Durban: what the media are not telling youby Christopher, Viscount Monckton of Brenchley in Durban, South Africa
DURBAN, South Africa -- “No high hopes for Durban.” “Binding treaty unlikely.” “No deal this year.” Thus ran the
headlines. The profiteering UN bureaucrats here think otherwise. Their plans to establish a world government paid for by
the West on the pretext of dealing with the non-problem of “global warming” are now well in hand. As usual, the
mainstream media have simply not reported what is in the draft text which the 194 states parties to the UN framework
convention on climate change are being asked to approve.
Behind the scenes, throughout the year since Cancun, the now-permanent bureaucrats who have made highly-profitable
careers out of what they lovingly call “the process” have been beavering away at what is now a 138-page document. Its
catchy title is "Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action Under the Convention -- Update of the amalgamation
of draft texts in preparation of [one imagines they mean 'for'] a comprehensive and balanced outcome to be presented to
the Conference of the Parties for adoption at its seventeenth session: note by the Chair.” In plain English, these are
the conclusions the bureaucracy wants.
The contents of this document, turgidly drafted with all the UN's skill at what the former head of its documentation
center used to call “transparent impenetrability”, are not just off the wall – they are lunatic.
Main points:
Ø A new International Climate Court will have the power to compel Western nations to pay ever-larger sums to third-world
countries in the name of making reparation for supposed “climate debt”. The Court will have no power over third-world
countries. Here and throughout the draft, the West is the sole target. “The process” is now irredeemably anti-Western.
Ø “Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft, which seems to have been written by feeble-minded green activists and
environmental extremists, talks of “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to ensure harmony between
humanity and nature”. Also, “there will be no commodification [whatever that may be: it is not in the dictionary and
does not deserve to be] of the functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose”.
Ø “Right to survive”: The draft childishly asserts that “The rights of some Parties to survive are threatened by the
adverse impacts of climate change, including sea level rise.” At 2 inches per century, according to eight years' data
from the Envisat satellite? Oh, come off it! The Jason 2 satellite, the new kid on the block, shows that sea-level has
actually dropped over the past three years.
Ø War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease – just like that – because they contribute to
climate change. There are other reasons why war ought to cease, but the draft does not mention them.
Ø A new global temperature target will aim, Canute-like, to limit “global warming” to as little as 1 C° above
pre-industrial levels. Since temperature is already 3 C° above those levels, what is in effect being proposed is a 2 C°
cut in today's temperatures. This would take us halfway back towards the last Ice Age, and would kill hundreds of
millions. Colder is far more dangerous than warmer.
Ø The new CO2 emissions target, for Western countries only, will be a reduction of up to 50% in emissions over the next
eight years and of “more than 100%” [these words actually appear in the text] by 2050. So, no motor cars, no coal-fired
or gas-fired power stations, no aircraft, no trains. Back to the Stone Age, but without even the right to light a
carbon-emitting fire in your caves. Windmills, solar panels and other “renewables” are the only alternatives suggested
in the draft. There is no mention of the immediate and rapid expansion of nuclear power worldwide to prevent near-total
economic destruction.
Ø The new CO2 concentration target could be as low as 300 ppmv CO2 equivalent (i.e., including all other greenhouse
gases as well as CO2 itself). That is a cut of almost half compared with the 560 ppmv CO2 equivalent today. It implies
just 210 ppmv of CO2 itself, with 90 ppmv CO2 equivalent from other greenhouse gases. But at 210 ppmv, plants and trees
begin to die. CO2 is plant food. They need a lot more of it than 210 ppmv.
Ø The peak-greenhouse-gas target year – for the West only – will be this year. We will be obliged to cut our emissions
from now on, regardless of the effect on our economies (and the lack of effect on the climate).
Ø The West will pay for everything, because of its “historical responsibility” for causing “global warming”. Third-world
countries will not be obliged to pay anything. But it is the UN, not the third-world countries, that will get the money
from the West, taking nearly all of it for itself as usual. There is no provision anywhere in the draft for the UN to
publish accounts of how it has spent the $100 billion a year the draft demands that the West should stump up from now
on.
The real lunacy comes in the small print – all of it in 8-point type, near-illegibly printed on grubby, recycled paper.
Every fashionable leftist idiocy is catered for.
Talking of which, note in passing that Rajendra Pachauri, the railroad engineer who, in the topsy-turvy looking-glass
world of international climate insanity is the “science” chairman of the UN's climate panel, has admitted that no one
has been talking about climate science at the climate conference here in Durban. Not really surprising, given no real
warming for getting on for two decades, no recent sea-level rise, no new record Arctic ice-melt, fewer hurricanes than
at almost any time in 30 years, no Pacific atolls disappearing beneath the waves.
