Leaked Coppenhagen documents
The third world countries are catching on to the fact they will be held to strict standards instead of enjoying largess from the developed nations!
sWAMPY
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In an update yesterday on the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, we reported on the words of Conference President Connie Hedegaard. Ms. Hedegaard, who is also Denmark’s former climate minister, was worried that a failure to achieve agreement in Copenhagen would be a disaster for democracy. As the official conference website reported her words:
If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then I think it’s a failure that is not just about climate. Then it’s the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century. And that is and should not be a possibility. It’s not an option.
As was observed previously, Hedegaard’s statement reflects a rather odd definition of the “democratic system” since she clearly implies that the system must yield a particular course of action (which just happens to coincide with her policy agenda) if it is going to uphold its “democratic” character. But that’s not democracy: That’s reducing a conference of 192 nations to a ‘photo-op’ to approve a deal which has been ‘cooked’ behind the scenes.
Thus the outrage over the leak of what is being characterized as a “draft”— and conference organizers who are desperate to regain control of the situation.
According to the official conference website:
For more than a week a rumour has circulated that Denmark, host of the ongoing UN conference on climate change, has drawn up a compromise text. On the afternoon of the conference’s second day, The Guardian published what it claimed to be this text. The British newspaper also claims to have read “a confidential analysis of the text by developing countries” which “shows deep unease”.
“You need to listen to all countries. That’s what democracy is about, and that’s what you have been cheering in Denmark. What your Prime Minister (Lars Løkke Rasmussen) does is contrary to the spirit of the developing aid, which Denmark has provided for Africa through many years,” Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping ... chair of the Group of 77, mostly consisting of developing countries, tells Danish daily Politiken.
(The full text of the Danish “draft” is available from the Guardian here.)
Why are the “developing countries” upset? Because the Danish “draft” document expects them to eventually submit to some measure of the restrictions which would be imposed on the industrialized world:
9. The developing country Parties, except the least developed countries which may contribute at their own discretion, commit to nationally appropriate mitigation actions, including actions supported and enabled by technology, financing and capacity-building. The developing countries’ individual mitigation action could in aggregate yield a [Y percent] deviation in [2020] from business as usual and yielding their collective emissions peak before [20XX] and decline thereafter.
10. Attachment B reflects individual commitments to nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing country Parties. Developing country parties which have not reflected their contributions at COP15 should do so before [XX], except least developed countries. A developing country Party may subsequently amend its national contribution to register additional national appropriate mitigation actions which increase its overall mitigation outcome.
The unspecified dates and figures were intended to be subject to negotiation, but the clear intent of the paragraphs is that the Third World would eventually submit to limitations on emissions of “greenhouse gases” — and that’s not on the agenda of the “developing nations.”
The Danes — and the industrialized world, in general — may receive a rather unpleasant lesson in the nature of “democracy.” The far more numerous developing nations have shown up in Copenhagen looking for a massive redistribution of wealth from the wealthy nations to themselves and they probably have the votes to accomplish that end; the question is how deeply they will be able to gouge the First World without those nations simply walking away from the talks without signing anything.
Thus, for example, Bangladesh has already gone on record demanding a 15 percent “cut” of whatever funds are extracted from the First World—not a fixed sum, to help with alleged troubles from “climate change,” but a fixed percentage. The developing nations are there to demand “justice”—as one member of delegation from Bangladesh declared.
The result of the leaking of the “draft” has been chaos.
In the words of a report at Guardian.co.uk:
The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.
The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.
The so-called Danish text, a secret draft agreement worked on by a group of individuals known as "the circle of commitment" – but understood to include the UK, US and Denmark – has only been shown to a handful of countries since it was finalised this week.
Welcome to the reality of politics. For the self-righteous noise being emitted by the environmentalists, the more sane members of that contingent know that they will never get Europeans, North Americans, Australians or Japanese to voluntarily reduce their nations to a per capita level of emissions equal to those found in Sudan. Making the cuts they are willing to push for will cripple the economies of the industrialized world as it is. The Third World recognizes that a fundamental element of the entire proposed Copenhagen treaty will be to dramatically curtail the economic development of the entire world—and they are understandably upset those cuts will affect them. They thought, after all, that Ban Ki-moon’s global welfare system was going to simply mean that they would be the recipients of the largesse of a looted First World. Now suddenly they realize that the same Internationalists who want to control the economies of the First World actually want to control their nations as well.
Welcome to the “global democratic system” in action.
Rt. Rev. James Heiser has served as Pastor of Salem Lutheran Church in Malone, Texas, while maintaining his responsibilities as publisher of Repristination Press, which he established in 1993 to publish academic and popular theological books to serve the Lutheran Church. Heiser has also served since 2005 as the Dean of Missions for The Augustana Ministerium and in 2006 was called to serve as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA). An advocate of manned space exploration, Heiser serves on the Steering Committee of the Mars Society. His publications include two books; The Office of the Ministry in N. Hunnius' Epitome Credendorum (1996) and A Shining City on a Higher Hill: Christianity and the Next New World (2006), as well as dozens of journal articles and book reviews.