The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is drawing to a close in Cancun. Delegates and protesters have endured record cold temperatures–the Al Gore effect–and, thankfully, hardly anything has been accomplished. An Associated Press reporter who buys anthropogenic global warming hook, line and sinker is distressed:
Weary delegates from almost 200 nations struggled through all-day talks Friday to cobble together final decisions wrapping up the U.N. climate conference, small steps to revive the faltering, yearslong talks to guard the Earth against planetary warming.
No grand compact mandating deep cuts in global warming gases was in the cards. Instead, the two-week session focused on a proliferation of secondary issues–a “Green Climate Fund” to help poor nations, deforestation, technology sales and other matters.
The cross-cutting interests of rich and poor nations, tropical and temperate, oil producers, desperate islanders and comfortable continental powers, all combined once more to tie up the annual negotiating session of environment ministers down to its scheduled final hours.
That’s right. What is going on is that the leaders of developed countries are well aware that global warming hysteria is overblown if not 100 percent fraudulent, and no country has any intention of impoverishing itself to satisfy a bunch of hoaxers. Japan took the lead in that regard this year. But the AP is bitterly disappointed:
[Bangladesh’s state minister for environment, Mohammed Hasan Mahmud] lamented that once again a hoped-for overarching pact to slash global emissions was being deferred at least another year, to the 2011 conference in Durban, South Africa.
“I doubt if the Durban (conference) will deliver the desired level of results if the negotiations go the way we have been going through here,” he said.
I’m pretty sure he’s right about that. The AP reaches back in time to blame the U.S.:
In the two decades since, the annual conferences’ only big advance came in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, when parties agreed on modest mandatory reductions by richer nations.
But the U.S., alone in the industrial world, rejected the Kyoto Protocol, complaining it would hurt its economy and that such emerging economies as China and India should have taken on emissions obligations.
As I recall, Romania was the only country that actually implemented the Kyoto Protocol. The AP editorializes shamelessly:
The upcoming takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives by the Republicans, many of whom dismiss strong scientific evidence of human-caused warming, rules out any carbon-capping legislation for at least two years, however.
The AP hopes the Dems will recapture the House in 2012, and will do whatever it can to bring about that result. The AP wants us to be guided by the top-notch scientists who say we need to reduce our standard of living lest things get too warm:
Thankfully, the world has caught on; those portions of it that aren’t holding out their hands for cash, anyway.
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