Here – and, as always, you heard it here first, for the mainstream media have conspired to keep secret the Madness of
King Rajendra and his entire coterie of governmental and bureaucratic lunatics worldwide – is what the dribbling,
twitching thrones and dominions, principalities and powers of the world will be asked to agree to.
“International Climate Court of Justice”: This kangaroo court is to be established by next year “to guarantee the
compliance of Annex I Parties with all the provisions of this decision, which are essential elements in the obtaining of
the global goal”. Note that, here as elsewhere, the bias is only against the nations of the West. However badly the
third-world countries behave, they cannot be brought before the new court. Though none of what the draft calls the
“modalities” of the proposed marsupial dicastery are set out in detail, one can imagine that the intention is to oblige
Western nations to pay up however much the world government run by the Convention secretariat feels like demanding, just
as the unelected tyrants of the EU demand – and get – ever-larger cash payments from the ever-shrinking economies and
ever-poorer tribute-payers of their dismal empire.
The temperature target: At Copenhagen and Cancun, the states parties to the Convention arrogated to themselves the power
– previously safe in the hands of Divine Providence – to alter the weather in such a way as to prevent global mean
surface temperature from rising by more than 2 C° above the “pre-industrial” level. They did not even say what they
meant by “pre-industrial”. From 1695-1745 temperatures in central England, quite a good proxy for global temperatures,
rose by 2.2 C°, with about another 0.8 C° since then, making 3 C° in all. The previous temperature target, therefore,
was already absurd. Yet the new, improved, madder target is to keep global temperatures either “1 C°” or “well below 1.5
C°” above “pre-industrial levels” – i.e., well below half of the temperature increase that has already occurred since
the pre-industrial era. The twittering states parties are committing themselves, in effect, to reducing today's global
temperatures by getting on for 2 C°. This is madness. Throughout pre-history, the governing class – Druids or Pharaohs
or Mayans or Incas – thought they could replace their Creator and command the weather. They couldn't. No more can we.
But try telling that to the strait-jacketed ninnies of today's governing “elite”. Speech after speech at the plenary
sessions of the Durban conference has drivelled on about how We Are The People Who At This Historic Juncture Are Willing
And Able To Undertake The Noble Purpose Of Saving The Planet From Thermageddon and Saving You From Yourselves [entirely
at your prodigious expense, natch].
The emissions-reduction targets: The new target proposed by the staring-eyed global-village idiots will be a reduction
of 50-85% of global greenhouse-gas emissions from 1990 levels (i.e. by 65-100% of today's levels) by 2050, with
emissions falling still further thereafter. The West should cut its emissions by 30-50% from 1990 levels (i.e. by 40-65%
of today's levels) in just eight years, and by more than 95% (i.e. more than 100%) by 2050. Alternatively (for there are
many alternatives in the text, indicating that agreement among the inmates in the Durban asylum is a long way off), the
West must cut its emissions “more than 50%” in just five years, and “more than 100%” by 2050. The words “more than 100%”
actually appear in the draft. The Third World, however, need cut its emissions only by 15-30% over the next eight years,
provided – of course – that the West fully reimburses it for the cost.
The greenhouse-gas reduction target: Greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere “should stabilize well below
300-450 ppm CO2 equivalent”. This target, like the temperature target, is plain daft. CO2 concentration is currently at
392 ppmv, and the IPCC increases this by 43% to allow for other greenhouse gases. Accordingly, today's CO2-equivalent
concentration of greenhouse gases is 560 ppmv, and the current lunacy is to cut this perhaps by very nearly half,
reducing the CO2 component to just 210 ppmv, at which point trees and plants become starved of CO2, which is their food,
and start to die.
The greenhouse-gas peak targets: Global greenhouse gas emissions, say the mentally-challenged Durban droolers, should
peak in not more than eight years' time, and perhaps as soon as two years' time. Western greenhouse-gas emissions should
peak immediately (or perhaps by next year, or maybe the year after that) and must decline thereafter. The greenhouse-gas
emissions peak in third-world countries will be later than that of the West, and – no surprises here – will depend on
the West to pay the cost of it.
“Historical responsibility”: The nations of the West (for which the UN's code is “Annex I parties”) are from now on
required to beat their breasts (or at least their strait-jackets) and acknowledge their “historical responsibility” for
increasing CO2 emissions and giving us warmer weather. The draft says: “Acknowledging that the largest share of the
historical global emissions of greenhouse gases originated in Annex I Parties and that, owing to this historical
responsibility in terms of their contribution to the average global temperature increase, Annex I Parties must take the
lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof.” This new concept of “historical responsibility” –
suspiciously akin to the “war-guilt” of post-1918 Germany, declared by the imprudent governments of the world at the
Versailles conference, which was no small cause of World War II – further underscores the rapidly-growing anti-Western
bias in the UN and in the Convention's secretariat.
