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| Hurray for Earth! |
The world forum also launched a "Green Climate Fund" to help channel up to $US100 billion a year in aid to poor, vulnerable countries by 2020, an initiative born under the 2009 Copenhagen Summit. Approval came after two-and-a-half days of round-the-clock wrangling among 194 nations.
Even by UNFCCC standards, the meeting broke the record for going into overtime.
The talks should have ended on Friday but wrapped up in the dawn light of Sunday amid scenes of exhaustion and shredded nerves.
And the often stormy exchanges reflected concerns among many countries over the cost of making energy efficiencies and switching to clean renewable sources at a time of belt-tightening. The UNFCCC's chief Christiana Figueres was exultant. Citing the words of Nelson Mandela, she said on Twitter: "In honour of Mandela: It always seems impossible until it is done. And it is done!" Chief US negotiator Todd Stern said he thought that in the end the conference ended up "quite well". "The first time you will see developing countries agreeing, essentially, to be bound by a legal agreement," Stern said." Read More....
Posted by Kathy Meeh
14 comments:
Mary D. Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, which arguably has done more to reduce carbon pollution in the United States than any other body, was in Durban as an observer. Ms. Nichols said that given the inability of the international bureaucracy or the United States Congress to move decisively on global warming, the job would increasingly fall to the states and local governments.
“Instead of waiting for them to negotiate some grand bargain, we have to keep working on the ground,” she said. “Progress is going to come from the bottom up, not the top down.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/science/earth/climate-change-expands-far-beyond-an-environmental-issue.html?_r=2
These conferences always end with the participants patting themselves on the back. Then they ignore the agreements.
Fix Pacifica is not about Pacifica anymore. It's about Kathy and her opinions.
RIP Fix Pacifica.
Initially I don't think there was much hope for a unified UN agreement. 14 days, 194 nations, 20 years. Notwithstanding, the level of DESERVED cynicism from Steve (1122) and Anon (832), the agreement is the potential "save the earth from climate disaster" UN step forward.
From the article link: "The package gave new life to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, whose carbon emissions targets expire next year and apply only to industrial countries. A separate document obliges major developing nations like China and India, excluded under Kyoto, to accept legally binding emissions targets in the future. Together, the two documents overhaul a system designed 20 years ago that divide the world into a handful of wealthy countries facing legal obligations to reduce emissions, and the rest of the world which could undertake voluntary efforts to control carbon."
However, "The EU, the primary bloc falling under the Kyoto Protocol's reduction commitments, said an extension of its targets was conditional on major developing countries also accepting limits with the same legal accountability."
Rich countries patting themselves on the back. All the bullshit coming out of these conferences has got to increase the greenhouse gases in direct proportion to how long the participants mouths are open.
oh, and
Wasn't it in the 70's that everyone was freaked about a new ice age!?
Wonder how much Gore made off that one?
The problem is Anonymous 5:15 PM, John Muir was a naturalist, he would have understood the climate warming and green house science issues, as has Al Gore.
Kathy, why don't you start a "People with no prayer of changing each other's minds arguing back and forth about politics" blog and let the rest of us talk about Pacifica here. It would improve the signal to noise ratio about 10000%.
Kathy, there are thousands and thousands of places for you to engage in partisan bickering, but this is the only place on the web to discuss Pacifica that is (mostly) uncensored. Please show some holiday spirit and spare everyone else your political garbage.
Anon 814), since you are attacking without defined specifics, I sense you may be having "holiday blues".
The Global Climate debate is officially over.
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/12/the-global-warming-debate-is-over-new-scientist-magazine-admits-modern-temperatures-are-not-unpreced.html
50 years of earth warming tracked by science, the debate is officially over, Anon (135). The article you posted makes reference to New Scientist, which you could have viewed directly yourself. From New Scientist, 12/14/11, "We can still avoid a 'lost decade' on climate change".
"By delaying the imposition of new emissions targets until 2020, the policy wonks in Durban all but condemned the world to decades of rapid warming. Over the next decade, global carbon dioxide emissions could rise by as much as 50 per cent. That will make it vastly more difficult and expensive to curb global warming: UNEP says it would almost double the pace of emissions decline required thereafter. Many believe that it will be almost impossible to stay within the 2 °C target."
Who cares about global warming? We'll all be dead anyway. Even the living system that is the earth will eventually die. I've got mine, you get yours. Party on, Garth.
Genetically modify all the cows in the world, termites too, not to fart. No farts, reduced methane, reduced global warming. Problem solved.
Fat Bastard, you're going to be on the cover of Time for that one. Nobel, MacArthur, there all yours. Party On.
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