U.N. Climate Talks Hinge on Rich Nations

U.S. Among Industrial Countries Saying Global Warming Pact Can be Reached

(AP)  After two years of tough U.N. climate talks often pitting the world's rich against the poor, negotiators said Friday that a new global agreement now rode on industrial nations pledging profound emissions cuts at next month's conference in Copenhagen.

Negotiators from industrial nations including the United States on Friday said 11th-hour promises are possible and a global warming pact can be reached.

But developing countries complained that pledges so far were nowhere near enough to avoid climate catastrophe, and that world leaders need to participate in the conference to cut a meaningful deal.

"Part of the frustration is that a deal is so close ... all the elements are there," said Kevin Conrad, the delegate from Papua New Guinea. "But it's absolutely conceivable for senior people to come together and spend a week and clean all this up."

The United States was universally seen as the lynchpin to a Copenhagen deal, but it has been unable to present its position or pledge emissions targets because of the slow progress of climate legislation in the Congress. "Everyone else wants to calibrate against" the Americans, Conrad said.

With the U.S. position still unclear, expectations at this week's U.N. talks in Spain shifted toward a political agreement in December in which rich nations would make hard pledges to reduce emissions and to finance aid to help the world's poorest cope with the effects of Earth's rising temperatures.

Under such a deal, nations would agree to stick to their promises while negotiating the details of the treaty, taking as long as a year. If world leaders came to Copenhagen to endorse the deal, those promises would carry more weight, delegates said.

Some 40 world leaders so far were expected to attend the Copenhagen talks, including British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has indicated he may come, and a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is keeping the date open.

Yvo de Boer, the U.N. official who is shepherding the talks, said negotiators still hoped to achieve a significant deal that would set specific goals.

"Governments can deliver a strong deal in Copenhagen," de Boer said, adding that it would be difficult for developed countries "to wiggle out" of written commitments they make in a Copenhagen deal.

The deal may take the form of consensus decisions, including an overarching statement of long-term objectives, along with a series of supplemental decisions on technology transfers, rewards for halting deforestation, and building infrastructure in poor countries to adapt to global warming, delegates said.

But developing nations were mistrustful of any result that did not hold wealthy nations to legally binding targets, citing a history of broken promises in development aid and famine relief.

The aim of the ongoing negotiations has been to broker a deal building on the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Without a successor accord, carbon emissions will have no international regulation, which would hinder the ability of industry to factor in the price of carbon and plan future business.

While some countries, such as Germany and Britain, are meeting their Kyoto emission-reduction targets, others have not. Canada's emissions, for example, grew by more than 25 percent from 1990 to 2007, U.N. figures show, although it committed under Kyoto to reduce them 6 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. Japan's grew 9 percent during that period, compared with a target of minus 6 percent.

De Boer was looking to the United States to announce a clear emissions target for 2020, saying "a number from the president of the United States would have huge weight."

"The United States is interested in the strongest possible agreement we can get from this process," said Jonathan Pershing, the chief U.S. delegate to the U.N. talks. He showed impatience with developing nations for wanting to hold rich nations to legally enforceable targets while arguing they should be exempt from them.

"We are looking for parallelism. We are not looking for imbalance," he said.

He declined to say whether the U.S. will be ready to submit a target for the Copenhagen accord. He noted that President Barack Obama has the authority to make a commitment without congressional approval, "but a decision on whether or not we will do it has not yet been made."

U.N. scientists say rich countries must cut carbon emissions by 25 to 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent Earth's temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius (3.8 F) above its average temperature before the industrial era began 150 years ago. Anything higher could trigger climate catastrophe.

So far, reduction pledges total 11-15 percent.

But those pledges could also be seen as opening bids that could be upped as negotiations grow more intense. "Somebody's got to start creating that dynamic. Either it happens or doesn't," said Conrad, the Papua New Guinea delegate.

The wider issue of ending the Copenhagen conference without a legally binding agreement disappointed developing nations already suffering severe droughts, floods and other disasters blamed on rising temperatures.

