QuoteThe political leaders who gathered at the UN climate summit in Paris last week may as well have been dressed in ornate kimonos and elaborate stage makeup, because for all intents and purposes they were participating in kabuki – the ritualized Japanese theatre. Their performances were predictable and the outcome of their choreographed moves was known to all in advance.



The Paris climate declaration, even if implemented, will achieve almost nothing – except hand tens of billions of tax dollars from Western countries (Canada included) over to UN bureaucrats.



By even the most optimistic projections, the Paris accord will only slow global warming by between two-tenths and half a degree Celsius over the next century.



Because the deal (worked out long before Justin Trudeau and the 150 other heads of government headed to Paris) carries no scientifically based emission targets, it will be a mere coincidence if it helps stop climate change.



The point is, Paris was all about style not substance.



Most of the politicians there will never do anything back home to implement the emission reductions they committed to. And there is nothing the UN will be able to do to make them.



The UN will content itself with taking $100 billion or more a year by 2020 from ordinary people in rich countries to give to rich people in poor countries to pay for dubious "green" projects.



Because the accord's emission targets were "self-set," meaning set by each country on its own, the Paris agreement will not stop even one of the more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants currently under construction or on the drawing board around the world over the next 20 years.



Ontario has just finished sabotaging its own power supply and doubling the price of electricity, all so it can boast it is coal-free. And Alberta is about to do the same thing – closing its coal-fired generating stations by 2030 and converting to wind turbines.



As if shutting Ontario's six coal plants and Alberta's 18 will make any difference at all in the face of China, India and other developing countries bringing more than 2,000 new ones online in roughly the same time.



Gestures like that, while expensive to real people and costly to real jobs, are why Paris was mostly political kabuki.



But in a way, Paris was exactly the deal most voters in the developed world wanted – a deal with bold objectives but few consequences.



Slim majorities of voters in most western countries claim they are worried about climate change and want their governments to act to stop it. (I maintain this is because many people confuse greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide with smog or soot or other real air pollution. But that's for another day.)



But whenever governments do anything real – such as jackassing up taxes or raising power rates or building wind turbines or solar farms in your backyard – voters resist.



For instance, last month Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley announced a $3 billion to $4 billion-a-year carbon tax on all fuel and electricity. About two-thirds of Albertan's insist they are worried about global warming, but polls taken since Notley's announcement show the same percentage are opposed to her tax.



Similarly, Trudeau gets a 51% approval for his actions in Paris, yet just 13% of Canadians told IPSOS pollsters last week that they were concerned about climate change. It was ninth on a list of their nine top concerns, well below health care (40%), jobs (39%), taxes (32%) and refugee control (23%).



So just maybe all that stage-managed drama in the French capital was exactly what voters wanted to see – sound and fury signifying nothing.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/12/climate-summit-was-pure-theatre">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/12/c ... re-theatre">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/12/climate-summit-was-pure-theatre

QuoteWith the environmental reputation of 150 world leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, riding on the outcome, the United Nations' climate conference scheduled to wrap up Friday in Paris will be declared a historic success.



But it will be a failure because whatever agreement is reached at COP 21 (the 21st meeting of the Conference of the Parties), it will not include legally binding, enforceable greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction targets for the 190 participating nations.



That is what the UN has insisted for a quarter century is the only thing that can save the planet from runaway global warming caused by the emission of man-made GHGs when fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) are burned for energy.



The failure to achieve it is why the UN's Kyoto Protocol, approved in 1997 at Cop 3 in Kyoto, Japan failed.



It's why the UN's attempt to draft a successor agreement to Kyoto in 2009 at COP 15 in Copenhagen failed.



If past practice is any indication, the Paris conference will blow past its official Friday deadline amid breathless media reporting based on leaked information from the negotiators about how the negotiators are heroically working-round-the-clock on "humanity's last chance" to "save the planet" from global warming, before a "miraculous" deal emerges on the weekend.



We've heard it all before -- including at COP 11 in 2005 held in Montreal during the dying gasps of the Jean Chretien-Paul Martin Liberal government, which ratified the Kyoto Protocol and then did nothing to implement it.



But Canada, responsible for 1.6% of global GHG emissions, is a bit player.



COP 21 will fail for the same reason COP 15 in Copenhagen failed, because neither China, the world's largest GHG emitter, nor the U.S., the second-largest, will accept a binding treaty on reducing their emissions.



Indeed, the UN is twisting itself into a pretzel in Paris to avoid directly criticizing U.S. President Barack Obama, who at Copenhagen said a legally binding global treaty was ultimately needed to effectively combat climate change.



Now he doesn't want one because he can't get it through the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress, especially the Senate, which must ratify international treaties.



