India signs on to do-nothing deal for Paris Climate “Theatre”

Look who “signed up” to the Cabaret called the Paris Agreement?

Paris, Climate Agreement, India.

India is doubling its coal use by 2020 and tripling its emissions by 2030. That’s what “going green” means.

India has ratified the weakest kind of non-reduction, just a promise it will try to “cut emissions intensity“.  That big goal is to increase its carbon emissions by slightly less than the rate its population is growing at. An achievement most countries do just by being there. It’s the default condition as economies develop. Instead of reducing emissions, India is set to increase its total emissions threefold by 2030. Ratify that, eh?

Though even that pitifully weak anti-goal is not enforceable. Nearly everything in the Paris deal is optional, voluntary, and written as a should, not a shall. After ten months of delays and frivolous ambit claims like trying to get entry to the nuclear club (and access to more uranium), India has finally signed up for Paris anyway. Which is signing nothing much — all India has agreed to is to submit a new goal for itself every five years, and do a stocktake. It’s that banal.

As I’ve said before, there are so many reasons for developing countries to want to join the cast:

Figure how the Paris equation looks to China or India:

  1. how can we hobble competitors, get their factories, and help sell more goods?
  2. how can we collect more of pointless guilt payments (carbon credits etc)?
  3. as a bonus we like to get thanked and look like heroes. :- )

To get all three: smile at the press conference, and pander to the Global Worriers in words only. Do token efforts and turn the guilt screws on the West as appropriate.

The Paris agreement is a Grand Theater designed to convince western taxpayers to cough up more money. China and India are part of the show, putting on their best environmental faces while they do nothing green, or even less.

Remember December 2015: India is going to double coal output and the Paris climate deal won’t affect that.

India still plans to double coal output by 2020 and rely on the resource for decades afterwards, a senior official said on Monday, days after rich and poor countries agreed in Paris to curb carbon emissions that cause global warming.

India, the world’s third-largest carbon emitter, is dependent on coal for about two-thirds of its energy needs and has pledged to mine more of the fuel to power its resource-hungry economy while also promising to increase clean energy generation.

Oren Cass felt China was doing too little, and India was even worse:

India, meanwhile, managed to lower the bar even further, submitting a report with no promise of emissions ever peaking or declining and only a 33-35 percent reduction in emissions per unit of GDP over the 2005-2030 period. Given India’s recent rate of improving energy efficiency, this actually implies a slower rate of improvement over the next 15 years. In its INDC, India nevertheless estimates it will need $2.5 trillion in support to implement its unserious plan.

 —   Why the Paris deal is meaningless

 The best analysis came from Paul Homewood:

India’s Climate Plan Will Triple Emissions By 2030

What does this all mean, when we take away the smoke and the mirrors. The following points stand out:

  • No actual CO2 target has been set.
  • Although the talk is of “increase the share of clean energy in its total energy mix by as much as 40%”, when you get down to the small print, as we will shortly, the commitment is only to 40% of capacity, and not generation. As we know, renewables give very poor utilisation, so the amount generated will be much, much less than 40%.
  • Also, this 40% is not of its total energy mix, as reported, but only of electricity mix.
  • Commitment is given about reducing carbon intensity of GDP, but nearly half of this has already been achieved since 2005. As we have seen with China, maturing economies tend to grow away from energy intensive industries.

Homewood calculates that if India sticks to its INDC (Intended Nationally Determined Contribution) and cuts its emissions intensity by 19% as promised, allowing for current population growth, its emissions will still grow from 2100Mt in 2014 to 6300Mt by 2030.

Last October India were asking for $166b a year to achieve this. I wonder what they got?

Extra reading — how the US and China “ratifications” are just as meaningless: Emergency Theater for Paris Agreement: China, US rush to sham ratification.

Tell the obedient Anglosphere nations, not to pay, not to play —  the Paris agreement is an act.

Big emitters would like to be seen,
By alarmists as having turned clean,
For which they don’t care,
Just to gain market share,
And profit from anything Green.

