The Global Warming Movement Has Run Out of Gas
The Secretary-General of the United Nations -- do you know his name? -- gave a speech over the weekend. He announced the following.
Climate change is the defining issue of our time. If we do not take urgent action, all our plans for increased global prosperity and security will be undone."
This speech indicates that the climate change movement is now a politically lost cause. The classic statement of a politically lost cause is this declaration: "If nothing is done immediately, it will soon be too late. But there is time to save ourselves if we act now."
Why is this evidence of a lost cause? Because nothing is ever done politically to solve major long-term problems. Politicians take action only when the public demands it, and therefore their re-election is at risk. By the time the public is unified enough to demand action, the voters are already feeling the pain. By the time they feel the pain, the crisis is upon them. It is no longer a long-term problem. It is a short-term problem.
At this point, Congress will take a major action, which costs a lot of money, centralizes more power, transfers more sovereignty to the national government's various bureaucracies, and then is forgotten. The problem then goes out of the public's perception, and the bureaucrats take over. They do little to solve the problem, but they establish the rules for dealing with it on a permanent basis. If it is solved, they are out of jobs. So, it is never officially solved. Nothing remains except the turf wars of the various bureaucracies.
There is a name for this process: "Kick the can."
A few true believing politicians continue to warn us that if something is not done, the problem will be unsolvable.
Nothing is ever done, but the speeches never change. Nothing was done two decades ago, but the politicians still assure us that "it is not too late if we act now." But that was what they said two decades ago. Nothing was done then, but somehow there is still time, "if we act now."
The classic example of this is the unfunded liability of Social Security and Medicare. We are told that if nothing is done, the programs cannot be sustained. Nothing is ever done. The politicians continue to sound the warning. There is always time left . . . if we act now. But "we" do not act now. The politicians keep giving the same warnings. A decade later, two decades later, three decades later. The warning never changes. The unfunded liabilities continue to build up.
Climate change has now entered the status of a politically lost cause.
THE KEY YEAR: 1992
The high point for global warming was in 1992. Wikipedia describes this.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international environmental treaty negotiated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. The objective of the treaty is to "stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".The treaty itself set no binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms. In that sense, the treaty is considered legally non-binding. Instead, the treaty provides a framework for negotiating specific international treaties (called "protocols") that may set binding limits on greenhouse gases.
The UNFCCC was opened for signature on 9 May 1992, after an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee produced the text of the Framework Convention as a report following its meeting in New York from 30 April to 9 May 1992. It entered into force on 21 March 1994. As of March 2014, UNFCCC has 196 parties.
This was a toothless exercise in high-salary bureaucracy. "The treaty itself set no binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms. In that sense, the treaty is considered legally non-binding."
A follow-up treaty was signed in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. Another Wikipedia article explains.
The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international treaty that sets binding obligations on industrialized countries to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. The UNFCCC is an environmental treaty with the goal of preventing dangerous anthropogenic (i.e., human-induced) interference of the climate system. According to the UNFCC website, the Protocol "recognises that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity, and places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of 'common but differentiated responsibilities'." There are 192 parties to the convention: 191 states (including all the UN members except Andorra, Canada, South Sudan and the United States) and the European Union. The United States signed but did not ratify the Protocol and Canada withdrew from it in 2011. The Protocol was adopted by Parties to the UNFCCC in 1997, and entered into force in 2005.As part of the Kyoto Protocol, many developed countries have agreed to legally binding limitations/reductions in their emissions of greenhouse gases in two commitments periods. The first commitment period applies to emissions between 2008-2012, and the second commitment period applies to emissions between 2013-2020. The protocol was amended in 2012 to accommodate the second commitment period, but this amendment has (as of January 2013) not entered into legal force.
In short, it is a dead letter legally. The USA dropped out in 2011. Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama never submitted it to the Senate for ratification. There was no enforcement, anyway.
Of course, it is alive and well bureaucratically. Bureaucracies do not voluntarily shut down.
ABU DHABI MEETING
Over the weekend, a thousand well-paid officials met in Abu Dhabi to listen to a speech by the Secretary General of the U.N. His speech was a series of one-sentence slogans. It could have been delivered in 1992. It could be delivered -- and perhaps will be -- in 2032.
He began with what looks like an attempt at irony: "I thank the United Arab Emirates for hosting this important meeting and for being pioneers on the journey to a low-carbon future." They held the conference in an oil exporting "nation" whose very existence depends on carbon emissions.
Then came the slogans.
It is the future we need and we have to lay the foundations by today.We have little time to lose.
Climate change is the defining issue of our time.
The effects are already widespread, costly and consequential -- from the tropics to the poles, from small islands to large continents, and from the poorest countries to the wealthiest.
If we do not take urgent action, all our plans for increased global prosperity and security will be undone.
That is why it is important that governments complete a meaningful new climate agreement by 2015 that will rapidly reduce emissions and support resilience.
The Climate Summit I will convene in New York on 23 September is designed to shape a collective ambitious vision anchored in concrete action.
He called on unnamed politicians to take decisive action.
I am inviting Heads of State and Government, along with mayors and senior representatives from business, finance and civil society, to join a "race to the top."I am asking them to announce bold commitments and actions that will catalyze the transformative change we need.
As we Americans say, "Don't hold your breath."
Many of the solutions we need already exist.Many others are being rapidly developed.
But we need to deploy them at a scale that matches the challenge.
And we need to do it now, because we may not get a second chance.
Ladies and gentlemen,
We are rapidly approaching dangerous thresholds.
Then, in words inspired by Jesse Jackson and the late Johnny Cochran, he announced this: "The longer we delay, the more we will pay."
He ended with this:
That message is clear and simple -- climate action is feasible, affordable and beneficial.Change is in the air.
Solutions exist. The race is on. It's time to lead.
Thank you.
This is 22 years after the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and 17 years after the Kyoto Protocol. Nothing has been done. Of course nothing was done. The treaty had no sanctions to apply if nothing was done.
Meanwhile, global surface temperatures have not risen since 1998, the year after the Kyoto Protocol.
Then came the November 2009 hacking and release of the emails of the Climate Research Unit in Great Britain. It was immediately dubbed Climategate. This was done three weeks before the United Nations Organization's Copenhagen meeting, which was to be the culmination of a decade of U.N. orchestration. That killed the meeting. The steam began to go out of the global warming movement. But there had never been much steam in it, politically speaking.
Bureaucratically, the movement is real. National and international bureaucracies do continue to seek to implement bits and pieces of the agenda. But there is no effective support for it in China, which is the world's greatest supplier of carbon emissions. The United States never ratified the treaty, and officially pulled out in 2011. In any case, a treaty without an enforcement procedure is nothing more than a public relations statement.
CONCLUSION
Three words describe the politicians' response to the climate change movement: "Kick the can."
The defenders are now in the futile stage of "Five Minutes to Midnight."
Never fear. There is still time if we act now.