Skip to content or view screen version

COP15 Fails -- Capitalism is Ecocide

IMC UK Features | 20.12.2009 21:59 | COP15 Climate Summit 2009 | Climate Chaos | World

As the politicians and protesters disperse from Copenhagen , the COP15 climate talks were judged to have ended in a failure to produce any binding commitment to tackle climate change. On Saturday 12th, an estimated 100 000 joined a demo, to be met with repressive policing and mass arrests. The same style of policing continued for the duration of the summit, with hundreds of protestors detained for hours in degrading and inhumane conditions. Whilst the police demonstrated the limits of freedom and democracy on the streets, inside the convention centre western powers and corporations dominated the proceedings, imposing unfair conditions and watering down the already inadequate proposals that were on the table.

In London, the Climate Camp which was set up after the 'wave' demo on December 5th, remained in situ in Trafalgar Square throughout the summit, mounting a number of actions, including an action against Tar Sands at Canada House on Monday 14th, and a protest against the Danish police on Thursday 17th.

Links:
Time Line | Climate IMC | IMC Denmark | iCOP15 aggregated site.



IMC UK Features

Comments

Hide the following 16 comments

Was it?

18.12.2009 23:28

So was it a success? Was it worth going to Copenhagen or would resources be better spent supporting the camp in Trafalgar Square? Please tell me before the Climate camp "Ra ra ra" merchants start to hype it up.

Just give me some truth now.

True believer


Copenhagen is a sham

19.12.2009 05:58

well i hope everyone is happy the mircle president has done it again, lets all but our hand together and clap at this wonderful non-binding agreement. arnt words just the best !!!!!!!!


lets see how long this lasts

samuel s


Don quixote

19.12.2009 13:31

And another environmental climate sham passes off as the joke of the year.

We are all supposedly facing collapse of food supplies, and the extinction of many animal species, changes in our climate that will lead to large numbers of people dying of the poisonous environment but its all ok. the jolly hockey sticks brigade turned up an sealed a deal involving some percentage or other reduction in corporate pollution index and a something or other promise from the G20/COP15/WTO/IMF that they will do something at some point.

And all the while people die in Afghanistan and Iraq.

What a piss-poor joke the climate movement is? Are you climate protesters/campaigners or pro-war enforcers? You look like the government!

Polar bear


Climate Camp in Trafalgar Square, climate protests in Copenhagen - was it worth

21.12.2009 13:20

Climate Camp in Trafalgar Square, climate protests in Copenhagen - was it worth it?

The previous comments are a bit frustrated, so here's a reminder that one demo never ever changed a policy - protest works in the long run, radical change never happens from one moment to the next. Even previous revolutions were just the tipping point of very long processes.

What is the alternative to protest, not only against the climate-carbon-trading-solution, but against the entire system that guides these policies? The perfect model for more just social relations does not yet exist, but there are beginnings. Alternative economies, social relations not based on profit but solidarity, models for globalisation from below are being tried out on a small scale, and not least during protest events. Whithout protest, the hegemony of the powers that be would go entirely uncontested. Power is not an either/or. Only because it is not "us" who decide how to deal with climate change, it doesnt mean that we are entirely powerless. Protesting does make a difference, its part of the long way to radical change. No change without protest.

Did anyone really think that a few thousand people on the streets of Copenhagen would influence the hard decisions made on this particular summit? Now THAT would be easy! 3000 people holding a people's assembly, and as a consequence, Obama says: Oh, hang on, maybe they are right! I'll commit to the 2 % rule and deal with congress later.

Copenhagen was the first UN summit where the protest took place inside as well as outside. Where a coalition between poor countries, powerful NGOs and radical protesters seemed not easy, but possible. Where delegates tried to walk out from inside the summit to join protesters on the outside. Radical demands are not anymore unrealistic, impossible - they are just on the wrong side of the power-balance. But this can change - in a process of protesting, communicating, working together, defining the conflicts between us to face the conflict with those in power, work out what exactly we mean by "system change not climate change", continuing the struggle.

It is important to realise that dissent against the current climate politics is not confined to the summit location, this year copenhagen, next year somewhere else. It's up to us to make it visible at home as well. The climate camp in London was not only in London - it was connected to the wider struggles elsewhere, and in turn it strengthened those struggles. It's not either London or Copenhagen - its got to be everywhere!

protester


Need MORE

21.12.2009 18:13

JUST saying that capitalism is bad for the environment does not let us jump to "non/anti capitalism is good for the environment".

We need to make our case and mustn't confuse "necessary" with "sufficient". We need to explain how SOME SPECIFIC ALTERNATIVES to capitalism would allow us to come back into balance with the environment. Trying to argue that JUST by saying any alternative wouldn't have the SAME forces preventing that coming into balance as capitalism does isn't nearly enough. What reasons do we have to believe that there wouldn't be non-capitalist forces acting to blind us to resources running out, the environmant collapsing, etc.

I am distrustful about the environmental sincerity of those arguing against capitalism "to save the environment". Don't get me wrong here, I'm against capitalism too, but for social justice reasons. I am far less convinced just any old alternative will help the environment all that much. There might be SPECIFIC alternatives that would, I certainly hope so. That's what we need to talk about.