Who pays? Oh, you guessed it before I told you. The West pays. The third world (UN code: “non-Annex-I parties”) thinks
it will collect, so it will always vote for the UN's insane proposals. But the UN's bureaucrats will actually get all or
nearly all the money, and will decide how to allocate what minuscule fraction they have not already spent on themselves.
As a senior UN diplomat told me last year, “The UN exists for only one purpose: to get more money. That, and that alone,
is the reason why it takes such an interest in climate change.” The draft says: “Developed-country Parties shall provide
developing-country Parties with new and additional finance, inter alia through a percentage of the gross domestic
product of developed-country Parties.” And, of course, “The extent of participation by non-Annex-I parties in the global
effort to deal with climate change is directly dependent on the level of support provided by developed-country Parties.”
The get-out clause: One or two Western countries – Canada and Japan, for instance – have begun to come off the Kool-Aid.
They have worked out what scientifically-baseless nonsense the climate scam is and have said they are not really playing
any more. To try to keep these and the growing number of nations who want out of “the process” bankrolling the
ever-more-lavish UN, an ingenious escape clause has been crafted: “The scale of financial flows to non-Annex-I parties
shall be based on the assessments of their needs to deal with climate change.” Since climate is not going to change
measurably as a result of Man's emissions, any honest assessment of the needs of third-world countries “to deal with
climate change” is that they don't need any money at all for this purpose and shouldn't get a single red cent. The UN is
now the biggest obstacle to the eradication of poverty worldwide, because its pampered functionaries divert so much cash
to themselves, to an ever-expanding alphabet-soup of bureaucracies, and then to heroically lunatic projects like “global
warming” control. Time to abolish it.
World government: The Copenhagen Treaty draft establishing a world “government” with unlimited powers of taxation and
intervention in the affairs of states parties to the UN Framework Convention fortunately failed. Yet at the Cancun
climate conference the following year 1000 new bureaucracies were established to form the nucleus of a world government,
with central control in the hands of the Convention's secretariat and tentacles in every region and nation. The draft
“agrees that common principles, modalities and procedures as well as the coordinating and oversight functions of the
UNFCCC are needed” – in short, global centralization of political, economic and environmental power in the manicured
hands of the Convention's near-invisible but all-powerful secretariat. No provision is made for the democratic election
of key members of the all-powerful secretariat – in effect, a world government – by the peoples of our planet.
Reporting to the world government: From 2013/14, the world government will oblige Western nations to prepare reports and
submit them to it every two years. The format of these reports is specified in obsessive detail over several pages of
the draft. The reports will describe the extent of their compliance with the mitigation targets imposed by the various
treaties and agreements. The West will be obliged to to continue reporting “greenhouse-gas emission inventories”, for
which “common reporting formats and methodologies for the calculation of emission, established at the international
level, are essential”. Separately, Western nations will now be required to provide information on the financial support
they have pledged to assist third-world countries in mitigating greenhouse-gas emissions and adapting to “the adverse
effects of climate change”. The world government also expects to receive reports from Western nations on their financial
contributions to the Global Environment Facility, the Least Developed Countries' Trust Fund, the Special Climate Change
Fund, the Adaptation Fund, the Green Climate Fund and the Trust Fund for Supplementary Activities”. Western nations must
also provide information on the steps taken to promote technology development and transfer to third-world countries, and
on how they have provided “capacity-building support” to third-world countries, and on numerous other matters. The
inexorable increase in compulsory reporting was one of the mechanisms by which the unelected Kommissars of the
anti-democratic European Union acquired absolute power over the member states. EU advisors have been helping the UN to
learn how to use similar techniques to centralize global power just as anti-democratically in its own hands.
Review of Western nations' conduct: Once the multitude of mechanisms for Western nations' compulsory reporting to the
world government are in place, the information gathered by it will be used as the basis of a continuous review of every
aspect of their compliance with the various agreements and concords, whether legally-binding or not. Teams of five to
eight members of the Convention's secretariat will scrutinize each Western nation's conduct, and will have the power to
ask questions and to require additional information, as well as to make recommendations that will gradually become
binding. The world government will then prepare a record of the review for each Western nation, including reports of
various aspects of the review, an assessment of that nation's compliance, questions and answers, conclusions and
recommendations (eventually instructions) to that nation, and a “facilitative process” (UN code for a mechanism to
compel the nation to do as it is told by people whom no one has elected).
