AN AGREEMENT TO HOLD MORE TALKS: BIG DEAL! (1)

It's just face-saving. Government and diplomats would talk until kingdom come to avoid doing anything

Australia helped draw big greenhouse polluters such as the US, China and India back into climate negotiations by championing a new round of global talks to run in parallel with the Kyoto Protocol negotiations. Australia and the US continue to reject Kyoto and its emphasis on binding targets for emissions reduction, but they have agreed to join new talks that will include 189 developed and developing countries.

On his way home from the 11th international climate change conference in Montreal yesterday, after all-night negotiations sealed the agreement, federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell said the meeting recognised what Australia has consistently argued. "The Beyond Kyoto policy we wrote last September was aimed at getting a deal ... that faces up to the fact that unless we get 65 per cent of the emissions not represented within Kyoto on track for some action, we would fail to address climate change," he said. "The greatest achievement of this conference is the multiple-track approach and the recognition that the one size fits all approach is not the way to go."

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AN AGREEMENT TO HOLD MORE TALKS: BIG DEAL! (2)

UK Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett has dismissed suggestions the UN climate control deal achieved in Montreal has been "over-hyped". Mrs Beckett said she achieved all she set out to at the conference, which ended in agreement on two key issues. Talks can now begin on new targets to reduce carbon emissions when the Kyoto treaty ends in 2012, and the US has agreed to non-binding talks on climate. Forging agreement between 189 countries was "a diplomatic triumph", she said. ... The Tories, however, have been sceptical of the deal. Shadow environment secretary Peter Ainsworth said: "It's better than nothing, but it isn't much. We need a great deal more than talk if we are going to stop the descent towards rapid and irreversible climate change."

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CLOSER TO REALITY: OFFICIALS ADMIT IDEAL OF AGREED EMISSION CONTROLS IS 'FINISHED'

After nearly two weeks of intensive talks aimed at drawing up international plans to curb global warming, ministers and diplomats will today offer an agreement with no firm timetable for action. ... But even those countries who are taking part in the Montreal talks are considering a watered-down successor to Kyoto. The original accord was itself regarded - even by some of its authors - as half-hearted.

The best the 12-day talks look like producing is a negotiating plan that would set the terms for the talks to create the new climate-change treaty. And drafts of the final agreement circulating yesterday didn't even set a firm timetable for the end of talks about quite when the new emissions-cut period would begin. That means months or even years could pass between the expiry of Kyoto and the start of the next treaty. But whatever the deal that finally emerges from those discussions, officials say it will not be as rigid as Kyoto, instead giving signatories much more leeway in how to comply. "It is fair to say that a Kyoto-style agreement is very unlikely to be achieved from the negotiations," Ian Campbell, the Australian environment minister, said yesterday. "The concept of binding targets and timetables is just about finished," he said......

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MEANWHILE IN THE REAL WORLD: WE'D RATHER KEEP THE LIGHTS ON THAN BE GREEN

The 189 nations and 8,000 delegates gathered last week in Montreal at the Climate Change Conference faced an ugly reality: most of the countries that promised to cut their greenhouse gas emissions to meet their Kyoto treaty obligations have failed to do so. It seems that job-creating economic growth trumps environmental concerns, especially given the uncertainty surrounding the presence and causes of global warming. Besides, developing countries such as India, China, South Africa and Brazil have shown no inclination to join, although richer countries agreed in Montreal to increase their incentives to cut emissions.

Indeed, when the energy crunches come, politicians quickly shed their green clothes. This week the Opec oil cartel hinted that its members might cut production to keep the price of crude oil above $60 a barrel. That sent consuming countries' policymakers into a spin. They want Opec to pump more, not less, oil to feed their thirsty cars, trucks and factories, and to heat the homes of those who have not switched to natural gas. Oh yes, that oil will produce more greenhouse-gas emissions - but that's a problem for another international conference.

Then there is natural gas. Suddenly the politicians are less concerned about the emissions resulting from the burning of natural gas than about shortages that might force some factories to shut down during periods of peak use of that relatively - but only relatively - clean fuel. Hell hath no fury like that of a workman (read, voter) laid off because his government's energy policy has resulted in a supply shortage.....

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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