For social justice AND for the environment.

MDN


Pentagon's Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes

21.12.2009 22:18

In evaluating the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen -- with more than 15,000 participants from 192 countries, including more than 100 heads of state, as well as 100,000 demonstrators in the streets -- it is important to ask: How is it possible that the worst polluter of carbon dioxide and other toxic emissions on the planet is not a focus of any conference discussion or proposed restrictions?

By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.


The Pentagon wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; its secret operations in Pakistan; its equipment on more than 1,000 U.S. bases around the world; its 6,000 facilities in the U.S.; all NATO operations; its aircraft carriers, jet aircraft, weapons testing, training and sales will not be counted against U.S. greenhouse gas limits or included in any count.


The Feb. 17, 2007, Energy Bulletin detailed the oil consumption just for the Pentagon's aircraft, ships, ground vehicles and facilities that made it the single-largest oil consumer in the world. At the time, the U.S. Navy had 285 combat and support ships and around 4,000 operational aircraft. The U.S. Army had 28,000 armored vehicles, 140,000 High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles, more than 4,000 combat helicopters, several hundred fixed-wing aircraft and 187,493 fleet vehicles. Except for 80 nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers, which spread radioactive pollution, all their other vehicles run on oil.

Even according to rankings in the 2006 CIA World Factbook, only 35 countries (out of 210 in the world) consume more oil per day than the Pentagon.

The U.S. military officially uses 320,000 barrels of oil a day. However, this total does not include fuel consumed by contractors or fuel consumed in leased and privatized facilities. Nor does it include the enormous energy and resources used to produce and maintain their death-dealing equipment or the bombs, grenades or missiles they fire.

Steve Kretzmann, director of Oil Change International, reports: "The Iraq war was responsible for at least 141 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMTCO2e) from March 2003 through December 2007. ... The war emits more than 60 percent of all countries. ... This information is not readily available ... because military emissions abroad are exempt from national reporting requirements under U.S. law and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change." (www.naomiklein.org, Dec. 10) Most scientists blame carbon dioxide emissions for greenhouse gases and climate change.

Bryan Farrell in his new book, "The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism," says that "the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency ... the Armed Forces of the United States."

Just how did the Pentagon come to be exempt from climate agreements? At the time of the Kyoto Accords negotiations, the U.S. demanded as a provision of signing that all of its military operations worldwide and all operations it participates in with the U.N. and/or NATO be completely exempted from measurement or reductions.

After securing this gigantic concession, the Bush administration then refused to sign the accords.

In a May 18, 1998, article entitled "National security and military policy issues involved in the Kyoto treaty," Dr. Jeffrey Salmon described the Pentagon's position. He quotes then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen's 1997 annual report to Congress: "DoD strongly recommends that the United States insist on a national security provision in the climate change Protocol now being negotiated." (www.marshall.org)

According to Salmon, this national security provision was put forth in a draft calling for "complete military exemption from greenhouse gas emissions limits. The draft includes multilateral operations such as NATO- and U.N.-sanctioned activities, but it also includes actions related very broadly to national security, which would appear to comprehend all forms of unilateral military actions and training for such actions."

Salmon also quoted Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who headed the U.S. delegation in Kyoto . Eizenstat reported that "every requirement the Defense Department and uniformed military who were at Kyoto by my side said they wanted, they got. This is self-defense, peacekeeping, humanitarian relief."

Although the U.S. had already received these assurances in the negotiations, the U.S. Congress passed an explicit provision guaranteeing U.S. military exemption. Inter Press Service reported on May 21, 1998: "U.S. law makers, in the latest blow to international efforts to halt global warming, today exempted U.S. military operations from the Kyoto agreement which lays out binding commitments to reduce 'greenhouse gas' emissions. The House of Representatives passed an amendment to next year's military authorization bill that 'prohibits the restriction of armed forces under the Kyoto Protocol.'"

Today in Copenhagen the same agreements and guidelines on greenhouse gases still hold. Yet it is extremely difficult to find even a mention of this glaring omission.

According to environmental journalist Johanna Peace, military activities will continue to be exempt from an executive order signed by President Barack Obama that calls for federal agencies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Peace states, "The military accounts for a full 80 percent of the federal government's energy demand." (solveclimate.com, Sept. 1)

The blanket exclusion of the Pentagon's global operations makes U.S. carbon dioxide emissions appear far less than they in fact are. Yet even without counting the Pentagon, the U.S. still has the world's largest carbon dioxide emissions.

More than Emissions

Besides emitting carbon dioxide, U.S. military operations release other highly toxic and radioactive materials into the air, water and soil.

U.S. weapons made with depleted uranium have spread tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste throughout the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans.

The U.S. sells land mines and cluster bombs that are a major cause of delayed explosives, maiming and disabling especially peasant farmers and rural peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America . For example, Israel dropped more than 1 million U.S.-provided cluster bombs on Lebanon during its 2006 invasion.

The U.S. war in Vietnam left large areas so contaminated with the Agent Orange herbicide that today, more than 35 years later, dioxin contamination is 300 to 400 times higher than "safe" levels. Severe birth defects and high rates of cancer resulting from environmental contamination are continuing into a third generation.