"We totally reject it ... it would be a mockery," said Sudanese delegate Lumumba Di-Aping, representing the bloc of developing nations.

In the meantime, world leaders will be discussing the climate issue at major meetings planned before the Dec. 7-18 Copenhagen talks, including an upcoming meeting by the 17 nations in the Major Economies Forum.

Developing nations one by one urged negotiators not to give up on a legal pact at Copenhagen.

"We don't share view that it is no longer possible. If it were no longer possible, we would rather pack up and go home," said the Indian delegation chief, Shyam Saran. He said any agreement signed by all 192 nations at Copenhagen could still be binding.

South Africa's chief negotiator Alf Wills warned other nations against promoting a watered-down text, saying "we will not accept a weak, green-wash outcome."

The chairman of the 43-member Alliance of Small Island States also urged world leaders to seek a legally binding pact. "Weak political declarations are not the solution," Grenada Ambassador Dessima Williams said.

The European Union, led by Sweden, said it was pushing for the most ambitious deal possible. "We are going to change the fundamentals of industrial civilization, so it's no wonder there is a lot of activity going on in a negotiation like this," Swedish delegate Anders Turresson said.

[Noval53]

Nothing that comes out of any Copenhagen pact will change the earth's temperature by one half of one degree. What will come out of Copenhagen will be a lot of hot air, power schemes, and ways to rip money out of the hands of the working man to be deposited in the UN bottomless money pot.

[doc_holliday76]

Nice to see a change for once, where GOP Senator Lindsay Graham has broken with his DENIALIST republican'ts, in order to work with in a bi-partisan fashion for climate change legislation.


GOP's Graham steps out on a limb on climate change

Graham, a South Carolina Republican, is working with Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut to craft a climate change bill.

They face the dual challenge of overcoming widespread GOP opposition and withstanding relentless attacks by Big Oil and allied energy interests.

"Our goal is to create a vision that not only will help this planet ? which I think is in peril ? but will create millions of new jobs for Americans who need them, and help us become energy independent to make us safer," Graham told a crowded Capitol Hill news conference Wednesday.

---------------

For his part, Graham believes that Republicans must stop denying that global warming is a dire problem ? and stop blocking the growth of alternative forms of energy that he says could become a powerful economic engine.

"We need to lead the world rather than follow the world on carbon pollution," he said. "Our country doesn't have the infrastructure in place to build a green economy, and never will until we price carbon. And our country doesn't have a vision for energy independence. We need one."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20091107/sc_mcclatchy/3351537

[doc_holliday76]

From Scientific American:

Thomas Jefferson would be appalled. More than two centuries after he helped to shape a government based on the idea that reason and technological advancement would propel the new United States into a glorious future, the republican party has largely turned its back on science. Even as the country and the planet face both scientifically complex threats and remarkable technological opportunities, many Republican officeholders reject the most reliable sources of information and analysis available to guide the nation.

http://www.amazon.com/Republican-War-Science-Chris-Mooney/dp/0465046754

[doc_holliday76]

From Scientific American:

In almost every instance, Republican leaders have branded the scientific mainstream as purveyors of "junk science" and dubbed an extremist viewpoint--always at the end of the spectrum favoring big business or the religious Right--"sound science." One of the most insidious achievements of the Right, Mooney shows, is the Data Quality Act of 2000--just two sentences, written by an industry lobbyist and quietly inserted into an appropriations bill. It directs the White House's Office of Management and Budget to ensure that all information put out by the federal government is reliable. The law seems sensible, except in practice. It is used mainly by industry and right-wing think tanks to block release of government reports unfavorable to their interests by claiming they do not contain "sound science."

[Noval53]

Climate "mad" science is now lead by a bunch of political hacks. It's much more about money & power than it is about the climate. The governments of Australia and India understand that and Americans are now waking up to that fact too.

[doc_holliday76]

The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney

A stinging indictment of how the Republican Party has not only ignored science, but has used bad science to justify its political agenda.

