The following text (in annex) was
published simultaneously by major Newspapers around the
World. It constitutes a Worldwide public relations
initiative, intended to sway public opinion into
unreservedly accepting the "Global Warming consensus". The
text of the editorial was prepared by The Guardian team.
The editorial presents an apocalyptic scenario, with global
warming ravaging the planet.
While it rightly points to the need to reduce toxic manmade
emissions, as an environmental clean air objective in its
own right, it accepts the Global Warming Consensus,
outright, without debate or discussion, as an absolute truth
as outlined by the UN Panel on Climate Change.
It fails to acknowledge the broader scientific debate on
climate change. It also fails to address the controversy
behind the data base on climate change and greenhouse gas
emissions.
Scientists who
dissent from the alarmism have seen their grant funds
disappear, their work derided, and themselves libelled as
industry stooges, scientific hacks or worse. Consequently,
lies about climate change gain credence even when they fly
in the face of the science that supposedly is their basis.
(Ibid)
CO2 emissions are heralded in the
editorial as the single and most important threat to the
future of humanity.
The authors of the editorial believe that "the politicians
in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on
this generation".
Our understanding is that the politicians from NATO
countries, who will be attending the Copenhagen
Venue, invariably act on behalf of the interests of the
financial establishment, the oil companies and the defense
contractors.
In this regard, it is worth noting that key decisions and
orientations on COP15 have already been wrapped up at the
World Business Summit on Climate Change (WBSCC) held in
May in Copenhagen, six months ahead of COP15.
The WBSCC brought together some of the World's most
prominent business executives and World leaders including Al
Gore and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. (The
World Business Summit on Climate Change,
includes webcast)
The results of
these high level consultations are contained in a "summary
report for policymakers" drafted by PricewaterhouseCoopers
LLP, on behalf the corporate executives participating in the
event. This report, which has been forwarded to the
participating governments, has very little to do with
environmental protection. It largely consists in a profit
driven agenda, which uses the global warming consensus as a
justification. (For details see Climate Council: The World Business
Summit on Climate Change)
"The
underlying ambition of the [WBSCC] Summit was to address
the twin challenges of climate change and the economic
crisis. Participants at the Summit considered how these
risks can be turned into opportunity if business and
governments work together, and what policies, incentives,
and investments will most effectively stimulate low-carbon
growth." (Copenhagen
Climate Council)
What is the hidden agenda behind
the Copenhagen CO15 Summit?
The Global Warming
consensus is being used to justify a lucrative multibillion
carbon trading scheme which seeks to enrich corporations and
financial institutions to the detriment of the developing
countries.
According to the editorial: "Social justice demands that
the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and
pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate
change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow
economically without growing their emissions".
This carbon trading scheme does not serve the interests
of social justice. Quite the opposite. What is now being
contemplated is a multibillion trade in Carbon Derivatives:
the banks are slated "to make a killing" on carbon
trading, with ... a very high probability of massive fraud
and insider trading in the carbon trading markets." (See
Copenhagen's Hidden Agenda: The
Multibillion Trade in Carbon Derivatives,
Global Research, December 8, 2009). In a bitter irony,
the architect of Credit Default Swaps at JP Morgan is behind
the development of a trading system in "Carbon
Derivatives".
While we share the concerns of the
environmentalists, there is no reason to uphold something
which is untrue or questionable to reach stated
environmental goals.
Reducing toxic manmade CO2 emissions need not be viewed as
subordinate and instrumental to reducing the tide of Global
Warming. It is an objective in its own right.
The implementation of an environmental program geared
explicitly towards reducing CO2 emissions at the national
and international levels requires neither the Global Warming
Consensus, nor a profit driven carbon trading system.
Michel Chossudovsky, December 7, 2009
ANNEX
Copenhagen climate change
conference: 'Fourteen days to seal
history's judgment on this
generation'
Unless we combine to take decisive
action, climate
change will ravage our planet, and
with it our prosperity and security.
The dangers have been becoming
apparent for a generation. Now the
facts have started to speak: 11 of the
past 14 years have been the warmest on
record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting
and last year's inflamed oil and food
prices provide a foretaste of future
havoc. In scientific journals the
question is no longer whether humans
are to blame, but how little time we
have got left to limit the damage. Yet
so far the world's response has been
feeble and half-hearted.
