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No New Climate Targets Without Binding UN Climate Agreement, EU Energy Chief

Owen Paterson: Fight Against Climate Change ‘May Cause More Harm Than Global Warming’



Measures to combat climate change may be causing more damage than current global warming, a former environment secretary has said. Owen Paterson, who was sacked in David Cameron’s reshuffle in July, attacked what he described as a “wicked green blob” of environmentalists for failing to explain the pause in global warming. --Matt Dathan, The Times, 28 September 2014
There has not been a temperature increase now for probably 18 years, some people say 26 years. So the pause is old enough to vote, the pause is old enough to join the army, the pause is old enough to pay its taxes. We were never told the pause was coming along, there are – as I understand it – about 30 different explanations for it and nobody explains why the pause is suddenly going to disappear and we’re going to get back on the track upwards. So I’m concerned that the measures being taken to counter projected dangers may actually be causing more damage now than those dangers. –Owen Paterson, The Times, 28 September 2014 Europe should only push ahead with its planned cuts to carbon emissions if the rest of the world agrees to a global climate change deal at a crunch summit in Paris next year, according to the EU’s energy chief. “If there is no binding commitment from countries as India, Russia, Brazil, the US, China, Japan and South Korea, whose governments are responsible for some 70% of global emissions, I think it is not really smart to have a -40% target,” the EU’s outgoing energy commissioner, Gunther Oettinger, told an oil and gas conference in Brussels. --Arthur Neslen, The Guardian, 25 September 2014

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In a blow to American hopes of reaching an international deal to fight global warming, India’s new environment minister said Wednesday that his country would not offer a plan to cut its greenhouse gas emissions ahead of a climate summit next year in Paris. The minister, Prakash Javadekar, said in an interview that his government’s first priority was to alleviate poverty and improve the nation’s economy, which he said would necessarily involve an increase in emissions through new coal-powered electricity and transportation. It would be at least 30 years, he said, before India would likely see a downturn in CO2 emissions. --Carol Davenport, The New York Times 24 September 2014 What cuts? That’s for more developed countries. The moral principle of historic responsibility cannot be washed away. India’s first task is eradication of poverty. Twenty percent of our population doesn’t have access to electricity, and that’s our top priority. We will grow faster, and our CO2 emissions will rise. --Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar, The New York Times 24 September 2014 Two Nasa astronauts, whose photographs of Earth from space helped to start the environmental movement, believe the images have been “exploited” by campaigners against global warming. Charlie Duke, a member of the Apollo 16 mission in 1972 who took one of the blue marble images, told last week’s Starmus science festival in Tenerife: “Climate science is bogus. The world has got no warmer for more than 15 years. It is a great irony that the images taken on the Apollo missions have been used in this way. We helped to start it [the environment movement] but I do not agree with it.” Walter Cunningham, who flew on Apollo 7, said: “Climate science is one of the greatest scientific fiascos of all time.” --Jonathan Leake, The Sunday Times, 27 September 2014 Germany’s energy revolution—its energiewende—was supposed to blaze a trail, and show off a new way countries could meet their energy needs without wrecking their environment or the climate. It was an audacious experiment, but it’s hard to read much success out of it these days. It’s hard to imagine a worse set of outcomes for Germany — higher electricity prices, a rising reliance on the dirtiest fossil fuel around (coal), an accelerated phase out of one of the only zero-carbon baseload power sources around (nuclear), and a less diverse, less secure energy mix that leaves Germany exposed to the machinations of exporters like Russia. --Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest, 27 September 2014


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