US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has flown into Denmark – presumably on her Nimbus 2000 and told the delegates at the Copenhagen climate change/cash for the G77 meeting, that her country was prepared to “work towards mobilising $100 billion a year” for developing countries.
The wording of that statement is very clever. It does not say that the USA will contribute $100 billion per year. Neither does it suggest that the Americans will be contributing anything . They will work towards mobilising. That’s good! That’s very good.
Here is the full quote: “In the context of a strong accord in which all major economies pledge meaningful mitigation actions and provide full transparency as to those actions, the US is prepared to work with other countries towards a goal of mobilising $100 billion a year to address the needs of developing countries.”
Genius! The African states are thinking that they’ve scored a decent amount of “wedge” and the Americans know that the New Faith of Global Warming only has limited “legs”. The most important thing is that President Obama will be able to fly in like a latter-day Saviour and appear to have engineered a famous victory.
We have to bear in mind that all these Copenhagen agreements, “strategies” and handouts designed to deal with climate change will not be in place until after 2012, which is when the obligations of the Kyoto Protocol expire.
Today’s state of play in Copenhagen is confused because the developed and developing nations remain at odds over who should cut emissions, how deep the cuts should be, and how much cash should be handed to the poorest nations.
Gordon Brown has arrived early so as not to be overshadowed by the American Presidential machine when it hits town. Gordon Brown is the political equivalent of “dad-dancing”. It’s embarrassing but you cannot help but watch and cringe.
He has once again slipped into his Mittyesque Churchillian skin:
We must summon up the greatest level of ambition”, followed by “The success of our endeavours depends on us forging a new alliance” and “In these few days in Copenhagen which will be blessed or blamed for generations to come, we cannot permit the politics of narrow self-interest to prevent a policy for human survival.”
The technical term for that sort of rhetoric is political “sincero-talk” . Many of us prefer to think of it as meaningless bollocks.
Surprisingly, he didn’t mention anything at all about “fighting them on the beaches” but then again, Germany’s Angela Merkel is about to speak . Best not to rock das boot.
Outside the meeting, the Danish Riot Squad will continue to throw tear gas and beat the crap out of protestors and sundry activists who believe that actions speak louder than words. They cannot fail to speak louder than some of the words we’ve heard this week.
Think about this: The politicians are supposed to know how doomed we really are.
So, if we are THAT doomed, why are they behaving like children and why do they all appear to be so laid back about the whole thing. The urgency with which they address their taxpayers appears to be totally missing from their deliberations.
Surely the polluted triple spectres of self-interest, opportunism and procrastination have no place in discussions which are supposed to decide the future well-being of the human race.
Or perhaps they know something that we don’t – or something that we’re not meant to know.
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