2011-GCF

Sovereignty International, Inc.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
Conference of the Parties Meeting #17

November - 28 - December 9, 2011
Durban, South Africa

Reports from Cathie Adams, Eagle Forum International Issues Chair

COP 17 logo

Final Report, December 12, 2011

Climate Change Can Kicked Down the Road

The United Nations finally concluded its Climate Change meeting in Durban, South Africa at about 3:30 a.m. Sunday, a day and a half late. Delegates did not create a new treaty to legally bind nations to limit greenhouse gas emissions to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Nor did they approve a global tax scheme to fill the Green Climate fund. Nonetheless, developing (poor) nations, called G-77+China, took home the spoils because some developed (rich) nations voluntarily extended their commitments to the Kyoto Protocol and voluntarily granted start-up funds to the Green Climate Fund.

Todd Stern, head of the American delegation, called the new Durban Platform, "A very significant package, none of us likes everything in it. Believe me, there is plenty the United States is not thrilled about." Stewart Maginnis, of the radical environmental group International Union for Conservation Nature, was a bit more upbeat in his analysis stating, “Steps have been laid out for a new agreement to be put in place by 2015. A new spirit of compromise spanning the developed and developing countries is an encouraging step forward.”

The final Durban Platform produced by the 194-party conference created a new Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action to begin work immediately on a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol which will supposedly put all countries under the same legal regime enforcing commitments to limit greenhouse gases. It is to be presented for approval by 2015 and to take effect by 2020 at the latest.

The G-77+China negotiated forcefully to continue the Kyoto Protocol so that they can continue to profit from mostly European nations (the U.S. Senate has not ratified the KP) that offset their greenhouse gas emissions by moving industries to developing nations, primarily to India and China.

India led the G-77+China efforts calling “equity” the “centerpiece of the climate change debate." Jayanthi Natarajan, the Indian minister of environment and forests, added that her country would "never be intimidated by threats” (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1211/70252.html#ixzz1gJ3pDZ7V, expressing her disapproval of the notion that ALL nations be part of a new binding treaty.

China was a bold supporter of the G-77+China position that only rich nations be legally bound by greenhouse gas emissions limits. When the EU proposed language to put every country under equally binding limits, the Chinese negotiator Xie Zhenhua waved his arms and yelled, "We are doing whatever we should do. We are doing things you are not doing. What qualifies you to say things like this?”

Even language calling for “a protocol, another legal instrument, or a legal outcome” was replaced with, “an agreed outcome with legal force,” to accommodate the G-77+China.

The G-77+China also fought for and won funding for the Green Climate Fund, established at last year’s meeting along with a 40-member Transitional Committee that was to design a global tax scheme to fill the GCF. Durban delegates, however, stopped short of approving a tax scheme; instead, they created a 20-member Standing Committee composed of equal numbers of representatives from developed and developing countries to overview and assist those who meet annually at the Climate Change meetings. Developing countries are to begin accessing the GCF in 2012.

The World Bank has oversight of the GCF for three years, but the new Standing Committee will become the intermediary between the COP and the World Bank to assuage the angst of environmental extremists who do not trust the World Bank because it has financed coal-fired power plants in developing countries, which they consider wholly unacceptable. A work program on long-term finance was also created to analyze options for more resources from a variety of sources to meet future escalating demands for the GCF.

Next year’s Climate Change meeting in Qatar is to build on these commitments, preceded by a meeting called Rio+20 in June 2012, the UN Sustainable Development Conference. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has high hopes for Rio+20, stating, "We hope to chart a new path for development -- sustainable development.... You know the threats as well as I: climate change, environmental destruction, growing scarcities of essential resources -- water, food, energy, the clean air we breathe....We cannot afford to fight over religion, race, or any of the other categories that separate us.”

The global economic crisis worked in the favor of most Americans who oppose new taxes, global or otherwise. Americans who support free markets and clean dependable energy, and oppose the economically destructive and environmentally ineffective legally binding greenhouse gas emissions limits, won a temporary stay on a new treaty and a new global tax.

We will see what happens at Rio+20 next June and in Qatar next December.

Report #6, December 10, 2011

BlueGreen Alliance: Labor Unions and Greens Unite

President Obama and his Democratic party’s radical environmental agenda are killing American jobs and the economy. Robust economies require bountiful and dependable energy to run industries and to create jobs, but regulatory abuses by the Environmental Protection Agency, Executive Orders such as the White House Rural Council and Obama’s “stimulus” funding that filled the pockets of campaign donors with taxpayer money to build solar factories that have since gone bankrupt are purposely destroying the American economy.