Because the UN knows no treaty has credibility unless the U.S., the de facto leader of the developed world, backs it, it has been tip-toeing around the fact Obama now opposes the very thing he said was needed at the start of his presidency to save the planet, when he foolishly boasted his election victory would mark, "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."



China, the leader of the developing world, has never budged from its position it will not accept binding targets to cut its emissions imposed by the UN, the U.S. or anyone else.



China argues the developed world owes financial reparations to the developing world for being the prime causer of global warming.



That's why the UN wants Canada and other developed nations to contribute $100 billion annually to a so-called Green Climate Fund starting in 2020.



Indeed, that's what the UN climate effort is really all about -- not reducing GHG emissions but global wealth redistribution.



As for emissions, the only time they've fallen is during recessions, when less fossil fuel is burned to produce energy, not because of anything the UN has done.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/09/why-the-paris-climate-deal-will-fail">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/09/w ... -will-fail">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/09/why-the-paris-climate-deal-will-fail

QuoteIt's time for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to come clean -- pardon the pun -- and tell Canadians what national carbon price his government will impose on them.



That's because Canadians will have to pay for his plan through higher taxes and prices on virtually all goods and service.



They have a right to know what it's going to cost them.



While Trudeau boasted that Canada was a key player at the United Nations conference that produced a global agreement on climate change in Paris Saturday, talk is cheap.



Trudeau is now going to put our money where his mouth is.



We presume Trudeau will reveal his national carbon price before his upcoming meeting with Canada's premiers -- which he promised to hold within 90 days of the Paris agreement -- to devise a national climate change strategy.



So far, Trudeau has said only that Canada's minimum goal for reducing greenhouse gases linked to climate change is that of the previous Conservative government.



That means a 30% reduction in emissions compared to 2005 levels by 2030, with a short-term goal of 17% by 2020.



At a minimum, then, Trudeau has to reduce Canada's emissions by 104 megatonnes (Mt) annually by 2020 and by 202 Mt by 2030.



Reducing emissions by 104 Mt by 2020 means the equivalent of shutting down 58% of Canada's oil and gas industry within five years.



Reducing them by 202 Mt by 2030 means the equivalent of shutting down all of Canada's oil and gas sector within 15 years and still coming up 23 Mt short.



Trudeau cannot rely on provincial initiatives to get him anywhere near these targets.



British Columbia's carbon tax is expected to reduce emissions by only 3 Mt annually by 2020.



Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne's cap-and-trade plan, along with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley's carbon tax, don't even start until 2017 and Wynne's plan won't lower emissions (if ever) until 2018.



Will Trudeau meet Canada's target by buying billions of dollars worth of so-called "hot air" carbon credits on the fraud-ridden international carbon market, using federal tax money?



Finally, how much money will Trudeau give to the UN's Green Climate Fund for developing countries over the long term?



These are all questions the prime minister has yet to answer.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/13/pm-must-reveal-his-carbon-price">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/13/p ... rbon-price">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/13/pm-must-reveal-his-carbon-price

Quote from: "Shen Li"It's going to get expensive folks.....really expensive.

QuoteThe political leaders who gathered at the UN climate summit in Paris last week may as well have been dressed in ornate kimonos and elaborate stage makeup, because for all intents and purposes they were participating in kabuki – the ritualized Japanese theatre. Their performances were predictable and the outcome of their choreographed moves was known to all in advance.



The Paris climate declaration, even if implemented, will achieve almost nothing – except hand tens of billions of tax dollars from Western countries (Canada included) over to UN bureaucrats.



By even the most optimistic projections, the Paris accord will only slow global warming by between two-tenths and half a degree Celsius over the next century.



Because the deal (worked out long before Justin Trudeau and the 150 other heads of government headed to Paris) carries no scientifically based emission targets, it will be a mere coincidence if it helps stop climate change.



The point is, Paris was all about style not substance.



Most of the politicians there will never do anything back home to implement the emission reductions they committed to. And there is nothing the UN will be able to do to make them.



The UN will content itself with taking $100 billion or more a year by 2020 from ordinary people in rich countries to give to rich people in poor countries to pay for dubious "green" projects.



Because the accord's emission targets were "self-set," meaning set by each country on its own, the Paris agreement will not stop even one of the more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants currently under construction or on the drawing board around the world over the next 20 years.



Ontario has just finished sabotaging its own power supply and doubling the price of electricity, all so it can boast it is coal-free. And Alberta is about to do the same thing – closing its coal-fired generating stations by 2030 and converting to wind turbines.



As if shutting Ontario's six coal plants and Alberta's 18 will make any difference at all in the face of China, India and other developing countries bringing more than 2,000 new ones online in roughly the same time.



Gestures like that, while expensive to real people and costly to real jobs, are why Paris was mostly political kabuki.