The 1991 U.S. war in Iraq , followed by 13 years of starvation sanctions, the 2003 U.S. invasion and continuing occupation, has transformed the region -- which has a 5,000-year history as a Middle East breadbasket -- into an environmental catastrophe. Iraq 's arable and fertile land has become a desert wasteland where the slightest wind whips up a dust storm. A former food exporter, Iraq now imports 80 percent of its food. The Iraqi Agriculture Ministry estimates that 90 percent of the land has severe desertification.

Environmental War at Home

Moreover, the Defense Department has routinely resisted orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up contaminated U.S. bases. ( Washington Post, June 30, 2008) Pentagon military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as contaminants seep into drinking water aquifers and soil.

The Pentagon has also fought EPA efforts to set new pollution standards on two toxic chemicals widely found on military sites: perchlorate, found in propellant for rockets and missiles; and trichloroethylene, a degreaser for metal parts.

Trichloroethylene is the most widespread water contaminant in the country, seeping into aquifers across California , New York , Texas , Florida and elsewhere. More than 1,000 military sites in the U.S. are contaminated with the chemical. The poorest communities, especially communities of color, are the most severely impacted by this poisoning.

U.S. testing of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Southwest and on South Pacific islands has contaminated millions of areas of land and water with radiation. Mountains of radioactive and toxic uranium tailings have been left on Indigenous land in the Southwest. More than 1,000 uranium mines have been abandoned on Navajo reservations in Arizona and New Mexico .

Around the world, on past and still operating bases in Puerto Rico, the Philippines , South Korea , Vietnam , Laos , Cambodia , Japan , Nicaragua , Panama and the former Yugoslavia , rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon.

The best way to dramatically clean up the environment is to shut down the Pentagon. What is needed to combat climate change is a thoroughgoing system change.

George B


Seconded

22.12.2009 17:14

I agree with MDN. For all the anti-capitalism being thrown about, no-one seems to be presenting any specific alternatives. All anyone can say is that capitalism is destroying the environment, which as true as it is, does not mean an alternative would not. Some sort of forum for exploring various alternatives being tried around the globe would be useful so they can analysed, discussed, and hopefully put further into practice.

C


Protests and alternatives

23.12.2009 16:59

Yes the protets and klimaforum were well worth it. Partly because they had an affect on the negotiations inside the Bella centre, introducing antogonism into the post-political space being created around climate change and disrupting attempts to stage Make Poverty History style pseudo-movements that Milliband wanted. But also because firm connections have been made between different social movements from the global north and south and even some of the governments of developing countries. An interesting situation.

As to alternatives to capitalism - here is an interesting attempt to think this through - it was published in the latest issue of Turbulence of which 10,000 issues were apparently given out in Copenhagen.

 http://turbulence.org.uk/turbulence-5/potatoes-and-computers/

a.m.


Solutions

28.12.2009 19:50

Solutions are available to any problem once a critical analysis of the facts are established.

The point made above about the Pentagon as a polluter are accurate, and one wonders why they are omitted from the IPCCs recommendations...?

So a look at the FACTS.

The core biological function of all living orgnanisms is to imptove the habitat by their actions, for all life. And that has to include human beings as much as any other..

Thus there is no waste in nature. Everything is food for more life. Everything is metabolised and resused, time and time again and the 'management' of these processes is, as yet, a mystery in that no single agnet is found to 'control' these processes, other than the fundamentals : all life improves the habitat, all is food for more life and there is no waste.

Capitalism is not the problem, merely a symptom of the problem.

The core problem is 'civilisation' and it's tendency towards domination. Capitalism, like communism and religion, is merely a mechanisim of that dominance.

In 'Cradle to Cradle' a US designer and a German bio-chemist propose ways to align all industrial processes with the fundamentals of nature, and they have had lots of sucess in this project. Their concept works.

The opposition to this, and other alternatives such as Permaculture, Transition Towns, Small holding farming ect etc emerges from within that domination psyche - to enact that alignment with nature would neccessarily remove the 'need; for centralised power : most goods, foods and fuels could and would be produced locally, for local use; most communities would be self-organising; the rape of the thrid world would have to cease. Tis only natural.

The facts are that the protestors as much as the 'leaders' are working from within that domination psyche - the leaders role is obvious, and the protestors appeal reinforces that role.... because they have not examined in full the extent of their own conditioning.

And it is the constant unrelenting conditioning that we are subjected to from birth that is responsible for the 'apthy', 'selfishness' and malleability of most people, including myself...

Unless the 'Green' movement includes the pollution of childrens minds, the 'consumerisation' of children so that they become consumers, tied to earning an income to support their consumoption as opposed to becoming producers as equal to the pollution of the environment, unless the 'official' green leadership moves to expose the depth and effect of conditioning, they will have no sucess in their projects.

core luminous
mail e-mail: infocorneilius@yahoo.ie
- Homepage: http://www.dwylcorneilius.blogspot.com


protester (21.12.2009 13:20) +1

03.01.2010 15:23

Your comment:

Climate Camp in Trafalgar Square, climate protests in Copenhagen - was it worth

21.12.2009 13:20
Climate Camp in Trafalgar Square, climate protests in Copenhagen - was it worth it?
 https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2009/12/443388.html?c=on#comments

Well Said


George B: (21.12.2009 22:18) +1

03.01.2010 15:34

Your comment:

Pentagon's Role in Global Catastrophe: Add Climate Havoc to War Crimes

21.12.2009 22:18

Good research. Thanks for the info. Perhaps this article should be given wider circulation?

