UN’s Doha Climate Meeting Disappoints Environmentalists – OpEd
By Jim Kouri
An attempt by some of the world’s leading leftists to enhance their international environmental agenda met with disappointing results even after attempting to emulate President Barack Obama’s successful class-warfare political model, according to a GOP political consultant who attended the meeting.
The world’s news media reported that the United Nations climate talks in Doha, the capital city of Qatar, entered its final meeting on Saturday with a weak pledge of funds in spite of the differences between developed and developing countries.
The closing of the two-week meeting was delayed for almost a whole day as diplomats from more than 190 countries were pressing for any small progress after the final draft was not presented until Saturday morning.
UN delegates in Qatar agreed that rich countries should compensate poor nations for climate damage, and extend the Kyoto Protocol until 2020.
“This whole United Nations environmental agenda is geared towards wealth redistribution on a global scale. Taking money from working people in rich countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries is basically what’s at stake and the American people need to be told the truth,” said political strategist Michael Baker.
“Of course UN delegates agreed rich countries should pay more. The majority of UN delegates come from poor nations who’ve been developing for decades without success. This is soaking the rich politics on a grand scale,” Baker said.
The Doha treaty, the only UN plan that obliges developed nations to cut carbon emissions, is a vital step towards a new global UN deal to be agreed in 2015 and to enter into force in 2020.
The European Union-led group including Australia have pledged to join the second period of the Kyoto Protocol, while the United States, Japan, Canada and Russia, among others, insist on keeping away from the treaty despite international criticism.
However, no tougher emission reduction goals were announced by the developed countries in Doha, although they are urged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 by 2020.
On the issue of how the developed world will help poor nations respond to climate change, European countries including Britain, Germany, France, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark have announced their commitment to provide financial assistance worth several billion euros, although the amount is far from enough, claim the far-left environmentalists.
The developing nations complain that the large amounts of money promised by rich donors haven’t materialized. Developed countries had pledged a total of $30 billion in funds from 2010 to 2012, and a scale-up of the aid to $100 billion per year by 2020.
The United States, Europe and other so-called rich nations cited a drastic economic slowdown as the excuse for refusal to provide more.