But in a way, Paris was exactly the deal most voters in the developed world wanted – a deal with bold objectives but few consequences.



Slim majorities of voters in most western countries claim they are worried about climate change and want their governments to act to stop it. (I maintain this is because many people confuse greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide with smog or soot or other real air pollution. But that's for another day.)



But whenever governments do anything real – such as jackassing up taxes or raising power rates or building wind turbines or solar farms in your backyard – voters resist.



For instance, last month Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley announced a $3 billion to $4 billion-a-year carbon tax on all fuel and electricity. About two-thirds of Albertan's insist they are worried about global warming, but polls taken since Notley's announcement show the same percentage are opposed to her tax.



Similarly, Trudeau gets a 51% approval for his actions in Paris, yet just 13% of Canadians told IPSOS pollsters last week that they were concerned about climate change. It was ninth on a list of their nine top concerns, well below health care (40%), jobs (39%), taxes (32%) and refugee control (23%).



So just maybe all that stage-managed drama in the French capital was exactly what voters wanted to see – sound and fury signifying nothing.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/12/climate-summit-was-pure-theatre">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/12/c ... re-theatre">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/12/climate-summit-was-pure-theatre

Quote from: "seoulbro"

Quote from: "Shen Li"It's going to get expensive folks.....really expensive.

QuoteThe political leaders who gathered at the UN climate summit in Paris last week may as well have been dressed in ornate kimonos and elaborate stage makeup, because for all intents and purposes they were participating in kabuki – the ritualized Japanese theatre. Their performances were predictable and the outcome of their choreographed moves was known to all in advance.



The Paris climate declaration, even if implemented, will achieve almost nothing – except hand tens of billions of tax dollars from Western countries (Canada included) over to UN bureaucrats.



By even the most optimistic projections, the Paris accord will only slow global warming by between two-tenths and half a degree Celsius over the next century.



Because the deal (worked out long before Justin Trudeau and the 150 other heads of government headed to Paris) carries no scientifically based emission targets, it will be a mere coincidence if it helps stop climate change.



The point is, Paris was all about style not substance.



Most of the politicians there will never do anything back home to implement the emission reductions they committed to. And there is nothing the UN will be able to do to make them.



The UN will content itself with taking $100 billion or more a year by 2020 from ordinary people in rich countries to give to rich people in poor countries to pay for dubious "green" projects.



Because the accord's emission targets were "self-set," meaning set by each country on its own, the Paris agreement will not stop even one of the more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants currently under construction or on the drawing board around the world over the next 20 years.



Ontario has just finished sabotaging its own power supply and doubling the price of electricity, all so it can boast it is coal-free. And Alberta is about to do the same thing – closing its coal-fired generating stations by 2030 and converting to wind turbines.



As if shutting Ontario's six coal plants and Alberta's 18 will make any difference at all in the face of China, India and other developing countries bringing more than 2,000 new ones online in roughly the same time.



Gestures like that, while expensive to real people and costly to real jobs, are why Paris was mostly political kabuki.



But in a way, Paris was exactly the deal most voters in the developed world wanted – a deal with bold objectives but few consequences.



Slim majorities of voters in most western countries claim they are worried about climate change and want their governments to act to stop it. (I maintain this is because many people confuse greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide with smog or soot or other real air pollution. But that's for another day.)



But whenever governments do anything real – such as jackassing up taxes or raising power rates or building wind turbines or solar farms in your backyard – voters resist.



For instance, last month Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley announced a $3 billion to $4 billion-a-year carbon tax on all fuel and electricity. About two-thirds of Albertan's insist they are worried about global warming, but polls taken since Notley's announcement show the same percentage are opposed to her tax.



Similarly, Trudeau gets a 51% approval for his actions in Paris, yet just 13% of Canadians told IPSOS pollsters last week that they were concerned about climate change. It was ninth on a list of their nine top concerns, well below health care (40%), jobs (39%), taxes (32%) and refugee control (23%).



So just maybe all that stage-managed drama in the French capital was exactly what voters wanted to see – sound and fury signifying nothing.

http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/12/climate-summit-was-pure-theatre">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/12/c ... re-theatre">http://www.edmontonsun.com/2015/12/12/climate-summit-was-pure-theatre

And it will not stop or reverse any changes in climate.

Quote from: "cc la femme"Oh goody. ANOTHER BO BS non-binding (AKA meaningless) agreement

Quote from: "RW"What a bloody joke!

Quote from: "Shen Li"

Quote from: "cc la femme"Oh goody. ANOTHER BO BS non-binding (AKA meaningless) agreement

No doubt it will be held up as an historic agreement that began the healing of the earth or some insultingly stupid bullshit like that. Again, what a fucking waste of time, money and C02 emissions. Canada sent more people to the than the US, Australia and the UK.