Only hours into the fortnight-long Copenhagen conference and Australia is already being singled by NGOs out as a climate-change spoiler.
The conference opened to much fanfare in cloudy Copenhagen today — with trumpets blasting and a choir performance from Danish youngsters plucked straight out of the latest Aryans R Us catalogue. The politicians and diplomats were there, too, warning that feel-good statements simply won’t cut it this time around.
“Time is up,” executive secretary of the United Nations climate change convention Yvo de Boer said. “Over the next two weeks governments have to deliver.”
Yet Damien Lawson, of Friends of the Earth Australia, said that Australia is already working behind the scenes to water down any potential deal. “It continues to push for expanded offset loopholes for polluters, recognition of carbon capture and storage and lowering the ambition for an extended Kyoto protocol,” he said.
Among the more contentious issues to be thrashed out over the next twelve days will be that of land use, land-use change and forestry — known in UN babble as LULUCF. It may lack the technological s-xiness of solar panels, electric cars or “clean coal” but the sector makes up 9.4% of Australia’s total emissions.
Groups such as the Australian Conservation Foundation are concerned that Australia’s LULUCF submissions includes two possible scenarios for measuring reductions: one based on 1990 levels and another based on so-called “forward looking baseline” (essentially business as usual).
Nothing is yet determined, but if the latter were to be adopted then the ACF estimates it would add some 33 million tonnes to Australia’s carbon footprint, an 8% increase on 1990 emissions.
“In other words,” the ACF’s Tony Mohr told Crikey, “the rules for land use emissions could make almost as much difference as Australia accepting a 15% or a 25% target”.
“We are worried that the government will try and make meeting our targets easier with a stroke of the pen that changes the rules.”
Let’s not forget the Howard government’s eleventh hour Kyoto Protocol wranglings that managed to insert the now infamous “Australia clause” into the final agreement — a loophole allowing reductions in land clearing from 1990 to count towards our baseline target. 1990 happened to be a year with unusually high levels of land clearing. Australian greenhouse gas emissions actually soared 23% from 1994 to 2004, but factor in a massive reduction in land clearing and voila: a spiffy-looking emissions rise of only 2.3%.
We fudged the figures. And the world knows it — this time round they’ve got their eye on us.
What’s wrong with recognition of carbon capture and storage? It might not be economic, or even turn out to be practical, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be counted.
Let’s hope that this time Australia’s major expansion plans for coal exports get the glare of the spotlight that they deserve.
Australia a Climate Change Spoiler? We shouldn’t even be there in freezing Copenhagen in the first place listening to over paid prima donnas like Leonardo de Caprio and publicity addicts like Richard Branson (who all Jetted in) have their two cents worth and for what exactly?
The world’s puppets, shills and dupes have assembled for a massive “snout in trougher” at the expense of the rest of us who actually produce something. They seem bent on handing over any semblance of national sovereignty left, to unelected UN “snout in troughers”. The client follower media are lock step all the way so what hope have the common people got with these grasping elites mapping out their global tax plan.
We’ll see no change in emissions but a heck of a spike in commissions me little lovelies.
And what sleight of hand being foisted on us by the Danish Prime Minister, branding this farcical slothfest as carbon neutral by building a better brickworks for the Bangladeshis. Can’t you see where this is heading. The big elite polluters continue to pollute and buy up Third World’s credits to use as offsets through Goldman Sachs & JP Morgan etc. Meanwhile, the Third World remains in poverty and we keep going – the bankers getting exponentially richer – everyone else poorer but with just enough to operate a 500 cm TV.
Whether you believe in global warming or not, AGW or not; or even whether you believe the CRU workers are genuine, can’t you see this is just one massive scam to create a global carbon market where offsets are traded thick and fast at commission. You have already seen it in action with the Danish PM and worse, their newspapers have been full of local scandals about dodgy carbon trading. Somehow, by getting the Bangladeshis to use less carbon, we can pollute to our hearts content. I think the Australian Greens are twigging to this con. Don’t buy into it – it is the biggest scam since the 1929 stock market collapse and the most egregious since the Gulf of Tonkin. If you want to fight another day on climate change get mad as hell about this crooked scheme.
Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, today made the following statement on YouTube regarding President Obama’s intentions for the American people:
“Today, the Obama administration announced an unprecedented rule, one that will have far-reaching implications for each and every American leading to a wave of new regulations and bureaucracy that will wreak havoc on the American economy, destroy millions of jobs, and force consumers to pay more for electricity and gasoline.
“This bureaucratic nightmare is based on flawed science. Lisa Jackson, Obama’s EPA Administrator, admitted to me publicly that EPA based its action today in good measure on the findings of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC which she accepted without any serious, independent analysis to see whether they were true. Of course, we now have thousands of emails showing several of the UN’s top scientists….. cooked the science.
“For example, some of the scientists involved worked to exclude inconvenient facts — most notably the fact that there has been no global warming since 1998. The scandal, which has come to be known as “Climategate,” has rocked the scientific community. The Atlantic Monthly said, “The stink of intellectual corruption is overpowering.” And the U.K. Telegraph said, “This is the worst scientific scandal of our generation.”
The endangerment finding (by the Obama administration) also will have virtually no impact on global warming. That’s because India and China, two of the world’s leading emitters of CO2, are left out.
So, our jobs and our emissions will move to countries that have few if any environmental requirements. Don’t take my word for it; just ask EPA Administrator Jackson, who said “U.S. action alone will not impact world CO2 levels.”
You need to be very wary of what many of our politicians have planned for us and start asking questions no matter what your political colour.
Shrillsong in Dopenhagen. Jesus, I’m glad I’m not there.