Things are not going too well at Durban, or anywhere in the Land Where People Want to Change the Weather.
Richard Black (BBC) admits there’s a “seismic shift” going on. (Could it be a tipping point I say?)
“The politics of the UN climate process are undergoing something of a fundamental transformation. “
It appears nearly anyone with power or influence wants to get out, or delay action on “climate change”.
Canada announced it will formally withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol next month, joining Japan and Russia who’ve ruled out commitments.
The EU announced it won’t act if everyone else doesn’t:
The 27-nation bloc said it accounts for about 11 percent of global emissions and that it can’t act alone on emissions blamed for damaging the environment.
As far as Durban goes, most the rest of the major emitters want to delay things.
The US, Russia and Japan were already arguing for a longer timeframe.
To the anger of small islands states, India and Brazil have joined rich nations in wanting to start talks on a legal deal no earlier than 2015.
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UPDATE: Durban Warning: Public Will Soon ‘Lose Confidence In This Travelling Circus’
…within hours of the summit’s start, most of the major players made clear their unwillingness to negotiate their positions.
Within the European Union grouping, which speaks at the summit with one voice, cracks were already beginning to emerge after the publication of a report suggesting the UK was backing a controversial plan by Canada to extract oil from swampland – something the EU has made clear it is against because of the levels of greenhouse gas emissions.
Those watching the talks begin said it was an inauspicious start. “It is headed towards a real impasse in Durban, frankly, there is no way to gloss over it,” one veteran participant said.
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Meanwhile GWPF’s Benny Peiser lays it out in the Wall St Journal (he saw it coming back in Dec 2008*):
The 2008 Brussels summit symbolizes a turning point. The watered-down climate deal epitomizes the onset of a cooling period in Europe’s hitherto overheated climate debate. It may lead eventually to the complete abandonment of the unilateral climate agenda that has shaped Europe’s green philosophy for nearly 20 years.
Participants at last week’s United Nations climate conference in Poznan, Poland, were taken aback by a world seemingly turned upside-down. The traditional villains and heroes of the international climate narrative, the wicked U.S. and the noble European Union, had unexpectedly swapped roles. For once, it was the EU that was criticized for backpedalling on its CO2 targets while Europe’s climate nemesis, the U.S., found itself commended for electing an environmental champion as president.
The wrangle over the EU’s controversial climate package at a separate summit in Brussels wrong-footed the world’s green bureaucracy. The EU climate deal was diluted beyond recognition. Instead of standing by plans to cut CO2 emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020, the actual reductions might be as trivial as 4% if all exemptions are factored in.
The Brussels summit symbolizes a turning point.
The Germans were asking the hard questions and leading other EU countries out of the mess:
At the forefront of the left-wing opposition to the EU’s climate policy has been EU Industry Commissioner Günter Verheugen. The German Social Democrat has been arguing throughout the year that the climate targets should only be accepted if “truly cost-effective solutions” could be found. Other prominent dissenters in his party include Hubertus Schmoldt, the head of the mining, chemical and energy industrial union, who has recently called for a two-year postponement of the climate package.
[WSJ]
As usual, the little developing nations are left convinced that they’ve been done in by the rich ones, and in a sense they have. They’ve been played by factions within wealthy nations, used as convenient token victims for schemes the factions wanted to set up in any case. The fear and anger of developing nations was just another tool for leverage for one class of wealthy people to use to increase their own power and influence.
Big Hat tip to GWPF, thanks to Benny Peiser.
*Updated: Apologies for leaving the date off. Oops!