 Things don’t look good for Copenhagen climate treaty Nov. 9, 2009  By Ron Arnold, CDFE Executive Vice PresidentThe last United Nations negotiating session before December’s Copenhagen summit on climate change has ended in Spain, but rich and poor nations are still far from agreement. The key stumbling blocks are targets for emissions cuts and money for poorer nations. Officials are desperate not to admit complete failure, so they’re now saying that a new treaty to replace the Kyoto accords on greenhouse gas emissions could take another year. UN officials have finally admitted that progress has been so slow on the most difficult issues that they will need more time to legally seal the deal. Copenhagen could surprise us and still lead to a significant political agreement, but if it happens it will be a major disaster for the developed world, with the United States the biggest loser, since it would bankrupt the nation to bribe poor countries into surrendering their own development. Insiders at the negotiating session in Spain said the missing ingredient – even more than the absence of agreement on targets, money and technology – was trust. Rich countries don’t trust poor countries because they not only keep raising the ante for agreeing to comply with global warming rules, but don’t seem eager to surrender their own development for the sake of climate theories that originated in rich countries. Poor countries don’t trust rich countries because they think all the global warming restrictions are just a new form of colonialism that will enslave them to the wills of powerful foreign politicians. G20 meeting When the session in Spain wound up, finance ministers from the G20 had arrived in Scotland to discuss the global financial recovery and tackle climate change. G20 countries are like that famous quote from Saint Augustine: “God give me chastity, but not yet.” They agree on the need to cut carbon emissions, but not on how to do it – or even whether to discuss it now or wait until the Copenhagen summit, or maybe a year later. Britain says the Copenhagen talks will be a better forum to decide the issue and coordinate with an American plan to help poor countries deal with global warming (at fantastic cost to U.S. taxpayers). The Swedish finance minister Anders Borg says he is confident leaders will reach a deal, like Saint Augustine – but not yet. "There will be a deal in Copenhagen, that's quite clear. We won't solve the problem in Copenhagen, but there will be progress," he said. That’s mostly face-saving talk to pretend they really did something. "We need to have an agreement where people are committing actual money to start the adaptation to climate change." That “actual money” part is the hang-up. All the G20 nations know perfectly well that “adaptation” to global warming would destroy their economies. So, it’s the sincere hypocrisy of, “Give me global warming adaptation, but not yet.” Ron Arnold is the executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise, a position he has held for twenty-five years. He is widely known for his mentoring of new advocates for free enterprise and as the author of numerous books. |
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