Well Said


A letter from a skeptic to a leader

05.01.2010 09:08

A letter sent from: The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley

1 January 2010

His Excellency Mr. Kevin Rudd,

Prime Minister, Commonwealth of Australia.

Prime Minister,

Climate change: proposed personal briefing

Your speech on 6 November 2009 to the Lowy Institute, in which you publicly expressed some concern at my approach to the climate question, has prompted several leading Australian citizens to invite me come on tour to explain myself in a series of lectures in Australia later this month. I am writing to offer personal briefings on why “global warming” is a non-problem to you and other party leaders during my visit. For convenience, I am copying this letter to them, and to the Press.

Your speech mentioned my remarks about the proposal for world “government” in the early drafts of what had been intended as a binding Copenhagen Treaty. These proposals were not, as you suggested, a “conspiracy theory” from the “far right” with “zero basis in evidence”. Your staff will find them in paragraphs 36-38 of the main text of Annex 1 to the 15 September draft of the Treaty. The word “government” appears twice at paragraph 38. After much adverse publicity in democratic countries, including Australia, the proposals were reluctantly dropped before Copenhagen.

You say I am one of “those who argue that any multilateral action is by definition evil”. On the contrary: my first question is whether any action at all is required, to which – as I shall demonstrate – the objective economic and scientific answer is No. Even if multilateral action were required, which it is not, national governments in the West are by tradition democratically elected. Therefore, a fortiori, transnational or global governments should also be made and unmade by voters at the ballot-box. The climate ought not to be used as a shoddy pretext for international bureaucratic-centralist dictatorship. We committed Europeans have had more than enough of that already with the unelected but all-powerful Kommissars of the hated EU, who make nine-tenths of our laws by decree (revealingly, they call them “Directives” or “Commission Regulations”). The Kommissars (that is the official German word for them) inflict their dictates upon us regardless of what the elected European or any other democratic Parliament says or wishes. Do we want a worldwide EU? No.

You say I am one of “those who argue that climate change does not represent a global market failure”. Yet it is only recently that opinion sufficient to constitute a market signal became apparent in the documents of the IPCC, which is, however, a political rather than a scientific entity. There has scarcely been time for a “market failure”. Besides, corporations are falling over themselves to cash in on the giant financial fraud against the little guy that carbon taxation and trading have already become in the goody-two-shoes EU – and will become in Australia if you get your way.

You say I was one of “those who argue that somehow the market will magically solve the problem”. In fact I have never argued that, though in general the market is better at solving problems than the habitual but repeatedly-failed dirigisme of the etatistes predominant in the classe politique today.


The questions I address are a) whether there is a climate problem at all; and b) even if there is one, and even if per impossibile it is of the hilariously-overblown magnitude imagined by the IPCC, whether waiting and adapting as and if necessary is more cost-effective than attempting to mitigate the supposed problem by trying to reduce the carbon dioxide our industries and enterprises emit.

Let us pretend, solum ad argumentum, that a given proportionate increase in CO2 concentration causes the maximum warming imagined by the IPCC. The IPCC’s bureaucrats are careful not to derive a function that will convert changes in CO2 concentration directly to equilibrium changes in temperature. I shall do it for them.

We derive the necessary implicit function from the IPCC’s statement to the effect that equilibrium surface warming ΔT at CO2 doubling will be (3.26 ± ln 2) C°. Since the IPCC, in compliance with Beer’s Law, defines the radiative forcing effect of CO2 as logarithmic rather than linear, our implicit function can be derived at once. The coefficient is the predicted warming at CO2 doubling divided by the logarithm of 2, and the term (C/C0) is the proportionate increase in CO2 concentration. Thus,

ΔT = (4.7 ± 1) ln(C/C0) | Celsius degrees

We are looking at the IPCC’s maximum imagined warming rate, so we simply write –

ΔT = 5.7 ln(C/C0) | Celsius degrees

Armed with this function telling us the maximum equilibrium warming that the IPCC predicts from any given change in CO2 concentration, we can now determine, robustly, the maximum equilibrium warming that is likely to be forestalled by any proposed cut in the current upward path of CO2 emissions. Let me demonstrate.

By the end of this month, according to the Copenhagen Accord, all parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are due to report what cuts in emissions they will make by 2020. Broadly speaking, the Annex 1 parties, who will account for about half of global emissions over the period, will commit to reducing current emissions by 30% by 2020, or 15% on average in the decade between now and 2020.

Thus, if and only if every Annex 1 party to the Copenhagen Accord complies with its obligations to the full, today’s emissions will be reduced by around half of that 15%, namely 7.5%, compared with business as usual. If the trend of the past decade continues, with business as usual we shall add 2 ppmv/year, or 20 ppmv over the decade, to atmospheric CO2 concentration. Now, 7.5% of 20 ppmv is 1.5 ppmv.