— Ruairi

9.7 out of 10 based on 83 ratings

107 comments to India signs on to do-nothing deal for Paris Climate “Theatre”

  • #
    Greg

    They have signed up with a rider : we want $2.5 bn to be payed to use by rich countries and free / cheap technology transfer.

    With terms like, I’d sign up too.

    India is a festering pool of corruption. This fits totally with their way of doing things.

    Usually as a westerner you can’t even buy a rail ticket with bribing the man behind the counter to sell it too you.

    $2.5bn baksheesh will do nicely where do we sign. Oh, tank you velly much , isn’t it.

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    • #
      Peter Miller

      In a less politically correct world, we might comment:

      Wily oriental/Indian always outsmarts western liberal idealist

      Repeat – Always

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      • #
        OriginalSteve

        And ruthless to boot…

        Mind you, the Brits had them cold for quite a number of years, which says a thing or two about the British and their methods, so…

        30

    • #
      PeterPetrum

      You forgot that lovely Hindi head shake – just a bit difficult to do if you are not actually Indian!

      70

  • #
    Greg

    They have signed up with a rider : we want $2.5 bn to be payed to use by rich countries and free / cheap technology transfer.

    With terms like, I’d sign up too.

    India is a festering pool of corruption. This fits totally with their way of doing things.

    Usually as a westerner you can’t even buy a rail ticket without bribing the man behind the counter to sell it too you.

    $2.5bn baksheesh will do nicely where do we sign. Oh, tank you velly much , isn’t it.

    71

  • #
    Greg

    Of course this is what the “Green Fund” was set up for: to pay developing countries for their complicity.

    111

  • #
    TdeF

    The IPCC will surely agree to everything just to get India onboard as Obama agreed that China could do nothing until 2030 and claimed a great success.
    The good news is boom times for Australia’s coal exports, crippled only by Green lawfare at our ports. However once India signs, these exports are sanctioned Internationally. India’s grand plan is like China’s plan, a complete sham playing the Greens at their own game of charades.

    China goes a step further and criticizes the West for ‘historic pollution’. After all, Western democracies have admitted they are wholly at fault for the 50% increase in CO2 levels. Scientifically this is nonsense but legally is a confession of guilt as this fabricated crisis plays out. Like South Australia’s massive self harm in their failed windmills, the agreement does nothing to reduce CO2.

    Meanwhile Australia is being run by the most useless government in history led by a man who stole his job on the pretext that he was a true visionary leader whose vision was to betray the very principles on which the Liberal party was based for Malcolm’s Green Liberals. In fact the Greens tricked him and came within a seat of grabbing power anyway and are certain to get the job next time. Only Daniel Andrews in Victoria stopped them, alienating his own voters.

    While Turnbull was prepared to jettison many in his own party as ‘deluded’, the Greens were not. Watch the carbon taxes flow after the next election as the Greens cripple the whole country with Bill Shorten’s 50% windmills in 14 years plan. By that time CO2 output from China and India will have peaked at triple current levels. We may be the lucky country but we are not the smart country and our leaders are certainly not.

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    • #
      OriginalSteve

      Youre forgetting that Malcolm is a Champagne Socialist at heart….

      Every PM we have had will/has happily sell out the country to protect the mythical “gaia” and make even more dosh along the way while sceptics are literally thrown to the lions along the way… you have to understand these people….these people dont get to be PM unless they sign up to “the cause”.

      If you think of the globalists as thinly veiled “cultured” versions of a cross between Roman Emporers Nero and Caligula, youre pretty close…..

      50

  • #

    The problem is not India which when offered free money would be fools to not accept it.

    The problem is the IPCC and the UN which has been systematically crafting a world view that the pursuit of profit is a manifestation of greed and should be penalized, rather then it being the engine that makes economies succeed and grow. They have pursued this by leveraging the envy of the developing world to support using climate reparations as an excuse for redistributional economics.

    Making it worse is that the regressive policies of the progressive left, which ignorantly support the IPCC’s motives and goals, are based on the same bundle of lies in their attempts to support other excuses to support even more redistribution of wealth.

    240

  • #
    TdeF

    Agree. Two changes. Progressive Left should be Repressive Left. Redistribution of wealth should just be State licenced theft.

