Liberals and conservatives are criticizing a U.N.-backed deal supported by the Biden administration for richer nations to pay reparations to poorer countries for the impacts of climate change.
Attendees of the COP27 climate summit held in Egypt went into overtime last weekend to establish a global “loss and damage” fund. The historic initiative calls for wealthier nations like the U.S. and its allies in Europe to compensate poorer nations that have been most affected by climate change but are among the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
The agreement has frustrated the political left and right alike in the U.S.
Climate hawks argue the agreement failed to go far enough because it did not call for phasing out all fossil fuels — only reiterating that the world should wean itself from coal. They also say it delayed many of the thornier decisions, such as how the fund would work and how much should be paid, until next year’s annual conference.
The U.S. and other developed countries have failed to meet a prior pledge to provide $100 billion per year.
Michael Sheldrick of the climate change and poverty advocacy group Global Citizen questioned whether the money will ever come to fruition.
“We have to ask ourselves: how credible are any new commitments, given the failure to make progress in other key areas? How can we take any of these new commitments seriously given promises that continue to go unmet?” Mr. Sheldrick said in a statement. “COP27 seems to retract on the $100 billion pledge in climate finance, a promise already broken two years in a row.”
Conservatives, meanwhile, suggested it amounted to an international slush fund for richer nations to fork over tens of billions of dollars each year to developing countries.
“Simply put, the United States can’t pay. We could give a few billion dollars now and then, but we’re $31 trillion in debt and face trillion dollar-per-year deficits for the foreseeable future,” said Alex Flint, executive director of the right-leaning economic climate group Alliance for Market Solutions. “Even if we were willing to pay, we simply don’t have the resources, or at least enough to reasonably compensate damages.”
Diana Furchtgott‑Roth, an energy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation and former Department of Transportation official in the Trump administration, argued the deal only further hamstrings poorer countries. As part of a broader agreement, wealthy nations want commitments from poorer ones to slash emissions to help meet the goal of limiting global temperature increases.
“The West should be encouraging all countries to use the most efficient forms of energy,” Ms. Furchtgott‑Roth said. “They can’t get to Western levels of living without conventional fuels: oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear. For us to have these standards of living and then say to other countries ‘you can’t have them’ is selfish and oblivious to the situations these low-income countries are in.”
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COP-27 Financiers And Merchants Of Death
As Americans give thanks this week for our many blessings, let us recall the Pilgrims’ and Native Americans’ primitive agricultural knowledge and technologies, the hunger and disease that were constants in their lives – and how so many around the world are not much better off today.
Much of Africa still lives on the edge, with well over 600 million people not even having electricity. Many parts of India, Asia and Latin America also face serious energy and food deprivation.
Incredibly, so does Europe. “German industry stares into the Net Zero abyss,” “Europe’s energy crisis may get even worse next year,” “Even Germany’s wind industry is sliding into crisis,” “Millions face poverty and destitution in Green Britain, as Brits pay highest electricity bills in world,” headlines warn.
Banning Russian gas imports amid Putin’s war on Ukraine plays a role and is frequently scapegoated. But the primary cause is Europe’s love affair with intermittent wind and solar, and hate-fest for fossil fuels and nuclear, amid frigid winter realities that have caused Germany to obliterate ancient villages and recent-vintage wind farms to mine lignite coal beneath them.
Closer to home, New England and New York also face a cold, dark winter, because they too have voted against drilling, fracking, pipelines, coal and nuclear power – and now demand more oil and gas from the same companies that they and President Biden want to drive into oblivion.
However, the greatest hypocrisy of all was on full-throated display at the COP-27 climate circus in Egypt November 6-18 – where attendees kept asking whether Africa should be allowed to exploit its oil, natural gas and coal reserves to improve living standards, feed families and save lives!
Al Gore preached that fossil fuel investments should be terminated worldwide, including in Africa. UN Secretary General António Guterres absurdly asserted that “New funding for fossil fuel exploration and production is delusional” and will only “feed the scourge of war, pollution and climate catastrophe” (the manmade cataclysms found in computer models and COP-27 rants, though not in the Real World).
