Good News from Copenhagen

posted at 11:07 am on December 8, 2009 by Track-A-'Crat
[ Enviro-nitwits ]   

Via The Guardian:

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN’s role in all future climate change negotiations.

Awesome.  And it gets better, with the documents purportedly pushing to:

• Force developing countries to agree to specific emission cuts and measures that were not part of the original UN agreement;

• Divide poor countries further by creating a new category of developing countries called “the most vulnerable”;

• Weaken the UN’s role in handling climate finance;

• Not allow poor countries to emit more than 1.44 tonnes of carbon per person by 2050, while allowing rich countries to emit 2.67 tonnes.

The fig leaf of global absolutism has fallen.  In the aftermath of Climategate, the conspirators at Copenhagen (those countries who drafted the secret text supposedly operate under the comical moniker of “the circle of commitment.” Dum dum duuummm!) are engaging in a spectacular double-or-nothing gambit.  As with the domestic US political scene, Obama is in the vanguard of efforts to push something, anything, through before support for self-enslavement deteriorates even further.

Though reports centering on the leaked documents contain an element of conjecture, its existence should surprise no-one: the prime motivation underlying the war on carbon emissions is unbridled megalomania, whether on the national or international stage.

There is nothing – not one human activity, from birth until death – that does not result in the release of carbon dioxide.  With this being the case, there is nothing to which such legislation could not potentially be deemed applicable, and nothing for which it could not then be used as justification.

If this appears to be verging on the hysterical, consider this: when was the last time that the political class awarded itself new powers, which were then left on the shelf?

Never is when.  County councils in the UK, for instance, have used the cover of recently enacted anti-terror laws to spy on families suspected of putting their trash out on the wrong day.  Which is totally what the legislation was intended to be used for.  Totalitarian climate change legislation would be exploited to even worse effect.

“Climate change” hyperactivity hurts those who can least afford it the most, in both the developed and developing worlds.  Should the LDCs jump ship, climate change talks will be as paralyzed as the moribund Doha development round.  Even Obama would hesitate (I hope) to conclude an agreement binding only the developed nations to self-destruction.

AllahP might just have to get the Humpbot cameo prepared…

Cross-posted.

Blowback