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Delegates
depart Bali talks on a lot of hot air
Christopher Booker
As those 10,000 weary delegates were at
last able to jet off home from 10 days
on their holiday isle, perhaps the best
summing up of what they had achieved
came from Humberto Rosa, head of the
delegation representing the European
Union.
"It is exactly what we wanted," he said.
"We are very pleased. We will now have
two tremendously demanding years,
starting in January. Many meetings, many
discussions, many people passing many
hours doing things."
The basic purpose of Bali, as we were
tirelessly reminded by the BBC, Al Gore,
old Uncle Ban Ki-moon and pretty well
everyone else, was that this vast
assemblage of people should gather
together to vilify George Bush.
It was he alone who stood in the way of
saving the planet, by refusing even to
sign Kyoto into law, let alone
participate in the new historic
agreement which is to follow, and to
discuss which Bali was all about.
(It is conveniently forgotten that it
was the US Senate which unanimously
voted not to ratify Kyoto in 1998, when
the vice-president of the USA was Al
Gore).
In the end, as in all good comedies, the
"baddies" came round to the side of
light, the US representative made her "climbdown"
by saying that her country was now ready
to join the "consensus", and everyone
could go home happy.
The reality of Bali, however, was that
all this vilification of America as the
"world's worst polluter" was only
displacement activity - to disguise the
fact that, when it comes to the crunch,
no one is really prepared to step off
the bandwagon of economic growth, by
making the unthinkable sacrifices which
would be required if any of them
actually meant what they said.
They are all happy to work themselves
into an intense state of excitement by
chanting their quasi-religious mantra:
that there is now "absolute scientific
consensus" that Planet Earth is doomed
unless we cut our carbon emissions by 50
per cent by 2050.
But no one is prepared to take any
serious step towards that inconceivable
goal unless everyone else jumps too.
America refused to ratify Kyoto because
it didn't include the "developing
countries" such as China, still building
a new coal-fired power station every
four days and about to overtake the US
as the world's leading CO2 emitter.
China and India say they cannot be
expected to cut their emissions until
they have caught up economically with
the already industrialised nations which
caused all that rise in CO2 in the first
place.
The European Union likes to claim that
it is "leading the world on climate
change", while Germany builds 26 new
coal-fired power stations, Britain plans
to double its number of air passengers
and the EU's emissions continue to rise
(just when America's last year actually
fell).
Thus Bali ends in a wonderfully
meaningless compromise, whereby
everyone, including America, agrees that
they want their carbon-free
pie-in-the-sky, so long as they don't
yet have to sign up to actual figures
and mandatory targets.
The only people really rejoicing in Bali
were all those beady-eyed businessmen
who have sussed out that the "carbon
trading schemes" set up under Kyoto are
turning into the most colossal
commercial racket of our day.
As for the armadas of politicians and
officials, as the man from the EU said,
they can look forward to "many meetings,
many discussions, many people passing
many hours doing things", lasting from
here to the crack of doom (which
incidentally may never arrive, because,
though CO2 levels are still rising,
global temperatures are not - a fact
mentioned in Bali by precisely no one).
Originally published
in the Telegraph at
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=
YRRLN5S2D4H21QFIQMFSFFWAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/earth/2007/12/16/eaclimate316.xml
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