Stillborn In Doha - Why Kyoto's Ghost Is Meaningless

[hatrack]

EDIT

The extended Kyoto Protocol is expected to compel about 35 industrialised nations to reduce GHG emissions. But the 15-year-old protocol has been weakened by the withdrawal of Russia, Japan and Canada. The fact that the US never ratified the protocol means its remaining backers, led by the European Union and Australia, now account for only 15 per cent of world GHG emissions. So we can see how much emission would be reduced.

The developed world [perhaps with the exception of the EU] had always been reluctant to accept binding emission cuts, but until now it at least appeared to take measures to fight climate change and help poorer countries do the same. But Doha, for all its drawbacks, has helped pull the veil of pretension off many a developed country's face.

There was never any doubt about the intentions of the US. Those who were fooled by US President Barack Obama's victory speech in Chicago on November 7 into thinking he would lead the US, historically the greatest GHG emitter, into the battle against climate change failed to read the not so fine print. The sentence in Obama's victory speech that left many an environmentalist jumping with joy was: "We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt, that isn't weakened up by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet." Indeed, the president was talking about protecting children from climate change, but then he was referring to American children, not children in the rest of the world.

There are too many powerful forces at play behind the scenes not only in the US, but also all the countries that have embraced the free-market economy. Profit is the language that the market understands, and market is the philosophy that most governments today follow. It is this philosophy, seeped in profit and endless greed, which has prevented the developed countries providing the promised US$100 billion to the poorest countries to adapt to and fight climate change. The "new deal" struck in Doha indicates only $10 billion will be available every year, which is only half of what the developed countries had promised to give between 2013 and 2015.

EDIT

http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Doha-delivers-a-dead-deal-on-climate-change-30196130.html

[Nihil]

1. "There was never any doubt about the intentions of the US"

"It was not surprising to see Japan, Canada and Russia "opt out" of the extended
Kyoto Protocol. Japan, with its overemphasis on nuclear energy and industrial production,
Canada with its newfound shale gas reserves and huge logging industry, and
Russia with its massive oil and gas production, are the last countries to heed the
warnings of climate change."

"Those who were fooled by US President Barack Obama's victory speech in Chicago
on November 7 into thinking he would lead the US, historically the greatest GHG emitter,
into the battle against climate change failed to read the not so fine print."

"It is this philosophy, seeped in profit and endless greed"


I really hope that someone is carving this failure into records that can't be just
"lost" or "accidentally shredded" so that future historians can see exactly what
happened.