We determine the warming forestalled over the coming decade by comparing the business-as-usual warming that would occur between now and 2020 if we made no cuts in CO2 emissions with the lesser warming that would follow full compliance with the Copenhagen Accord. Where today’s CO2 concentration is 388 ppmv –

Business as usual: ΔT = 5.7 ln(408.0/388) = 0.29 C°

– Copenhagen Accord: ΔT = 5.7 ln(406.5/388) = 0.27 C°

= “Global warming” forestalled, 2010-2020: 0.02 C°


One-fiftieth of a Celsius degree of warming forestalled is all that complete, global compliance with the Copenhagen Accord for an entire decade would achieve. Yet the cost of achieving this result – an outcome so small that our instruments would not be able to measure it – would run into trillions of dollars. Do your Treasury models demonstrate that this calculation is in any way erroneous? If they do, junk them.

You say “formal global and national economic modelling” shows “that the costs of inaction are greater than the costs of acting”. You ask for my “equivalent evidence basis to Treasury modelling published by the Government of the industry and employment impacts of climate change”. I respond that the rigorous calculation that I have described, which your officials may verify for themselves, shows that whatever costs may be imagined to flow from anthropogenic “global warming” will scarcely be mitigated at all, even by trillions of dollars of expenditure over the coming decade.

Every economic analysis except that of the now-discredited Lord Stern, with its near-zero discount rate and its absurdly inflated warming rates, comes to the same ineluctable conclusion: adaptation to climate change, in whatever direction, as and if necessary, is orders of magnitude more cost-effective than attempts at mitigation. In a long career in policy analysis in and out of government, I have never seen so cost-ineffective a proposed waste of taxpayers’ money as the trillions which today’s scientifically-illiterate governments propose to spend on attempting – with all the plausibility of King Canute – to stop the tide from coming in.

Remember that I have done this calculation on the basis that everyone who should comply with the Copenhagen Accord actually does comply. Precedent does not look promising. The Kyoto Protocol, the Copenhagen Accord’s predecessor, has been in operation for more than a decade, and it was supposed to reduce global CO2 emissions by 2012. So far, after billions spent on global implementation of Kyoto, global CO2 emissions have risen compared with when Kyoto was first signed.

Remember too that we have assumed the maximum warming that the CO2 imagines might occur in response to a given proportionate increase in CO2 concentration. Yet even the IPCC’s central estimate of CO2’s warming effect, according to an increasing number of serious papers in the peer-reviewed literature, is a five-fold exaggeration. If those papers are right, after a further decade of incomplete compliance and billions squandered, warming forestalled may prove to be just a thousandth of a degree.

Now ask yourself this. Are you, personally, and your advisers, personally, and your administration’s officials, personally, willing to make the heroically pointless sacrifices that you so insouciantly demand of others in the name of Saving The Planet For Future Generations? I beg leave to think not. At Flag 1 I have attached what I have reason to believe is a generally accurate list of the names and titles of the delegation that you led to Copenhagen to bring back the non-result whose paltriness, pointlessness and futility we have now rigorously demonstrated. There are 114 names on the list. One hundred and fourteen. Enough to fill a mid-sized passenger jet. Half a dozen were all that was really necessary – and perhaps one from each State in Australia. If you and your officials are not willing to tighten your belts when a tempting foreign junket at taxpayers’ expense is in prospect, why, pray, should the taxpayers tighten theirs?

You say that climate-change “deniers” – nasty word, that, and you should really have known better than to use it – are “small in number but too dangerous to be ignored”, and “well resourced”. In fact, governments, taxpayer-funded organizations, taxpayer-funded teachers, and taxpayer-funded environmental groups have spent something like 50,000 times as much on “global warming” propaganda as their opponents have spent on debunking this new and cruel superstition. And that is before we take account of the relentless prejudice of the majority of the mainstream news media.

How, then, it is that we, the supposed minority who will not admit that the emperor of “global warming” is adequately clad, are somehow prevailing? How is it that we are convincing more and more of the population not to place any more trust in the “global warming” theory? The answer is that the “global warming” theory is not true, and no amount of bluster or braggadocio, ranting or rodomontade will make it true.

You say that our aim, in daring to oppose the transient fashion for apocalypticism, is “to erode just enough of the political will that action becomes impossible”. No. Our aim is simply to ensure that the truth is widely enough understood to prevent the squandering of precious resources on addressing the non-problem of anthropogenic “global warming”. The correct policy response to a non-problem is to have the courage to do nothing. No interventionist likes to do nothing. Nevertheless, the do-nothing option, scientifically and economically speaking, is the right option.

You say that I and others like me base our thinking on the notion that “the cost of not acting is nothing”. Well, after a decade and a half with no statistically-significant “global warming”, and after three decades in which the mean warming rate has been well below the ever-falling predictions of the UN’s climate panel, that notion has certainly not been disproven in reality.

However, the question I address is not that but this. Is the cost of taking action many times greater than the cost of not acting? The answer to this question is Yes.

