Source:
Sydney Morning Herald
DEAUVILLE, France: Russia, Japan and Canada told the G8 they would not join a second round of carbon cuts under the Kyoto Protocol at United Nations talks this year and the US reiterated it would remain outside the treaty, European diplomats have said.
The future of the Kyoto Protocol has become central to efforts to negotiate reductions of carbon emissions under the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change, whose annual meeting will take place in Durban, South Africa, from November 28 to December 9.
Developed countries signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. They agreed to legally binding commitments on curbing greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.
EU Unlikely to Offer Deeper CO2 Cut Before Summit, Poland Says
By Ewa Krukowska,
Bloomberg News
The European Union is unlikely to propose a deepening of the bloc’s greenhouse-gas reduction target before the next global climate summit, due to start in November, Polish Environment MinisterAndrzej Kraszewski said.
The EU, which wants to lead the global fight against climate change, is on schedule to meet its binding goal of cutting emissions by 20 percent in 2020 compared with 1990 levels. It has said it’s ready to move to a 30 percent target if other countries follow suit.
Kraszewski, who met with EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard in Brussels yesterday before Poland adopts the rotating EU presidency in July, said Europe will keep its options open during the international climate talks in Durban, South Africa, scheduled from November 28 to December 9.
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On the road to Rio+20
By Peter Foster,
Financial Post
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development — whose members and affiliates now represent 80% of world trade and investment — this year celebrates its 50th anniversary. It seems to have come a long way from its original, noble purpose. The organization had its roots in the desire, after the Second World War, not to repeat the mistakes made after the First. Instead of demanding reparations from Germany, the Allies decided that what was needed was to encourage peaceful European co-existence and reconstruction. This approach was the brainchild of George C. Marshall, who had been U.S. Army chief of staff during the war, and subsequently became secretary of state, then secretary of defense. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.
Green alarmists such as Al Gore (who, astonishingly, also won the Peace Prize, in his case, in 2007, for stoking climate hysteria) often maintain that what is needed is a new Marshall Plan, only its objectives would be the reverse of those of George Marshall. The OECD seems more than happy to get with the new anti-Marshall program. It has now become a full-blown advocate of “sustainable development,” which is code for an anti-market ideology of less freedom and more bureaucratic control of the industries the Marshall Plan promoted.
Sustainable development was given its imprimatur by the United Nations-based, and socialist-packed, Brundtland Commission, which led to the mammoth 1992 UN environmental and development conference at Rio. Out of Rio emerged, among many other interventionist initiatives, the Kyoto Accord to control climate by restricting industrial output, and thus growth and jobs.
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