Two constituencies of the liberal Democratic political base are peddling their radical green agenda at the United Nations Climate Change meeting in Durban, South Africa. American labor unions and environmental organizations have formed a BlueGreen Alliance to ostensibly advocate for green jobs in a green economy, but it is more likely that the purpose of their new alliance is to enhance the shrinking union rolls (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/monitor_breakfast/2011/0831/Have-shrinking-union-rolls-eroded-the-middle-class-VIDEO).

Union leaders should know that dependable and plentiful energy is necessary to create jobs and that the radical environmentalists are working to destroy the energy that fires their industrial jobs. They should also know that undependable energy sources like wind and solar have never successfully replaced dependable sources like coal, nuclear, natural gas and hydroelectric.

Even so, at an alliance press conference in Durban, an American union leader accused right wing talk show hosts and think tanks of “assaulting” both workers and the economy, as they turned a blind eye to their true enemy: their “environmental partners.”

The union leader bragged that with the help of their environmental partners, they beat back anti-union efforts in Wisconsin and Ohio (http://news.yahoo.com/wisconsin-unions-encouraged-ohio-vote-170126972.html). He irrationally added that to win future battles, the unions will work to protect of the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon dioxide.

In turn, the radical environmentalists have promised to help the unions pass the Obama administration’s American Energy Production & Infrastructure Jobs Bill that includes vehicle fuel efficiency standards and a host of rail, freight and port endeavors. They also promised to support the labor unions’ demand to include Davis-Bacon wage requirements in the legislation.

The BlueGreen Alliance illogically believes the unsubstantiated claim that the Obama Administration’s new 54.5 miles per gallon fuel efficiency standard by 2025 will create 150,000 American jobs through the end of the decade. In reality, free markets have declared the new battery-operated Chevrolet “Volt” an abject failure. The corrupt stimulus-funded green energy projects that filled Obama’s campaign supporter’s pockets have gone bankrupt and added thousands of workers to unemployment roles.

It is irrefutable that reliable energy is the key to economic growth and job creation, regardless the utopian dreams of the new BlueGreen Alliance. If the unions want job creation, then they should form an alliance with energy producers, rather than with those who are working to destroy the energy sources that power the industries that sustain their jobs.

Government largess has failed miserably to create jobs and more government regulations will only fulfill candidate Barak Obama’s promise to “fundamental transform” America, which is to bankrupt energy producers so that we can be just as poor as the Third World.

Report #5, December 8, 2011

ICLEI: Linking Local Governments to the UN Agenda

National governments will probably not adopt a new United Nations’ legally binding greenhouse gas emissions treaty in Durban, South Africa, but that does not protect Americans from the UN’s tentacles. The globocrats are employing its non-governmental organizations to entice local and regional governments to allow global bureaucrats to measure, report and verify their municipalities’ greenhouse gas emissions.

The Durban Adaptation Charter, an initiative of ICLEI, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (http://www.icleiusa.org/), was signed this week by 114 mayors and other elected local leaders representing 950 local governments from around the world. ICLEI employs the same tactics to impose facets of Agenda 21 in hundreds of American communities (http://www.icleiusa.org/about-iclei/members/member-list) that link local governments to global governance to implement the UN’s radical environmental agenda.

Its first annual report, entitled “carbonn Cities Climate Registry (http://citiesclimateregistry.org/),” aims to influence nations to agree to the same measurable, reportable and verifiable climate commitments made by local governments. Co-authors of the report, the World Mayors Council on Climate Change, bragged that it is “turning the ‘talk’ of climate challenge into the ‘walk’ of climate action.”

The NGOs believe they have developed a model to measure, report and verify carbon reductions boasting voluntary participation of cities in 19 countries representing 83 million inhabitants to create 90 GHG inventories with 107 commitments and 555 actions.

The Mayor of Durban presented a resolution to both the Climate Change meeting and to the World Mayors Council on Climate Change calling for ten principles, which should serve as warning signs of intrusive influence on our elected officials:

1. A commitment to climate change adaptation as a key consideration for all zoning and planning

2. Undertake local level impact and vulnerability assessments of climate risks

3. Planning infrastructure and investments that are climate-smart and environmentally sustainable

4. Ensure that mitigation actions limit greenhouse gas increases

5. Encourage citizen lifestyle changes that contribute to local climate actions

6. Ensure sustainable management, conservation and restoration of ecosystems

7. Build climate financing with the Green Climate Fund (UN global tax), national governments and multilateral funding institutions

8. Develop a measurable, reportable and verifiable register of greenhouse gases

9. Ensure cooperation of all levels of government to implement UN legal frameworks

10. Promote partnerships at city, regional and global levels

More than 600 American communities are members of ICLEI and have suffered its costly and intrusive agenda to spend millions of taxpayer dollars for walking and bicycling paths and for public transportation.