At the COP-27 climate gabfest in Sham-El-Sheikhdown, Egypt, John Kerry said African nations shouldn’t rely on natural gas to generate electricity and modernize. (Kerry has five houses, a yacht and private jet – but that’s OK because they’re in his wife’s name, and he merely “makes use of them.”)
Even worse, it’s not just energy these arrogant eco-totalitarians want to obstruct in Africa and other developing regions. It’s also modern fertilizers — indeed, all aspects of modern agriculture – everything that can actually help farmers feed hungry people and make enough money to build a home or barn, send their children to school, and buy tractors and other equipment.
They don’t even want Africa producing natural gas and using it to make nitrogen fertilizer, which dramatically boosts crop yields and is absolutely essential if the world is to feed eight billion people – especially without turning millions more acres of wildlife habitat into marginal croplands.
Poor countries are no long going to tolerate this outrageous, intolerable, racist neo-colonialism. Nor should they, especially when they realize now-rich countries are on the verge of de-industrialization and bankruptcy – and have neither the intention nor ability to shell out billions, much less trillions, of dollars in annual “reparation, loss and damage” payments for alleged impacts from manmade climate change.
So when the UN, now-rich countries and eco-pressure groups tell them there’ll be no financing for fossil fuels and modern agriculture – only for wind and solar energy, organic farming and “AgroEcology” – poor countries should just tell these purveyors of poverty, hunger, disease and death to buzz off. That would leave poor countries largely on their own.
But they have numerous advantages that their predecessors lacked: access to the incredible energy, agricultural, industrial, economic, medical, communication and other advances of recent centuries, especially during the fossil-fueled industrial era.
They simply need to chart their own destinies and utilize these advances. Every project they undertake will generate new wealth, innovation and self-confidence to undertake subsequent projects.
I’ve written about these callous eco-imperialists – these financiers and merchants of death – many times (here, here, here and here, for example).
Unfortunately, they never repent, never revise their lethal attitudes and policies. The global following they enjoy underscores how the ill-informed but well-intended really are led around by the well-informed but ill-intended – on climate, energy, agriculture and human rights.
Their AgroEcology schemes reject virtually the entire foundation of modern agriculture, which feeds feed billions of people with less acreage and water, using monoculture farming, carefully developed and tested chemical fertilizers and insecticides, biotechnology, hybrid seeds and mechanized equipment.
Instead, they demand “food sovereignty” – the “right” to “culturally appropriate” food produced through “ecologically sound and sustainable methods, in accord with AgroEcology policies – the kind that brought hunger and chaos to Sri Lanka.
They even vilify Golden Rice, which could end Vitamin A Deficiency, blindness and death among malnourished children.
Could the insanity and hypocrisy get any worse? Sadly – yes.
European leaders have been pleading with African nations to launch oil, gas and coal projects – for shipment to Europe. In their next breath, the EU Commission says supporting nitrogen fertilizer production in Africa would “clash” with EU climate goals.
The International Energy Agency worries that half of Sub-Saharan Africa’s population has no access to electricity. In its next breath, the IEA says stopping planetary overheating doesn’t allow for more African petroleum production.
Even more colonialist, Time magazine promotes the notion that “humans eating insects could help save the planet.” The New York Times extolls a new Julia Child “Joy of Cooking (Insects).” And a group of “renowned” African and European “ecology and nutrition experts” says climate change and other considerations make Africa “the perfect laboratory” for testing new ways to feed humanity – like turning lake flies from the Lake Victoria region into “crackers, muffins, meat loaves and sausages.”
COP-27 (or FLOP-27) claims to have reached another “historic milestone” in saving Planet Earth! But it’s all driven by unfounded hysteria about manmade climate cataclysms. Let’s all take a deep breath.
We certainly face climate fluctuations and extreme weather events – but no worse than in the past, and with no replicable, convincing evidence that manmade emissions have replaced natural forces. More importantly, we have far greater wealth, far more knowledge, far better technologies and resources than in the past – to help us adapt to climate changes, survive extreme weather events and rebuild afterward.
That’s infinitely preferable to blanketing the Earth with wind turbines, solar panels, battery modules, transmission lines, mines and factories to build the things – and processing plants to make bug burgers and other delicacies, in time for climate luminaries to enjoy them at COP-28.