Millions are already dying of starvation in the world’s poorest nations because world food prices have doubled in two years. That abrupt, vicious doubling was caused by a sharp drop in world food production, caused in turn by suddenly taking millions of acres of land out of growing food for people who need it, so as to grow biofuels for clunkers that don’t. The scientifically-illiterate, economically-innumerate policies that you advocate – however fashionable you may conceive them to be – are killing people by the million.

You say my logic “belongs in a casino, not a science lab”. Yet it is you who are gambling with poor people’s lives, and it is you – or, rather, they – who are losing: and losing not merely their substance but their very existence. The biofuel scam is born of the idiotic notion – a notion you uncritically espouse – that increasing by less than 1/2000 this century the proportion of the Earth’s atmosphere occupied by CO2 may prove catastrophic. At a time when so many of the world’s people are already short of food, the UN’s right-to-food rapporteur, Herr Ziegler, has roundly and rightly condemned the biofuel scam as nothing less than “a crime against humanity”.

The scale of the slaughter is monstrous, with food riots (largely unreported in the Western news media, and certainly not mentioned by you in your recent speech) in a dozen regions of the Third World over the past two years. Yet this cruel, unheeded slaughter is founded upon a lie: the claim by the IPCC that it is 90% certain that most of the “global warming” since 1950 is manmade. This claim – based not on science but on a show of hands among political representatives, with China wanting a lower figure and other nations wanting a higher figure – is demonstrably, self-servingly false. Peer-reviewed analyses of changes in cloud cover over recent decades – changes almost entirely unconnected with changes in CO2 concentration – show that it was this largely-natural reduction in cloud cover from 1983-2001 and a consequent increase in the amount of short-wave and UV solar radiation reaching the Earth that accounted for five times as much warming as CO2 could have caused.

Nor is the IPCC’s great lie the only lie. If you will allow me to brief you and your advisers, I will show you lie after lie after lie after lie in the official documents of the IPCC and in the speeches of its current chairman, who has made himself a multi-millionaire as a “global warming” profiteer.

However, if you will not make the time to hear me for half an hour before you commit your working people to the futile indignity of excessive taxation and pointless over-regulation without the slightest scientific or economic justification, and to outright confiscation of their farmland without compensation on the fatuous pretext that the land is a “carbon sink”, then I hope that you will at least nominate one of the scientists on your staff to address the two central issues that I have raised in this letter: namely, the egregious cost-ineffectiveness of attempting to mitigate “global warming” by emissions reduction, and the measured fact, well demonstrated in the scientific literature, that a largely-natural change in cloud cover in recent decades caused five times as much “global warming” as CO2. It is also a measured fact that, while those of the UN’s computer models that can be forced with an increase in sea-surface temperatures all predict a consequent fall in the flux of outgoing radiation at top of atmosphere, in observed reality there is an increase. In short, the radiation that is supposed to be trapped here in the troposphere to cause “global warming” is measured as escaping to space much as usual, so that it cannot be causing more than around one-fifth of the warming the IPCC predicts.

My list of the Copenhagen junketers from Australia’s governing class is attached. All those taxpayer dollars squandered, just to forestall 0.02 C° of “global warming” in ten years. Yet, in the past decade and a half, there has been no “global warming” at all. Can you not see that it would be kinder to your working people to wait another decade and see whether global temperatures even begin to respond as the IPCC has predicted? What is the worst that can happen if you wait? Just 0.02 C° of global warming that would not otherwise have occurred. It’s a no-brainer.

Yours faithfully,

VISCOUNT MONCKTON OF BRENCHLEY


THE RUDD GOVERNMENT’S COPENHAGEN JUNKET LIST

December 2009


The following 114 officials or representatives of the Australian Government and of State administrations attended the UN climate conference at Copenhagen in December 2009 –