Finance: One of the 1000 bureaucracies established at Cancun is the Standing Committee on Finance, which the draft says
will have the power of “mobilizing financial resources” through flows of public and private finance, “mobilizing
additional funding”, and requiring and verifying the reporting of finance provided to third-world Parties by the Western
nations through a new Financial Support Registry. Finance for third-world countries is to be scaled up “significantly”,
and Western countries will be obliged to provide “a clear work-plan on their pledged assessed contributions” from
2012-2020 “for approval by the Conference of the Parties”. Taxpayers will be compelled to provide the major source of
funding through public expenditure.
Green Climate Fund: Western nations are urged to “commit to the initial capitalization of the Green Climate Fund without
delay”, to include “the full running costs” and “the funding required for the formation and operating costs of the board
and secretariat of the Green Climate Fund”. Here, as always, the UN bureaucrats want their own pay, perks, pensions and
organizational structure guaranteed before any money goes to third-world countries.
Worldwide cap-and-trade: The draft establishes a “new market-based approach/mechanism ... to promote the reduction or
avoidance of greenhouse-gas emissions” – once again for Western countries only. Also, “Ambitious, legally-binding
emission reduction targets for developed-country Parties ... are essential to drive a global carbon market”. What this
means, in the plain English that is almost entirely absent from the 138-page draft, is worldwide compulsory
cap-and-trade, centrally imposed and regulated, imposed on Western countries only.
Patent rights: Under the guise of action to prevent “global warming” that is not happening at anything like the
predicted rate, coded references to the extinction of patent rights in third-world countries are creeping into the text.
For instance, “identification and removal of all barriers that prevent effective technology development and transfer to
developing-country Parties”; and “the removal of all obstacles, including intellectual property rights and patents on
climate-related technologies to ensure the transfer of technology to developing countries”. As an inventor with patents
to my name, I can predict what effect any such provision will have. It will prevent the establishment and development of
patent offices in continents such as Africa, which – thus far – has contributed remarkably little to the world's
inventions, not least because the structure for protecting and encouraging inventors is rickety or non-existent.
Shipping and aviation fuels were previously excluded from the scope of the Convention and are now to be included.
International shipping and aviation are described as “a source of financial resources for climate change actions”. More
money for UN bureaucrats.
The new bureaucracies: As though the 1000 bureaucracies created at Cancun were not enough, another bureaucracy is to be
created “to oversee, monitor and ensure overall implementation of capacity-building activities consistent with the
provisions of the Convention”. There will also be a new “International Climate Court of Justice” (see above). A
“Financial Support Registry” is also to be set up.
The new special-interest group: Meet the “Parties that are alternative-energy-disadvantaged”. No wind, no sun, no
renewables – so, handouts from the West, please.
The new buzzwords: Welcome to the notion of “equitable access to global atmospheric space”; “Mother Earth” [I kid you
not: it's in the draft]; “climate-resilient infrastructure” and “paradigm shift towards building a low-carbon society”.
These buzzwords are in addition to pre-existing buzzwords such as “climate justice” and “climate debt” – the latter
being the notion that because the West has emitted more carbon dioxide than the rest it owes the Third World lots of
money.
“Rights of Mother Earth”: The draft burbles insanely about “The recognition and defence of the rights of Mother Earth to
ensure harmony between humanity and nature, and that there will be no commodification [whatever that may be] of the
functions of nature, therefore no carbon market will be developed with that purpose”.
“Right to survive”: “The rights of some Parties to survive are threatened by the adverse impacts of climate change,
including sea level rise.” At 2 inches per century? Oh, come off it! The Jason 2 satellite shows that sea-level has
dropped over the past three years.
The science is at last to be reviewed in a manner that appears independent of the discredited IPCC. However, no details
of the method of review are provided, and other parts of the schizophrenic draft say we must defer to the science put
forward not by the peer-reviewed learned journals but by a political body whose reports are not peer-reviewed in the
usual sense.
Legally-binding treaty: According to the draft, the aim is to create a “legally-binding instrument/outcome”. This is UN
code for an international Treaty. The US will sign no such treaty. Nor will Canada, Japan, France, India and many other
countries. On the basis of drafts as in-your-face idiotic as this, no legally-binding climate treaty will ever be
signed: which is just as well, because no such treaty is necessary.
War and the maintenance of defence forces and equipment are to cease because they contribute to climate change. Just
like that. The UN draft text asserts: "Stopping wars, defending lives and ceasing destructive activities will protect
the climate system; conflict-related activities emit significant greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere." A wave of
the UN's magic wand and peace will reign throughout the Earth, the sun will shine (but not too much) the rain will fall
(just where and when needed), and non-gender-specific motherhood and non-commodificated apple pie will be available to
all. Ouroborindra, ba-ba hee! It does not seem to have occurred to the Druids of the UN that they have near-totally
failed to prevent wars on Earth – the original purpose for which it was founded. Yet now, in their gibbering, spastic
arrogance, they think to command the weather. Canute, thou shouldst be living at this hour!
ENDS