Can’t we just be calm and rational (and thus colonialist?) just this once? Just asking.
https://www.eurasiareview.com/22112022-cop-27-financiers-and-merchants-of-death-oped/
*******************************************European industry exodus to US looms, driven by green handouts and cheaper gas prices
Politicians warn of investment exodus across Atlantic, driven by US incentives and cheaper gas prices. The Biden administration’s most senior trade official told the FT that the EU should introduce more subsidies.
Northvolt, Europe’s great hope in the global battery wars, began life as a start-up focused on the continent. Now the Swedish group, backed by Volkswagen, BMW and Goldman Sachs, is looking to the US to expand production.
The reason for the pivot is the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The US’s flagship green technology legislation, signed into law in August, would subsidise a factory in America by about $600mn-$800mn, according to Northvolt. That compares to €155mn in incentives on the table from Germany.
The IRA “is moving momentum a lot from Europe to the US”, Northvolt chief executive Peter Carlsson told the Financial Times, adding that it was not only affecting European companies. “There are new Asian players who are reallocating their strategic plans and investments to North America,” he said.
The combination of the Biden Administration’s $369bn package and high energy costs in Europe, where even after recent declines gas prices remain five times more expensive than in North America, is sounding alarm bells in EU capitals.
“I think we need a European wake-up on this point,” French president Emmanuel Macron told executives from domestic industrial companies such as glassmaker Saint-Gobain and cement maker Lafarge in a speech last week.
Germany’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, described the US support as “excessive” and “hoovering up investments from Europe”.
The EU has accused Washington of breaching World Trade Organization rules and set up a task force with the Biden administration to resolve their differences. It has asked for changes to nine provisions in the legislation involving subsidy programmes totalling $231bn, arguing they create a “race to the bottom” on handouts to business.
Brussels estimates the EU needs to boost annual investment by €520bn in the coming decade to meet its carbon reduction and environmental protection objectives.
While the IRA affects manufacturers in fields ranging from advanced machinery to heavy industry, EU executives are particularly concerned about the impact on the automotive sector. Only electric cars substantially made with parts from North America and assembled there will qualify for a $7,500 tax discount for consumers.
Europe is home to more than one-quarter of global EV production, and 20 per cent of the supply chain, according to the International Energy Agency. The US has just 10 per cent of EV production and 7 per cent of battery production capacity.
Luisa Santos, deputy director-general at BusinessEurope, a pan-European lobby group, said the US legislation had sent a “dangerous signal” that could encourage other jurisdictions to take protectionist measures.
Yet far from offering to extend the break to EU vehicles, Katherine Tai, the Biden administration’s most senior trade official, told the FT that the EU should introduce more subsidies.
https://www.ft.com/content/7f4b8029-258a-4af5-9e72-abcd736468e1
**************************************************Australia 1.47°C warmer than it was when national records began in 1910, State of the Climate Report reveals
Let's try a little logic here. If the Australian temperature is .37 of a degree above the global temperature of 1.1 degree then a significant part of the Australian warming is NOT due to global influences. That being so, how do we know that ANY of it is due to global influences? Both the global and Australian temperatures could be random fluctuations and probably are. Fluctuations are common in the long-term global record. Temperatures over the last 100 years or so are just a recent uptick from the Little Ice Age
Australia is 1.47°C hotter today than it was just over 100 years ago, putting it ahead of the global trend of 1.1°C of warming, the biennial State of the Climate report released on Wednesday reveals.
The report, from the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, revealed Australia as a whole is 1.47°C warmer than it was when national records began in 1910, although there is a margin of error of 0.24°C.
Most of that increase in warming has taken place since 1950, and every decade since the 1950s has been warmer than the one preceding it, the report stated.
Australia’s warming trend was seen across all months of the year, in both day time and night time temperatures, with a marked increase in the number of extremely hot days.
In 2019 – Australia’s hottest year – there were 41 extremely warm days, which the report said were “about triple the highest number in any year prior to 2000”.
While the temperature trend for the country has been uniform, with regards to rainfall the results are more mixed
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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