The Looking Glass World Of The U.N. Climate Bureaucracy

When you saw the headline at the top right on the front page of yesterday's Sunday New York Times -- "Growing Clamor About Inequities of Climate Crisis" -- I know what you were thinking.  You thought, "Finally they are waking up to the fact that the consequence of the climate campaign for carbon emission reductions is to condemn a couple of billion people in poor countries to continued life without electricity and other energy."  You thought, "The forces of the Left that profess such concern and empathy for the poor must at last be coming to the realization that their carbon reduction program brings about no measurable environmental benefits while condemning the hundreds of millions of the poor to continuing to live without automobiles, internet access, air conditioning, electric light, refrigeration, and the many other benefits of modern life with access to energy."

Well, you sure got that one wrong.  This article is a report from the U.N.'s latest Conference of Parties under its Framework Convention on Climate Change, currently taking place in Warsaw, Poland.  The "climate inequities" and "climate injustice" that they are talking about have nothing to do with condemning the poor to lives of poverty, and everything to do with efforts to con rich countries into giving massive transfer handouts to corrupt third world governments to maintain their power and suppress the hopes of their people.  Hey, this is the U.N.!

At a U.N. climate conference, it is a given that bad weather in poor countries is caused by the sin of people in rich countries driving their cars and lighting their homes.  In U.N. parlance, this is referred to as "climate injustice."

 [The "climate injustice" issue] assumes the culpability of the world’s most developed nations, including the United States and those in Europe, and implies a moral responsibility to bear the costs. . . .

And thus we see the representatives of one corrupt third-world country after another blaming their woes on "climate change" and seeking handouts from the rich countries.  For example, here is John Kioli of Kenya:

John Kioli, the chairman of the Kenya Climate Change Working Group, a consortium of nongovernmental organizations, called climate change his country’s “biggest enemy.” Kenya, which straddles the Equator, faces some of the biggest challenges from rising temperatures. Arable land is disappearing and diseases like malaria are appearing in highland areas where they had never been seen before.

Developed countries, Mr. Kioli said, have a moral obligation to shoulder the cost, considering the amount of pollution they have emitted since the Industrial Revolution. “If developed countries are reasonable enough, they are able to understand that they have some responsibility,” he said.

Or how about this from Ronald Jumeau of the Seychelles:

“We’ve reached a stage where we cannot adapt anymore,” said Ronald Jumeau, the United Nations representative for the Seychelles, who is his country’s chief negotiator here. . . . .  Mr. Jumeau noted that Congress allocated $60 billion just to rebuild from one storm, Hurricane Sandy, compared with the $100 billion a year that advocates hope to see pledged to a Green Climate Fund by all nations.

And needless to say, the representative of the Philippines, site of the recent big typhoon strike, gave an emotional speech and vowed to fast for the duration of the conference.

Dare anyone mention to these people that world temperatures have not increased for some 15 years?  And while we can all be sympathetic to the people of the Philippines for their recent suffering after the big typhoon, the fact remains that worldwide hurricane activity is at a record low level.  Here is an October 6 report from Accuweather on the remarkably quiet Atlantic hurricane season this year.  There is no reason whatsoever to believe that global warming (should it occur) would be associated with more rather than fewer hurricanes.

And even if you accept that every hurricane is the direct result of rich, sinful people driving their SUVs, how exactly is that ameliorated by a massive wealth transfer from taxpayers in rich countries to governments in poor countries?  Only in the U.N. looking glass world, where wealth comes from the tooth fairy and the benevolent bureaucracy exists to take that wealth from the exploiters and redistribute it to their own friends and cronies.

Fortunately this exercise does not seem to be getting too far.  Among other big problems, inconvenient facts keep getting in the way.  No, I'm not talking about temperatures not going up -- they are oblivious to that one.  I'm mainly talking about China taking over the number one spot as the world's biggest emitter.  No way can the Chinese be guilt-tripped into paying.