QandO TV: Episode 1
I‘ve been fiddling around with stuff, and came up with this. I don’t know whether it’ll be a regular deal, but for what it’s worth, here it is.
Some Good News Among All The Bad
It looks like the looming Copenhagen Climate Summit is shaping up to be a bust:
British officials preparing for next month’s UN summit in Copenhagen said the best that could be hoped for was that national leaders would make “political agreements” on emission cuts and payments to help poor countries to adapt to climate change. These agreements would be non-binding, however, and could later be revised or rescinded by national parliaments.
[...]
The admission that no treaty will be signed at Copenhagen marks the failure of the process agreed at a UN meeting in Bali in December 2007, when industrialised countries agreed to deliver a binding climate-change agreement within two years. The delay has angered developing countries, which say they are already suffering from man-made climate change.
No surprise that “developing countries” are angry about this – their opportunity to loot the richer countries has again been delayed. They’re angry because the payday is guaranteed since the “developed” nations have foolishly, in the past, agreed they’re the cause of the problem and should pay the “developing” countries for that.
Artur Runge-Metzger, the European Commission’s negotiator on climate change, said in Barcelona that the absence of commitment from the United States on emission cuts was a key factor contributing to the delay, although other countries were also to blame. He said that without a treaty the EU would agree to cut its 1990 emissions by only 20 per cent by 2020, whereas with a treaty it would agree to a 30 per cent cut.
And they can’t even blame Bush for this one. My question is, if Europe is so hot to trot on this idea, why they don’t take the lead for once and ratchet down their emissions to 30% unilaterally?
I’ll tell you why – because they know what effect it will have on their economy and won’t do anything without being assured everyone is sharing in the suffering.
The one good thing that may come out of this is the economy of Copenhagen may see a nice little economic up-tick as representatives from 190 countries fly in and hit all the posh hotels for a week or so. I wonder what the carbon footprint of that event will be?
~McQ