Let’s not mince words. The new President of the Philippines, Jose Duterte, says he won’t sign or honor the “stupid” Paris deal and he wanted to kick the ambassador who asked.
Here’s a memorable moment in international diplomacy:
“You are trying to stifle us,” Duterte said on Monday in widely reported comments. “That’s stupid, I will not honour that. You signed … That was not my signature.”
Duterte said: “I’m mad at this ambassador. I want to kick him,” adding that limits on carbon emissions for the Philippines were “nonsense”.
“You who have reached your peak and along with it spewed a lot of contaminants, emissions … Good for you. We are here, we have not reached the age of industrialisation. We are on our way to it.”
This is a bit of a bummer for the big-government collective. The Philippines has 100 million people and is the 12th biggest country on Earth population-wise.
Brexit, India and the Philippines smell like “Clexit”
The Trump factor looms too. Sensing a tidal wave, the UN promptly issued a call for everyone to hurry up.
The United Nations has issued a plea for nations to fast-track ratification of the Paris Climate Agreement as some countries are backtracking on support for the deal’s sweeping restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions.
How about Thursday?
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged nations to attend a “special event” Thursday where they may deposit their “instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession to the Paris Agreement on climate change.”
Progress so far? 177 nations turned up to the Paris party, but only 19 have ratified the agreement in the last six months. It’s not looking good. They need 55 nations which are responsible for 55% of the worlds emissions before the Paris deal gets legs.
Marc Morano, who runs the skeptics’ website Climate Depot, said Tuesday that the cold feet on global warming shows that some countries are realizing the international climate agreement is “not in their best interests.”
“More and more nations are realizing that the U.N. climate treaty is nothing more than an effort to empower the U.N. and attack national sovereignty while doing absolutely nothing for the climate,” said Mr. Morano, who debuted his film “Climate Hustle” during the negotiations in Paris.
He said that the “time has come for a U.S.-led ‘Clexit’ from … the climate treaty.”
The “Clexit” or Climate Exit, comes from Viv Forbes at Carbon Sense in Queensland. It’s catching on.
The Washington Times also quotes Eric Worrall on Watts Up.
“In the wake of a dramatic rollback of climate policy in Britain and Germany, the UN has accused Britain and Germany of “betraying the spirit” of the Paris Climate Accord.”
Given the accelerating collapse of political climate enthusiasm across the world, my prediction is Ban Ki-moon will be remembered as the UN Secretary General who presided over the downfall of the green movement.
One day the Washington Times will manage to link to the skeptics it cites. I’ve fixed that here.
The U.N.’s great climate-change fable,
Might collapse like the Tower of Babel,
If some countries start Clexit,
Then a stampede to exit,
To avoid signing up at the table.
— Ruairi