    191

  • #
    Harry Passfield

    India has ratified the weakest kind of non-reduction, just a promise it will try to “cut emissions intensity“

    “Try”: a means of committing to failure – with a clear conscience.

    As I have said on other blogs, if you ask someone to do something for you and they say they will try to do it, you have to understand that they have only committed to ‘try’ – so that when they fail to do what you thought they were agreeing to do they will tell you, “But I only said I’d try….”

    The trick is to get people to commit to succeed rather than commit to failure.

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    • #
      Olaf Koenders

      It’s no different to any Statute, although the word “try” doesn’t exist in Law or Statute due to its weak and non-binding nature.

      Nearly everything in the Paris deal is optional, voluntary, and written as a should, not a shall.

      Should
      Shall
      Must
      Will

      Are all future terminology that imply something is to happen in the future which is never defined. Every Statute is written this way. Even the descriptor “is” has 3 different meanings.

      Bill Clinton, during his adultery investigation:

      Contending that his statement that “there is nothing going on between us” had been truthful because he had no ongoing relationship with Lewinsky at the time he was questioned, Clinton said, “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”

      Unless you accept the spurious instruction or demands of Statute, they have no control of Men and Women. If you accept the description of yourself as a “person” – corp-oration – Latin for “the dead speaking”, then they can order you about via future Statute terms without consequence, otherwise they set themselves up to pay for your services.

      I’ve used merely the threat of that to good effect on a few occasions because government is now not only fully corporatised, but no Man, Woman or corporation/company can order another living soul to do anything without acceptance and agreement or signed contract. The living soul may accept to take up the offer of work, however there’s no such thing as legal (let alone lawful) slavery so payment must be awarded on demand.

      Maybe this is what Indonesia’s (?) new Prime Minister meant when he refused to acknowledge the outgoing power’s Paris ratification. This new man didn’t sign it.

      30

  • #
    Yonniestone

    With PM May pushing to quickly sever ties with the economy halting EU and a possible Trump victory Australia will see some positive trade coming its way.

    Let the fools play the moral earth games while we get back to rediscovering our untapped potential.

    241

  • #
    TdeF

    A comment on ‘renewables‘. This is a warm and fuzzy reassuring word for non fossil fuel power and carries the concept that the energy will last forever. Eternal energy. We will never run out. Rubbish.

    Sure the wind and sun and water are erratic but eternal but what we are building is replaceables, rapidly obsolescent, high maintenance power generation to replace everything we have without any particular need to do so? Why? Why did Adelaide blow up a power station just to run windmills? Who benefited?

    So while Hazelwood started in 1971 is written off by the Greens as obsolete when it is fine, what is going to happen to all the windmills, solar arrays and photoelectric panels in 45 years? Unserviceable replaceables.

    What is the real cost of maintenance and total replacement over the same period? Are complex mechanical tall windmills even servicable? Has anyone thought that far ahead? If Hazelwood has to be replaced simply because it is working fine but old (and 6% more CO2 output than black coal), is the massive proposed investment in ‘renewables’ any better? No one says the Snowy Mountain Scheme (1974) is obsolete but it supply more than a few days of power and the water would be gone like Tasmania.

    In practice Shorten’s 50% renewables means many thousands more wind towers, closing and replacing more working power stations and that is only renewable in the sense that we will have to do it all again, ad infinitum. This is not investing in energy security, it is destroying what we have. He proposes a perpetual and massive drain on the Australian economy until we run out of coal anyway, as coal sold overseas is paying the bills. None of this makes any sense except that we get to sell all our coal to India so they can have cheap reliable power while we cripple our current reliable and adequate power supplies. Economic suicide to show the world how clever and caring we are. The Indians will be able to name their own price for our coal as all our money will go to importing new windmills from China.

    240

    • #
      TdeF

      Not renewables, unreliables, disposables. From energy security and stability to erratic, dangerous and costly and unpredictable. Many had warned of the blackout in SA. There had been preludes. Now it is a state emergency all created by a political agenda to change the world climate?

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      • #
        Olaf Koenders

        Renewable energy? Nah.. Unpredictable energy – Unpredictables. Good one Tdef.