1. Kevin Michael Rudd, Prime Minister
2. Penelope Wong, Minister, Clim. Chg. & Water
3. Louise Helen Hand, Ambassador for Clim. Chg.
4. David Fredericks, Dep. Chf. of Staff, Dept. of the Prime Minister
5. Philip Green Oam, Sen. Policy Advr., Foreign Affairs Dept.
6. Andrew Charlton, Sen. Advr., Prime Minister’s Dept.
7. Lachlan Harris, Sen. Press Sec., Prime Minister’s Office
8. Scott Dewar, Sen. Advr., Prime Minister’s Office
9. Clare Penrose, Advr., Prime Minister’s Office
10. Fiona Sugden, Media Advr., Prime Minister’s Office
11. Lisa French, Prime Minister’s Office12. Jeremy Hilman, Advr., Prime Minister’s Office
13. Tarah Barzanji, Advr., Prime Minister’s Office
14. Kate Shaw, Exec. Sec., Prime Minister’s Office
15. Gaile Barnes, Exec. Asst., Prime Minister’s Office
16. Gordon de Brouwer, Dep. Sec. Prime Minister’s Dept.
17. Patrick Suckling, 1st Asst. Sec., Intl. Div., Prime Minister’s Office\
18. Rebecca Christie, Prime Minister’s Office
19. Michael Jones, Official Photographer, Prime Minister & Cabinet
20. Stephan Rudzki
21. David Bell, Federal Agent, Aus. Federal Police
22. Kym Baillie, Aus. Federal Police
23. David Champion, Aus. Federal Police
24. Matt Jebb, Federal Agent Aus. Federal Police
25. Craig Kendall, Federal Agent, Aus. Federal Police
26. Squadron Leader Ian Lane, Staff Offr., VIP Operations
27. John Olenich, Media Advr., to Minister Wong, Office of Clim. Chg. & Water
28. Kristina Hickey, Advr. to Minister Wong, Office of Clim. Chg. & Water
29. Martin Parkinson, Sec., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
30. Howard Bamsey, Special Envoy for Clim. Chg., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
31. Robert Owen-Jones, Asst. Sec., Intl. Div., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
32. Clare Walsh Asst. Sec., Intl. Div., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
33. Jenny Elizabeth Wilkinson, Policy Advr., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
34. Elizabeth Peak, Princ. Legal Advr., Intl. Clim. Law, Dept. of Clim. Chg.
35. Kristin Tilley, Dir., Multilat. Negots., Intl. Div., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
36. Andrew Ure, Actg. Dir., Multilat. Negots., Intl. Div., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
37. Annemarie Watt, Dir., Land Sector Negots., Intl. Div., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
38. Kushla Munro, Dir., Intl. Forest Carbon Sectn. Intl. Div., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
39. Kathleen Annette Rowley, Dir., Strategic & Tech. Analysis, Dept. of Clim. Chg.
40. Anitra Cowan Asst. Dir., Multilat. Negots., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
41. Sally Truong, Asst. Dir., Multilat. Negots., Intl. Div. Dept. of Clim. Chg.
42. Jane Wilkinson, Asst. Dir., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
43. Tracey Mackay, Asst. Dir., Intl. Div., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
44. Laura Brown, Asst. Dir., Multilat. Negots., Intl. Div., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
45. Tracey-Anne Leahey, Delegation Mgr., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
46. Nicola Loffler, Sen. Legal Advr., Intl. Clim. Law, Dept. of Clim. Chg.
47. Tamara Curll, Legal Advr., Intl. Clim. Law, Dept. of Clim. Chg.
48. Jessica Allen, Legal Support Offr., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
49. Sanjiva de Silva, Legal Advr., Intl. Clim. Law, Dept. of Clim. Chg.
50. Gaia Puleston, Political Advr., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
51. Penelope Morton, Policy Advr., UNFCCC Negots., Intl. Div., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
52. Claire Elizabeth Watt, Policy Advr., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
53. Amanda Walker, Policy Offr., Multilat. Negots., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
54. Alan David Lee, Policy Advr., Land Sector Negots., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
55. Erika Kate Oord, Aus. Stakeholder Mgr., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
56. Jahda Kirian Swanborough, Comms. Mgr., Ministerial Comms., Dept. of Clim. Chg.
57. H.E. Sharyn Minahan, Ambassador, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
58. Julia Feeney, Dir., Clim. Chg. & Envir., Dept. of Foreign Affairs & Trade
59. Chester Geoffrey Cunningham, 2nd Sec., DFAT, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to Germany
60. Rachael Cooper, Exec. Offr., Clim. Chg. & Envir., Dept. of Foreign Affairs & Trade
61. Rachael Grivas, Exec. Offr., Envir. Branch, Dept. of Foreign Affairs & Trade
62. Moya Collett, Desk Offr., Clim. Chg. & Envir. Sectn., Dept. of Foreign Affairs & Trade
63. Rob Law, Dept. of Foreign Affairs & Trade
64. Robin Davies, Asst. Dir. Gen., Sustainable Devel. Gp., Aus. Agency for Intl. Devel.
65. Deborah Fulton, Dir., Policy & Global Envir., Aus. Agency for Intl. Devel.
66. Katherine Vaughn, Policy Advr., Policy & Global Envir., Aus. Agency for Intl. Devel.
67. Brian Dawson, Policy Advr., Aus. Agency for Intl. Devel.
68. Andrew Leigh Clarke, Dep. Sec., Dept. of Res. Devel., Western Aus.
69. Bruce Wilson, Gen. Mgr., Envir. Energy & Envir. Div., Dept. of Resrc. Devel., W. Aus.
70. Jill McCarthy, Policy Advr., Dept. of Resrc., Energy & Tourism
71. Simon French, Policy Advr., Dept. of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry
72. Ian Michael Ruscoe, Policy Advr., Dept. of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry
73. David Walland, Acting Supt., Nat. Clim. Centre, Bureau of Meteorology
74. Damien Dunn Sen. Policy Advr., Aus. Treasury
75. Helen Hawka Fuhrman, Policy Offr., Renewable Energy Policy & Partnerships
76. Scott Vivian Davenport, Chf., Economics, NSW Dept. of Industry & Invest.
77. Graham Julian Levitt, Policy Mgr., Clim. Chg., NSW Dept. of Industry & Invest.
78. Kate Jennifer Jones, Minister, Clim. Chg. & Sustainability, Qld. Govt.
79. Michael William Dart, Princ. Policy Advr., Office of Kate Jones, MP, Qld. Govt.
80. Matthew Anthony Jamie Skoien, Sen. Dir., Office of Clim. Chg. Qld. Govt.
81. Michael David Rann, Premier, S. Aus. Dept. of Premier & Cabinet, S. Aus.
82. Suzanne Kay Harter, Advr., Dept. of Premier & Cabinet, S. Aus.
83. Paul David Flanagan, Mgr., Comms., Govt. of S. Aus.
84. Timothy O’Loughlin, Dep. Chf. Exec., Sust. & Wkfc. Mgmt., S. Aus. Dept. of Premier
85. Nyla Sarwar M.Sc, student, Linacre College, University of Oxford
86. Gavin Jennings, Minister, Envir. & Clim. Chg. & Innovation, Victorian Govt.
87. Sarah Broadbent, Sustainability Advr.
88. Rebecca Falkingham, Sen. Advr., Victoria Govt./Office of Clim. Chg.
89. Simon Camroux, Policy Advr., Energy Supply Ass. of Aus. Ltd.
90. Geoff Lake, Advr., Aus. Local Govt. Ass.
91. Sridhar Ayyalaraju, Post Visit Controller, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
92. Tegan Brink Dep. Visit Controller & Security Liaison Offr., Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
93. Melissa Eu Suan Goh, Trspt. Liaison Offr. & Consul, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
94. Lauren Henschke, Support Staff, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
95. Maree Fay, Accommodation Liaison Offr., Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
96. Patricia McKinnon, Comms. Offr., Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
97. Eugene Olim, Passport/Baggage Liaison Offr., Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
98. Belinda Lee Adams
99. Jacqui Ashworth, Media Liaison Offr., Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
100. Patricia Smith, Media Liaison Offr., Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
101. Martin Bo Jensen, Research & Public Dipl. Offr., Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
102. Mauro Kolobaric, Consular Support, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
103. Susan Flanagan, Consular Support, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
104. Stephen Kanaridis, IT Support Offr., Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
105. George Reid, Support Staff, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
106. Ashley Wright, Support Staff, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
107. Jodie Littlewood, Support Staff, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
108. Thomas Millhouse, Support Staff, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
109. Timothy Whittley, Support Staff Driver, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
110. Julia Thomson, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
111. Donald Frater, Chf. of Staff to Minister Wong Office of Clim. Chg. & Water
112. Jacqui Smith, Media Liaison, Dipl. Miss. of Aus. to DK
113. Greg French, Sen. Legal Advr. (Envir.), Dept. of Foreign Affairs & Trade
114. Jeremy Hillman, Advr., Prime Minister’s Office