In the book, Mooney discusses the Republican Party leadership's stance on science, and in particular that of the George W. Bush administration, with regard to issues such as climate change, the evolution/creation controversy, bioethics, alternative medicine, pollution, separation of church and state, and the government funding of education, research, and environmental protection. The book argues that the administration regularly distorted or suppressed scientific research to further its own political aims.

www.waronscience.com

[louiville35]

Yawn I see you're still spamming and spamming and spamming.

[doc_holliday76]

Though no previous U.S. government can match the busheviks for sheer brazenness in distorting scientific research to appease political and business interests, other Republican administrations have proved willing, on occasion, to subordinate science to politics. A blatant disregard for scientists and the scientific method has grown and ripened with the modern conservative movement. From Barry Goldwater's anti-intellectualism, through Ronald Reagan?s sympathy for creationism and Newt Gingrich's passion for science "skeptics," on through the present day, Republicans have shown a marked preference for politically inspired fringe theories over the findings of long-established and world-renowned scientific bodies.

[doc_holliday76]

Their WAR on science is part of the history of the modern conservative movement, and you see it coming to fruition recently with that movement's total control of the Republican Party and of the government. Here you have a movement anchored in, among other things, a distrust of big government. And of course a lot of science is funded by government, and a lot of science takes place in government agencies. This is also a movement that has plausibly been accused of having anti-intellectual tendencies, that thinks big universities and the academic elites are biased against ordinary folks.

But most importantly you have raw politics, or catering to your constituents. With the conservatives, you have industry, which is coming up against science all the time, and religious conservatives, who come out against science any time [it conflicts with] their moral view of the world.

[doc_holliday76]

The most egregious abuses of science was the bushevik's editing the global warming section in the Environmental Protection Agency's report on the environment. This was originally exposed by the New York Times, based on an EPA memo claiming that the White House was trying to change the report, and that its contents no longer reflected the scientific consensus on climate change. Of course, the White House forced them to take the edits. And not just that, but they edited out references to a report by the National Academy of Sciences, which Bush himself requested in 2001.

To get an accessible yet accurate boil-down of science as it impacts policy, as long as a corrupt administration is not politically editing their scientific work, the public can go to the National Academies of Science, and some of the scientific societies, like the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, for climate at least. They do science, but usually draft position statements as well.

We've lost the Office of Technology and Assessment which was a really good, reliable source that made its information publicly accessible. But the Gingrich Republicans got rid of that in 1995, in order to politicize any scientific research.

[doc_holliday76]

From Scientific American

Thomas Jefferson would be appalled. More than two centuries after he helped to shape a government based on the idea that reason and technological advancement would propel the new United States into a glorious future, the republican party has largely turned its back on science. Even as the country and the planet face both scientifically complex threats and remarkable technological opportunities, many Republican officeholders reject the most reliable sources of information and analysis available to guide the nation.

http://www.amazon.com/Republican-War-Science-Chris-Mooney/dp/0465046754

[doc_holliday76]

From Scientific American:

In almost every instance, Republican leaders have branded the scientific mainstream as purveyors of "junk science" and dubbed an extremist viewpoint--always at the end of the spectrum favoring big business or the religious Right--"sound science." One of the most insidious achievements of the Right, Mooney shows, is the Data Quality Act of 2000--just two sentences, written by an industry lobbyist and quietly inserted into an appropriations bill. It directs the White House's Office of Management and Budget to ensure that all information put out by the federal government is reliable. The law seems sensible, except in practice. It is used mainly by industry and right-wing think tanks to block release of government reports unfavorable to their interests by claiming they do not contain "sound science."

[Noval53]

The US has always been the money pot for the UN, and the UN is a huge bloated parasite that's never satisfied. Now the UN is using the global warming/climate change scam to suck as much money as possible directly from the US Economy into the black hole of a climate pact; all while the UN pretends to be Robin Hood for poor countries. Not one half of a degree of the globe's temperature will be changed if the pact passes, but money will flow from millions of workers fooled by this "Madoff" like scheme.