Climate change has been caused over
centuries, has consequences that will
endure for all time and our prospects
of taming it will be determined in the
next 14 days. We call on the
representatives of the 192
countries gathered in Copenhagen not
to hesitate, not to fall into dispute,
not to blame each other but to seize
opportunity from the greatest modern
failure of politics. This should not
be a fight between the rich world and
the poor world, or between east and
west. Climate change affects everyone,
and must be solved by everyone.
The science is complex but the facts
are clear. The world needs to take
steps to limit temperature rises to
2C, an aim that will require global
emissions to peak and begin falling
within the next 5-10 years. A bigger
rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase
we can prudently expect to follow
inaction — would parch continents,
turning farmland into desert. Half of
all species could become extinct,
untold millions of people would be
displaced, whole nations drowned by
the sea. The controversy over emails
by British researchers that suggest
they tried to suppress inconvenient
data has muddied the waters but failed
to dent the mass of evidence on which
these predictions are based.
Few believe that Copenhagen can any
longer produce a fully polished
treaty; real progress towards one
could only begin with the arrival of
President Obama in the White House and
the reversal of years of US
obstructionism. Even now the world
finds itself at the mercy of American
domestic politics, for the president
cannot fully commit to the action
required until the US Congress has
done so.
But the politicians in Copenhagen can
and must agree the essential elements
of a fair and effective deal and,
crucially, a firm timetable for
turning it into a treaty. Next June's
UN climate meeting in Bonn should be
their deadline. As one negotiator put
it: "We can go into extra time but we
can't afford a replay."
At the deal's heart must be a
settlement between the rich world and
the developing world covering how the
burden of fighting climate change will
be divided — and how we will share a
newly precious resource: the trillion
or so tonnes of carbon that we can
emit before the mercury rises to
dangerous levels.
Rich nations like to point to the
arithmetic truth that there can be no
solution until developing giants such
as China take more radical steps than
they have so far. But the rich world
is responsible for most of the
accumulated carbon in the atmosphere –
three-quarters of all carbon dioxide
emitted since 1850. It must now take a
lead, and every developed country must
commit to deep cuts which will reduce
their emissions within a decade to
very substantially less than their
1990 level.
Developing countries can point out
they did not cause the bulk of the
problem, and also that the poorest
regions of the world will be hardest
hit. But they will increasingly
contribute to warming, and must thus
pledge meaningful and quantifiable
action of their own. Though both fell
short of what some had hoped for, the recent
commitments to emissions targetsby
the world's biggest polluters, the United
States and China,
were important steps in the right
direction.
Social justice demands that the
industrialised world digs deep into
its pockets and pledges cash to help
poorer countries adapt to climate
change, and clean technologies to
enable them to grow economically
without growing their emissions. The
architecture of a future treaty must
also be pinned down – with rigorous
multilateral monitoring, fair rewards
for protecting forests, and the
credible assessment of "exported
emissions" so that the burden can
eventually be more equitably shared
between those who produce polluting
products and those who consume them.
And fairness requires that the burden
placed on individual developed
countries should take into account
their ability to bear it; for instance
newer EU members, often much poorer
than "old Europe", must not suffer
more than their richer partners.
The transformation will be costly, but
many times less than the bill for
bailing out global finance — and far
less costly than the consequences of
doing nothing.
Many of us, particularly in the
developed world, will have to change
our lifestyles. The era of flights
that cost less than the taxi ride to
the airport is drawing to a close. We
will have to shop, eat and travel more
intelligently. We will have to pay
more for our energy, and use less of
it.
But the shift to a low-carbon society
holds out the prospect of more
opportunity than sacrifice. Already
some countries have recognized that
embracing the transformation can bring
growth, jobs and better quality lives.
The flow of capital tells its own
story: last year for the first time
more was invested in renewable forms
of energy than producing electricity
from fossil fuels.
Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades
will require a feat of engineering and innovation to
match anything in our history. But whereas putting a
man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of
conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must
be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve
collective salvation.
Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of
optimism over pessimism, of vision over
short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the
better angels of our nature".
It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around
the world have united behind this editorial. If we,
with such different national and political
perspectives, can agree on what must be done then
surely our leaders can too.
The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape
history's judgment on this generation: one that saw a
challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw
calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We
implore them to make the right choice.
This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56
newspapers around the world in 20 languages including
Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a
Guardian team during more than a month of
consultations with editors from more than 20 of the
papers involved. Like
the Guardian most of the newspapers have
taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on
their front page.