When local citizens call for these actions, then local control and self-government are in tact; but when ICLEI entices locally elected officials to embrace the UN’s global agenda, then it is the responsibility of self-governed citizens to defend their right to elect public officials and hold them accountable to our form of government that originates with the governed, not with global busybodies.

Report #4, December 6, 2011

The Green Agenda is Green With Envy

A legally binding cap on greenhouse gas emissions to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012, and approval of a Green Climate Fund, a global tax scheme on carbon emitted by international aviation and shipping, are the two major objectives at the United Nations Climate Change meeting in Durban, South Africa. Both are facades for the UN’s true agenda, which is to stir up jealousy among nations so that they demand a redistribution of wealth by empowering the UN with the authority to tax, thus relieving itself of dependence upon dues paid by once-sovereign nations.

The UN is a forum for the rest of the world to express and act on their resentment of America’s social, environmental and economic successes produced by freedoms and free markets. Jealousy blinds the bureaucrats from learning from the American model that would enable them to enjoy a higher standard of living. Their jealously demands that the U.S. lower her standard of living.

During a press conference at this second and final week of the Climate Change conference for example, the American head of delegation Todd Stern was asked, “Why should other countries take the U.S. seriously within the UN system, since the Congress has not passed legislation [to cap and tax greenhouse gas emissions]?”

Stern responded that the transportation sector is responsible for one-third of GHG emissions and that Congress has already passed legislation to require automakers to produce cars with fuel efficiency standards of 35 miles per gallon to be increased to more than 50 miles per gallon by 2020 (http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/07/artba-20110729.html). Furthermore, Stern said that the Recovery Act gave $90 billion to produce renewable energy (Solyndra scandal (http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/284667/solyndra-scandal-s-key-players-andrew-stiles), smart grids, electric car batteries, etc., adding that legislation to cap and tax GHGs by 2020 is still possible.

The U.S. “has no disagreement,” according to Stern, with a legally binding agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, but believes that conditions are not right yet for a new legally binding agreement. The U.S. wants China and other developing country GHG emitters to join the fray with no trap doors such as a financial requirement for meeting the agreement. Stern added that, “The world has changed since 1992 [when the Climate Change Treaty was signed and ratified by the U.S.] and a new Kyoto Protocol will have to reflect those changes.”

Stern said the U.S. was an original proponent of the Green Climate Fund and that the COP, Conference of the Parties, would approve or disapprove a design by the Transitional Committee in Durban, adding that it would need to be under the guidance of, rather than the authority of, the COP.

The global carbon tax is likely to add ten percent to fuel costs, which have already increased 300% in the last five years. The International Maritime Organization (http://www.imo.org/Pages/home.aspx), the UN's specialized agency responsible for improving maritime safety and preventing pollution from ships, would become the tax assessor/collector. An alternative idea is to develop regional schemes, since developing nations would be exempted from the tax. A cost analysis has already been done by the UN High Level Advisory Group on Climate Finance (http://www.un.org/wcm/content/site/climatechange/pages/financeadvisorygroup), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for a G-20 report on mobilizing climate finance.

If Stern is correct that the conditions are not right for a new legally binding GHG emissions limit treaty, then our concerns this final week must center on the GCF. I have learned, however, by attending these meetings since 1995 to not trust anyone’s rhetoric. Until the deal is done, the outcome is absolutely unpredictable. I plan to keep you posted.

Report #3, December 1, 2011

Only Fools Believe that Money
Can Prevent the Breezes of Hell

Contrivances are already being proposed to spend the $100 billion annual United Nations tax scheme called the Green Climate Fund before it is even approved at the Climate Change meeting in Durban, South Africa. While the GCF is supposed to be used to fund green projects in developing countries, Libya, with its largest proven oil reserves in Africa, wants the money to develop a desert heat project to replace carbon fuel.

Referring to Libya’s recent ouster of the 42-year brutal dictator Muammar Gaddafi, a press statement released in Durban claimed that, “Libya did mission impossible in eight months with the help of the world. With the help of the world we can do it again, this time with global warming.”

Waves Environmental Co. Ltd. of Tajura, Libya, located in the Tripoli District, proposes The Libyan Initiative to totally replace carbon fuel with sustainable, safe and secure low cost renewable energy that they claim could be produced on a large scale to satisfy global demand. “Happy Days Ahead” claims a brochure on the company’s website www.amecosys.com.

Libya is the fifteenth largest exporter of oil in the world. Oil revenues make up over half of the nation’s gross domestic product. Yet it now claims that, “The sirens are wailing. The International community has no choice but to declare a state of emergency and mobilize the global economy to steer away from harm’s way.”

