Article Tags: Copenhagen Conference, Doug L. Hoffman
Once again the leaders in the fight against anthropogenic global warming have come together to hold an international fear fest, supposedly to save mankind from the ravages of climate change—or to save the planet from mankind, depending on who you talk to. The predictable result: more strident warnings of disaster, pledges of more far reaching actions from politicians, and no real change. After jetting into Denmark, expending the carbon equivalent of more than 200,000 trees, the carping climate crowd has jetted back home until the next act of this farce takes place in Mexico City in 2010.
The traveling circus that is the anti-AGW movement began with the 1992 Rio climate summit, which set the tone for all subsequent global warming passion plays. “It is a tale … full of sound and fury; signifying nothing,” to quote from Macbeth. Kyoto, in 1997, kept the tradition alive by also being long on promises but falling short on real world results. It, like Copenhagen, was rescued from total failure by producing a weak final agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, mostly due to last-minute intervention by then American Vice President Al Gore.
The Kyoto Protocol was an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol was that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These amounted to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012. The Clinton-Gore administration never submitted Kyoto’s agreement for ratification, the US Senate having denounced its terms 95 to 0. The US was not alone in not ratifying the treaty, most of the signatories have managed to procrastinate for 12 years.
Source: theresilientearth.com