        40

        • #
          TdeF

          Scary. I remember one circuit on the Melbourne University cyclotron where they used explosives in carbon blocks in the circuit to disconnect. You do not want to be near it at 4am when a circuit is disconnected. The people who run the grid must live in constant terror of input from the windfarms. At a political level it is just a nuisance but in reality, unpredictable is a very kind word.

          The total collapse of the SA grid would have been no surprise to anyone involved in it. At a political level, it is just one of those technical problems solved by scientists and engineers who have to live with the consequences of absurd political decisions. Politicians should not be deciding such things. It used to be up to engineers but now Greens have 20% of the vote, it is not surprising the damage is measured in hundreds of millions. As for collapse of some towers, that needs investigation but it is a handy out for the politicians.

          80

          • #
            Olaf Koenders

            The Greens that proposed the legislation and the wet-dreaming bureaucrats that passed it for SA should be forced to personally reimburse all that suffered, including industry for loss of productivity – excepting the productive loss of wind farms. They make money whether contributing or not.

            50

          • #
            TdeF

            Just wondering. The various bodies, generators, energy suppliers and the engineering companies tasked with setting up this dream would have covered themselves. They will have made sure that Weatherill was told in writing that the whole system could and probably would collapse at some time. This is the document in the bottom red box from Sir Humphrey so that the buck does not stop with them.

            If Weatherill was in full knowledge of this as a likelihood but decided to risk hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and serious life threatening injuries, that is criminal irresponsibility as a head of state. As I have written before, if he put the people of South Australia in such real danger with full knowledge, he must resign.

            Where is the political opposition in South Australia? This likelihood was surely not a secret. Hospitals shut down. People trapped. Who knows how many rescued. Airport at a standstill. Smelters wrecked. Whyalla in serious trouble still with no power. Not the first time. The last time was five hours. All with knowledge of the likelihood and with no solution in sight while the leader of the Labor party says we should go to 50% windmills? Why is there no resignation?

            Why is Josh Freydenberg saying ‘renewables’ are not the problem? Everyone in the country knows that is wrong. South Australia had no problem before.
            Perhaps it takes Pauline Hanson to say ‘please explain?”.

            50

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      The Left is just a bunch of dressed brawling Communist street fighting thugs.

      It knows it cant bring the west to its knees through force, so they have set about to white ant us via CAGW.

      The uncomfortable truth is that the UN and the IPCC are funded by individal sovereign gummints.

      As such, each gummint supporst and agrees tot he COmmunist UN ideals.

      As much as people may sometimes think I sprout complete tosh, when is it going to sink in that all around Oz there are 1000s of schools with 6 foot high ( federally funded ) black fences that are likely to be used as internment centres for dissidents, and surveillance state established with no end, and no proof of a whole bunch of stuff caused by “terrorists” and now we have legal indefinate detention without proof? Such a thing is called tyranny.

      People need to wise up fast – we have a communist state around us that will all of a sudden appear fully formed overnight, when the hammer drops via some deliberately planned and executed “event”…a latter day burning down of the “Reichstag”.

      So far I have been right about the planet forming into 10 super nations.

      Time is running out….the Biblical clock is running down fast now to armageddon.

      60

  • #
    Graeme No.3

    And what evidence is there that these renewables do reduce CO2 emissions?
    They may just be an expensive way of enriching Chinese suppliers.

    200

    • #
      Dennis

      Look at SA, no wind, high demand, and coal power is imported from VIC. What reduction in CO2?

      150

      • #
        Olaf Koenders

        Northern Vic has little to no wind most of the year round. Going by the rates I could get paid by producing no power, my windmill farm boondoggle won’t even contain internals, such as generators or grid connection. What a green dodge!

        40

  • #
    el gordo

    Beijing is unconcerned about European guilt, but they will quite happily pay lip service.

    ‘China’s National Action Plan for Air Pollution Prevention and Control’s mid-term review, which was released on July 5th, shows that the eight provinces which make up their ‘key regions,’ added on a massive 50.8 GW of new coal-fired energy capacity between the years of 2013-15.’

    Forbes

    ——

    The smog season in China has just begun and Beijing is giving up its addiction to dirty brown coal, with a strong preference for Oz black.

