[ExI] time to devour the dog

[Max More]

>Speaking of this culture, I was up to my 
>eyeballs in a family situation last week, still 
>actually, but as I recall there was supposed to 
>be a big climate hootnanny in Copenhagen, didn't 
>follow it.  Is that over now?  I don't really 
>want to read a bunch of long-winded URLs about 
>it, but would far prefer anyone here offering a 
>very few word summary, perhaps a single 
>sentence, that will tell me all I really need to 
>know about how that went or what happened.


spike: Here's a summary from the stimulating and 
often incisive yet rather rabid Viscount Monckton:

http://sppiblog.org/news/parturient-montes-nascetur-ridiculus-mus#more-314

The mountains shall labor, and what will be born? 
A stupid little mouse. Thanks to hundreds of 
thousands of US citizens who contacted their 
elected representatives to protest about the 
unelected, communistic world government with 
near-infinite powers of taxation, regulation and 
intervention that was proposed in early drafts of 
the Copenhagen Treaty, there is no Copenhagen 
Treaty. There is not even a Copenhagen Agreement. 
There is a “Copenhagen Accord”.

The White House spinmeisters spun, and their 
official press release proclaimed, with more than 
usual fatuity, that President Obama had 
“salvaged” a deal at Copenhagen in bilateral 
talks with China, India, Brazil, and South 
Africa, which had established a negotiating bloc.

The plainly-declared common position of these 
four developing nations had been the one beacon 
of clarity and common sense at the foggy 
fortnight of posturing and gibbering in the 
ghastly Copenhagen conference center.

This is what the Forthright Four asked for:

Point 1. No compulsory limits on carbon emissions.

Point 2. No emissions reductions at all unless the West paid for them.

Point 3. No international monitoring of any 
emissions reductions not paid for by the West.

Point 4. No use of “global warming” as an excuse 
to impose protectionist trade restrictions on 
countries that did not cut their carbon emissions.

After President Obama’s dramatic intervention to 
save the deal, this is what the Forthright Four got:

Point 1. No compulsory limits on carbon emissions.

Point 2. No emissions reductions at all unless the West paid for them.

Point 3. No international monitoring of any 
emissions reductions not paid for by the West.

Point 4. No use of “global warming” as an excuse 
to impose protectionist trade restrictions on 
countries that did not cut their carbon emissions.

Here, in a nutshell – for fortunately nothing 
larger is needed – are the main points of the ”Copenhagen Accord”:

Main points: In the Copenhagen Accord, which is 
operational immediately, the parties“underline 
that climate change is one of the greatest 
challenges of our time”; emphasize their “strong 
political will to urgently combat climate 
change”; recognize “the scientific view that the 
increase in global temperature should be below 2 
C°” and perhaps below 1.5 C°; aspire to 
“cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and 
national emissions as soon as possible”; 
acknowledge that eradicating poverty is the 
“overriding priority of developing countries”; 
and accept the need to help vulnerable countries 
– especially the least developed nations, 
small-island states, and Africa – to adapt to climate change.

Self-imposed emissions targets: All parties will 
set for themselves, and comply with, emissions 
targets for 2020, to be submitted to the 
secretariat by 31 January 2010. Where developing 
countries are paid to cut their emissions, their 
compliance will be monitored. Developed countries 
will financially support less-developed countries 
to prevent deforestation. Carbon trading may be used.

New bureaucracies and funding: Under the 
supervision of a “High-Level Panel”, developed 
countries will give up to $30 billion for 
2010-12, aiming for $100 billion by 2020, in 
“scaled up, new and additional, predictable and 
adequate funding” to developing countries via a 
“Copenhagen Green Fund”. A “Technology Mechanism” 
will “accelerate technology development and transfer” to developing countries.