G.Bruno


the role of intentionality

12.01.2010 23:55

I believe that capitalism is INTENTIONALLY destroying the environment.
Others implicitly believe that the destruction of the environment is just an accidental and unwanted side-effect of "econonmic growth" (within capitalism).
But this is not so.
The environment is a competitor to capitalism. When people are concerned with the environement they are not concerned with finance,economics, capitalism,etc. In order to have the complete attention (and idolization) of people capitalism must destroy that which competes for that attention.
Destruction of the environment by capitalists is not incidental. Every day the capitalist media encourages people to disrespect and destroy nature and this is justified because it boosts the economy. This is written into the strategy of every capitalist corporation and lesser business.

"every decision you make is a decision that may result in your death" (Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, Assuming Responsibility"

"the others saw economic growth, progress and productive factories, but *****m only saw death and the vengeance of angels" (Paul Bowles, The Spiders House)

Only horses cause 'horses' and all horses cause 'horses' (jerry Fodor, The Crude Causal Theory)


zagovor


to g bruno

13.01.2010 00:04

you adopt the name of giordano bruno perhaps.

knowing the fate of giordano but not his point of view.

Your article also displays acquaintance with a sensational fact, and a bottomless pit of ignorance with regard substance.

The figures you so generously donate I will forward to those burnt to death in the Victoria fires, to those frozen to death in this years' northern hemisphere and yes, of course to Giordano.

zagovor


zagovor - get over yourself!

19.01.2010 12:26

Clearly your two line reply was meant to hurt - because it sure did NOT inform.

Your arrogance in assuming that you alone know both the fate and the 'point of view' of this martyr to scientific progress is amusing.

Bruno was sacrificed by a venal ignorant power structure intent on preserving its position at the expense of ultimate truth and knowledge - an apt metaphor for the headlong rush to surrender our freedom and wealth to those now telling us that their control over our resources needs to be tighter, more comprehensive and that our access to them will be metered and charged [to them] accordingly.

As for substance (Your article also displays acquaintance with a sensational fact, and a bottomless pit of ignorance with regard substance.") ... where is yours?

I have showed you mine and it consisted of more that just a few throwaway insults pal.!!!

God[sic], why not just show us pictures of sad kittens if you want to evoke sentiment and feeling over scientific observation and study ...

... 'we're all gunna die, we're all for IT!' blah blah blah

Yep, tell 'em they are under attack and in danger, that should stop 'em thinking about it too much.

Meanwhile, some links:

 http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

 http://www.thunderbolts.info/thunderblogs/thornhill.htm

 http://wattsupwiththat.com/

... gather up the dry wood friend, for a lot of scientists need burning at the stake for their heresy!

zagovor, come back when you have some meaningful statement to make.

G Bruno