Have you noticed how quite this COP21 summit has been for the past week? Yeah, sure, the recent spate of ISIS-directed and/or -inspired jihadist attacks have grabbed most of the headlines, but I haven't seen or heard anything coming out of Paris since last weekend when they only thing the participants could agree on was that they all wanted to agree but quite clearly had not.
Judging by this amorphously ambiguous "official" statement, it doesn't look like any of that has changed one jot or tittle:
“Obviously, nobody will get 100% of what they want,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said Friday as he discussed the “balanced and as ambitious as possible” working document that will be voted on. “What I hope is that everyone remembers the message of the first day, when 150 heads of state and government came from all around the world to say, ‘The world needs a success.’ ”
Um, what? That's rhetorical five-knuckle-shuffling if I've ever heard it. Clearly there is no agreement on anything and Fabius is trying to salvage some sort of face-saving consolation prize from what is shaping up to be the biggest such debacle yet. I mean, really, he's practically on his knees, begging at this point. To call it undignified doesn't begin to describe it.
Countries must agree by consensus.
And they are not.
Organizers hope countries will adopt the proposal but there could be some nations that don’t go along.
Hope? Yep, this is a failure.
It will be up to the COP21 president to decide whether there’s an agreement.
Get ready for some hardcore bullshitting.
After the vote in Paris, the countries that adopt the agreement will later have to ratify it nationally.
And none will, because no country is going to commit economic suicide and forcibly herd their citizens into caves for what is an abstraction at best, and a rank fraud at worst, just as they have not done so up to now.
The exception is the United States, whose Congress will never get the chance to ratify or not ratify this "deal" because Barack Obama will never call it a "treaty" and will simply impose it via Executive Order, just like he did cap & trade. Which is why this "Will there be an agreement?" faux drama is an amusing distraction from what is the real threat from Greenapalooza.
Oh, they'll roll out something to great fanfare, but it'll just be "goals" and "objectives" to which everybody but The One will pay polite lip service and then completely ignore, while he will put it fully into practice, gutting the oil and gas industry with no practical replacement for the energy on the horizon. We will freeze to death in the coming mini-ice age while he continues to extol the phantom virtues of sunbeams we cannot collect and windmills that just create chilling breezes.
At least the sun will be taking care of that two degree increase "problem," though. And then some.
UPDATE: Told you so:
Barack Obama on Saturday hailed the landmark climate accord reached in Paris as strong and historic, calling it the best chance to save the planet from the effects of global climate change.
"Today the American people can be proud because this historic agreement is a tribute to American leadership. Over the past seven years, we've transformed the United States into the global leader in fighting climate change," Obama said.
He said the accord shows what is possible when the world stands as one, adding: "This agreement represents the best chance we have to save the one planet that we've got."
Does anybody still believe he'll submit this to the Senate as a treaty and be given "no" for an answer?
UPDATE II: Nope - although I have no idea why from the particular single word change:
A last-minute change in one word in the Paris climate agreement kept the deal from being sent to the Senate, where it would have met certain death by long skeptical Republicans. The issue emanated from a single sentence in Article Four of the accord, Politico reports.
It declared that wealthier countries "shall" set economy-wide targets for cutting their greenhouse gas "pollution". In earlier drafts of the agreement that was eventually approved Saturday, the word "shall" had been "should," according to Politico.
And, in the climate accords of the United Nations, "shall" implies legal obligation, while "should" does not. Without the change, the Obama administration would have had to submit the final agreement for Senate approval, Politico reports.
Isn't this the precise opposite of their designation of the Iran nuclear sellout as a "deal" or "agreement" instead of a "treaty"? In that case, it was word-parsing to try and get around having to submit it to the Senate for Article II, Section 2 ratification. And even then they needed a preemptive Senate forfeiture of that power. Here, unless I'm misunderstanding this language manipulation, they've turned a "deal" that was advisory into one that seeks to be legally binding. So how does that not make this a treaty, obligating Red Barry to submit it for Senate review?
Is the proverbial bleep not hitting the fan? I don't get it.
No comments:
Post a Comment