The plan is to build solar based low pressure zone power plants in the Libyan desert and phase out carbon fuel to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2021. The ground surface temperatures at the sites where the giant power plants are proposed are between 158 and 194 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind constantly blowing at about 35 miles per hour would allegedly turn wind turbines to generate electricity. Heat received during the day would penetrate the ground surface and they contest would radiate back at night to maintain full operation.

The Libyan Initiative developers claim that, “A total reverse of course will be achieved 15 years earlier than the day when the breeze of hell is felt if we continue on the current course.”

The Libyan Initiative is likely a grandiose ruse to collect the $100 billion annual Green Climate Fund because it defies logic that such a system could replace carbon energy for a myriad of reasons, not least of which is that it ignores the fact that solar and wind are undependable sources of energy because the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow--even in the Libyan desert. Solar and wind power have been profitable to producers ONLY with taxpayer subsidies.

Furthermore, it is illogical to trust a country that just suffered an eight-month civil war aided by a UN-mandated mission of NATO to oust a brutal dictator and will not have elections until 2013.

The fact is, however, that nothing is logically predictable at the UN.

Contrary to all the UN’s global warming rhetoric, the only decision thus far at the Durban Climate Change meeting is that Qatar will host the 2012 Climate Change meeting. Oil revenues make up 70% of Qatar’s government revenue and more than 80% of its gross domestic product. It is the richest country in the Muslim world.

In keeping with its Qatar decision, it is doubtful that the cavalierly extravagant UN will decide wisely whetherThe Libyan Initiative is funded by the Green Climate Fund. It is just as likely that the meeting in Qatar will give one more excuse to the radical environmental extremists to profit by threatening mayhem during the conference unless they are paid handsomely to join in the UN’s predetermined outcome. That is the way it works at the UN.

Report #1, November 30, 2011

Fossils and Zulu Beehive Huts at the United Nations

South African leader Nelson Mandela said that, “It always seems impossible, until it is done.” Mandela rightly envisioned the statement to mean freedom regardless of race, an ideal entirely supported by Americans, but the United Nations’ use of the statement during the meeting in Durban, South Africa is not supportable.

When Mandela’s statement is applied to the UN’s legally binding greenhouse gas emission targets, which are either laughably ridiculous or absolutely insane, every American should take care lest the UN’s impossible dream be allowed to destroy our national sovereignty.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol set legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions at seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012, but no country has been able to meet that goal because it would have devastated their economies. The Protocol/Treaty was signed by former President Bill Clinton and unsigned by former President George W. Bush. It was never submitted to the U.S. Senate for the required two-thirds vote for ratification. Democrats and Republicans alike know that there are a myriad of problems with Kyoto.

Even so, CAN International, a coalition of 700 radical environmental groups is in Durban demanding that when Kyoto expires in 2012, a new Durban agreement replaces it to set the greenhouse gas emission targets at least 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020 and to decarbonize national economies by 2050.

Environmental extremists in Durban have revealed how they think this can be accomplished. They are displaying a Zulu Beehive Hut that they claim is cool in the summer and warm in the winter because of its circular structure with a single door and no windows. The green beehive’s exterior is ladened with plants.

One could call it ingenious until he realizes that there is no running water or electricity in the beehive. And that the reason for its round structure is so that snakes are deprived of a corner to hide in! That standard of living cannot even appeal to environmental extremists.

The UN is supposed to be a place for sovereign nations to freely decide what is best for their countries, but the truth is that the UN is bent on micromanaging them into extinction by setting impossible targets then micromanaging them to transfer once-sovereign nations’ authority to themselves.

Canada, for example, was awarded the first place Fossil of the Day by CAN International because it plans to withdraw by Christmas from the Kyoto Protocol. (Each day CAN inflicts their Fossil award on a nation throughout major UNFCCC meetings.) Greenpeace activists responded by setting up LED emergency lights on the Canadian Parliament’s lawn stating “Climate Fail.” This is just one of the ways used by the UN to intimidate delegates to succumb to their extremist wishes.

The U.S. won the second place award accused of being “the worst historical climate polluter” and being “beyond complacent by rationalizing the collective mitigation targets as in keeping with what climate scientists say is needed to avoid global disaster.” They concluded that, “The United States is either in denial about the science, or is trying to thwart justified pressure to improve its own ambition."

Unless Americans are ready to exchange their homes for Zulu Beehive Huts, we had better notify our Congressmen that the inmates are running the asylum at the UN and we want our money withdrawn before they can do irreparable damage to our national sovereignty.