    60

    • #
      el gordo

      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/05/23/how-china-is-blowing-its-chance-to-lead-the-world-in-wind-energy/?utm_term=.2dfa22aa6cd9

      China has built the technology, but its not able to use it to the max. They have built more turbines than the country had the capacity to connect. About 15 percent of wind-generated power was curtailed in China last year.

      60

      • #
        Dennis

        Perhaps the most complex issue is what is technically termed “curtailment” — this is when wind power is available, but grid operators choose not to dispatch it, effectively wasting it. According to the authors of the new study, a lot of this problem is bound up in China’s lingering dependence on coal-fired power plants.

        “As Lewis explains in her comment, “In general, wind energy poses challenges for grid operators due to its intermittency — the wind isn’t always blowing, and it’s not always easy to predict when it will. Unless it is stored, the electricity produced from wind farms must be used at the exact moment it is generated.”

        This requires a bit of a balancing act between the deployment of wind power and power from other sources — namely coal, which still accounts for the majority of electricity produced in China. But the authors note that coal-fired power plants are often not flexible when it comes to adjusting their power output, meaning it’s difficult to conduct power balancing between coal and wind without wasting energy from one or the other. This is less of an issue in the United States, where more flexible power sources, such as gas-fired systems, play a bigger role in the market.”

        70

        • #
          Graeme No.3

          Also that in China the wind farmers don’t have the unfettered right to dump onto the grid whenever they like.

          80

        • #
          el gordo

          ‘…wind energy poses challenges for grid operators due to its intermittency….’

          The crow eaters experienced it recently.

          90

  • #
    tom0mason

    India has signed!

    Now cut to the song and the dancing girls…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9FkTd7Yt2k

    70

  • #
    Mic

    This just cant be, Obama hailed the Paris agreement as a ‘turning point for our world’, our best chance of keeping the Earth hospitable to human life and that in may even save our planet. I am not a betting man, but I’m not sure that tripling carbon emissions to global applause is what Obama had in mind.

    60

  • #
    Roy Hogue

    Just once I would like to see someone be honest about what they’re doing. If India had the nerve to say it outright I’d probably fall down dead from surprise.

    Hey world! We’re thumbing our nose at you and your foolish carbon emissions nonsense.

    Just once, if someone could manage to do that instead of saying one thing and then doing another… What has the rest of the world got to do with what India decides to do — for that matter, what anyone else decides to do? Nothing of course!

    They’re looking out for India. A totally legitimate and honest thing to do. It’s such a transparent game and a sham and everyone knows it.

    90

    • #
      OriginalSteve

      “Ah blow my nerz at you you engleesh peeg dog…”

      – Monty Python, “Monty Python an The Holy Grail”

      30

    • #
      Rereke Whakaaro

      It’s such a transparent game and a sham and everyone knows it.

      If everybody knows it to be a sham, then it has no purpose. So why not just stop doing it. That seems the easiest and cheapest answer to me. Or am I missing something ineffable?

      30

      • #
        OriginalSteve

        Money & power?

        They say religion is the opium of the people,
        well money and power is the opium of sociopaths…

        40

      • #
        Roy Hogue

        Rereke,

        You ain’t missed nuthin! I suspect the agreers and the agreese (agree-ese?) both know it ain’t gonna be followed before they ever come up with it. But look at all the fun vacations they all get to take to places like Paris, Copenhagen, Bali… Have they ever met in Podunk? No. It’s all set up to milk the taxpayers of this world to let ’em all live high on the hog.

        Poor old Obama don’t know it’s a joke so he takes it seriously. Someone otta tell him it’s a joke.

        And poor old me wishes they’d all go away.

        30

  • #
    Neville

    Jo Nova provides more evidence that Dr Hansen was correct when he stated that COP 21 was just BS and fra-d. Josh Frydenburg ( ABC am) was also on the money when he stated that India and China etc will blow out co2 emissions for decades to come. India by 200% and China by 100%. So much for OZ lefties promising to reduce our co2 emissions by 50%. That’s a 100% rock solid guarantee of zero change to the weather/climate/temp at all.
    Of course should Labor win the next election they will happily do a Rudd/Gillard/Rudd and export as much coal, gas and iron ore that it is possible to ship overseas.
    These dopey hypocrites couldn’t care less about fossil fuel use or co2 emissions. So what is their motivation and why do they want to harm our economy for a guaranteed zero return?

