nasty pocketses at the expense of somebody else.

Reminds me of the book "The Running Man" by Richard Bachman where the rich is able to afford air filters while the poor die a wheezy death.
 
@w1zard, @rwenzori

Lol. Your ad hominem attacks make me smile, it shows you are hurting in ways that only a lefty can; anything that makes a lefty squirm makes my day :)
 
I don't get it.
This is not about pleasing people or companies.

Here's the rules:
1. No more pollution.
2. No more generating artificial heat or cold.

Here's the penalties:
1. 5% of GDP and CEO gets personally fined 60% of yearly salary, the board gets fined 100% and then CFO gets 90% fine. Fines are issued yearly. Individuals are fined on a similar basis for their contribution to the problem.
2. All known patented designs of converting waste heat into electricity for storage must be purchased and the designs made available for free. Similar approach with other helpful technologies.

The fines will provide the funding.
Developing countries will hopefully be fined less.

This thing fell apart when Africa started making it's DEMANDS.
 
Alan said:
This is exactly the problem. Ideologues hijacking the movement to get at the corporations, capitalism, west etc blah, blah :rolleyes:
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The West? China also has a role in this. Shell, Chevron etc. do not have those "green" ads made because they care, they buy out any tech that threatens them.
 
Aqua_lung said:
The West? China also has a role in this. Shell, Chevron etc. do not have those "green" ads made because they care, they buy out any tech that threatens them.
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Wow! a linky from a mybroadband poster! I'm blown away by the intellectual
prowess.

Sarcasm aside, instead of talking about China this and that all the time, rich and middle income countries should do more to help the growing economies adapt. China is now the country pumping out most CO2 surpassing USA. The Americas and Europe are the economies putting most of the CO2 added to the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution. Should we get a free pass for past transgressions, while using the changing order of CO2 emissions to push our newly prosperous fellow humans down?
 
Eh! said:
Wow! a linky from a mybroadband poster! I'm blown away by the intellectual
prowess.

Sarcasm aside, instead of talking about China this and that all the time, rich and middle income countries should do more to help the growing economies adapt. China is now the country pumping out most CO2 surpassing USA. The Americas and Europe are the economies putting most of the CO2 added to the atmosphere since the start of the industrial revolution. Should we get a free pass for past transgressions, while using the changing order of CO2 emissions to push our newly prosperous fellow humans down?
Click to expand...

excuse me????????? when SASOL Secunda puts out MORE CO2 in a year than the whole of Norway (where they burn lots of wood to keep warm in winter)....
 
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