APEC has no effect on Climate Change

On Sept 7-10th 2007, leaders of 21 nations, including the USA, China, Japan and Canada met at the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit in Sydney, Australia. This gathering could have helped environmentalists set binding global targets to avert catastrophic climate change… but it didn’t. The Americans and coal rich Australia instead pushed voluntary "aspirational goals" which you and I both know will amount to nothing more than CO2 rich hot air.

Fuel Ghoul has received a number of email messages asking for more details about Bush's climate plan, the one he is rallying polluters around the world to support. The core of the issue is that George Bush opposes the most critical and effective element of a global treaty: emissions targets that actually count.

 
Perhaps that's why US president George Bush has mounted a push for a process outside of the UN negotiations. In fact, he has just recently invited the world's biggest polluting nations to a summit this September to discuss his toothless approach to climate change.

 Are US politicians now thinking outside the box?

 
George Bush acknowledged the fears of some policy makers that the United States is trying to construct a successor to the Kyoto Protocol outside of international efforts already under way. The Bush administration does not support any agreement that does not included developing nations, like China and India, which are the world’s fastest growing energy consumers.

 "We agree these issues must be addressed in an integrated way," he said. "We take climate change seriously in America." But America is all talk and no action. The United States never ratified Kyoto, which requires 35 nations to cut emissions 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. And some press reports have indicated that the American delegation has no less than twelve SUVs (and those are just the ones on camera) while other visiting nations are content to bring two or three vehicles to the conferences.

 
Now the Bush administration has unveiled plans for global warming talks later this month that will bring together the world's biggest polluters to seek agreement on reducing greenhouse gases. The United States, one of the world's biggest emitters of greenhouse gases (if not the largest), made no statement at Tuesday's sessions, and has repeatedly rejected firm targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, maintaining this would hurt the US economy. A senior U.S. official has said that the current administration stood by its opposition to mandatory economy-wide caps. Many climate experts say that without binding U.S. emissions targets, the chance for significant progress is limited.  

Washington calls for voluntary rather than mandatory emissions cuts.

As mentioned earlier, both the USA and Australia hope the next climate change treaty will address the growing energy consumption, and resultant pollution of China and India.

China's President Hu Jintao gave only qualified support to Australia's initiative on climate change, while some developing nations criticized Australian and US moves to put their vision of climate change at the top of the agenda at the gathering in Sydney.

 
After meeting Australian Prime Minister John Howard, Mr Jintao said he preferred the UN framework for handling climate change proposals compared with the Sydney Declaration.

He added: "We very much hope that this Sydney Declaration will give full expression to the position that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change would remain the main channel for international efforts to tackle climate change."

 
The declaration should also reflect UN principles of "common but differentiated responsibilities" towards lowering harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

 
Malaysia Trade Minister Rafidah Aziz said the leaders at the APEC should not be dealing with emission targets at all, while ministers from the Philippines and Indonesia also questioned the approach.

 
Climate control was supposed to top the agenda at APEC.

High-level discussions at APEC could have shaped new talks at a U.N. conference in December in Bali, Indonesia. Many pray that future conference will chart a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The U.S has called for a Sept. 27-28 conference in Washington of the 15 biggest polluters.

 
Stephen Harper hopes we'll all forget his dismal record.

While on the subject of aspiration goals and hot air, Prime Minister Stephen Harper went on record to say that simply getting the world's biggest emitters to start talking about a post-Kyoto climate change plan is a big step forward.  And that's  it.

 
Harper says nations representing two thirds of global emissions essentially "opted out" of the Kyoto protocol. "So we have to do a better job next time," says Harper. But what does that mean?  Fuel Ghoul hopes that Stephen Harper is not involved in the process. Its a well known fact that Canada also opted out of Kyoto’s emission targets when Stephen Harper’s Progressive Conservatives, bent by the resolve of some powerful Canadian corporations, released a Clean Air Act that will actually allow Canada's biggest polluters to increase their emissions !!!

 
Scientists agree, now is humanity's window of opportunity to stop a climate catastrophe.

Over 400,000 people signed Avaaz.org’s APEC petition.   On Saturday, these environmentalists are going to launch a massive 144-square meter floating canvas "target" at Sydney's iconic Bondi Beach where it will be taken out to sea by surfers and then eventually floated over the Great Barrier Reef which many experts believe will be completely destroyed by climate change by the year 2030.

Comments

[Simmons]

I'd have to say the best thing about a climate change agreement based on a plan set out at APEc would be that it would involve developing nations (as you mentioned). Great analysis though.

I've linked to you.

Simmons.

[Simmons]

Sorry about that:

Developing nations as in India and China, who are in the area.

[Nick]

That just isnt right!