    81

  • #
    tom0mason

    Pachauri is quietly pleased?

    20

    • #
      Dennis

      R.K Pachauri was born in Nainital, India. He was educated at La Martiniere College in Lucknow and at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Jamalpur, Bihar. He belongs to the Special Class Railway Apprentices, 1958 Batch, an elite scheme which heralded the beginning of mechanical engineering education in India. He began his career with the Indian Railways at the Diesel Locomotive Works in Varanasi. He joined North Carolina State University in Raleigh, United States, where he obtained an MS in Industrial Engineering in 1972, and a PhD with co-majors in Industrial Engineering and Economics in 1974. His doctoral thesis was titled, A dynamic model for forecasting of electrical energy demand in a specific region located in North and South Carolina. He lives in Golf Links, New Delhi. He is a strict vegetarian, largely because of “the environmental and climate change implications.”

      40

    • #
      Raven

      Ahhh . . Pachauri.
      My all time favourite Pokemon.

      50

  • #
    TdeF

    In the Business Australian this morning, John Durie. “the best way to get that agreement is for the federal government to have a credible climate policy. Sadly that is missing right now.”

    I react badly to this nonsense. If we had told the previous generation who built our fantastic, stable, maintainable and reliable energy grid that we would throw that all away to change the climate, they would be aghast. A climate policy? What on earth is that? How does the Australian government enforce its climate policy, apart from punishing its own people. Are we going to jail cows for farting?

    Does John Durie really think governments control the climate as he so clearly says? Does he think the temperature or climate has changed at all in the last twenty years? Does he think the world will change, the seas will drown cities and the crops will fail with another dreadful 0.5C? Does he really think destruction of our old grid to be replaced by windmills is urgent? India alone plans to increase CO2 output by3400 million tons a year while our leaders hope to reduce ours from 392 to say 200 million tons, as a ‘climate policy’? Why?

    140

    • #
      TdeF

      Besides, as Australia produces only 2% of the world’s CO2, 98% of it comes from overseas. We should do nothing and have a ‘climate policy’ that taxes India, China, Russia, the US and Europe and give us bucketload of cash to compensate us for our obvious suffering. At least $1Bn a week, the amount we are borrowing from the same countries to pay for their windmills and to cripple our own power generation and businesses and manufacturers and quality of life. Cash will do nicely.

      130

    • #
      David Maddison

      I agree TdeF. It is an insult to our engineers of the past that built modern society with a basis on cheap, reliable fossil, hydro and nuclear power. We are taking the miracle they built based on legitimate science and technology and destroying it. Their hard work is made to count for nothing as energy prices go up and reliability go down based upon the fra-ud of anthropogenic global warming.

      151

      • #
        TdeF

        Yes and an insult to the bulk of Australians that these climate lemmings are getting our politicans to jump off the same cliff. What has happened to South Australia is a disgrace and if done by a private company we would expect prosecution for damages. What do you do when the vandals are the elected government?

        91

        • #
          OriginalSteve

          People consider me “old school” but I am confident old schoolers are the ones who will survive the coming purge of “dissidents”.

          What the lemmings foget, is that there is “no app for that” regards solid engineering knowledge and experience, espcially when we see the joke SA has become with its electricity grid.

          What the lemmings also forget is that when the grid realy does collapse, all the young things who have had a paper based education but are now trying to work out how to survive without power and maintain basic camp hygiene and medical discipline, will die in huge swathes. And on that day, the firearms the bleating Left have demonized, will be the every thing that keep them alive….

          70

    • #
      BruceC

      “If we had told the previous generation who built our fantastic, stable, maintainable and reliable energy grid”

      Except if you live in SA.

      00

  • #
    el gordo

    ‘India has competitive bidding for solar tenders, with companies vying aggressively for them and pushing down tariffs to as low as 6 cents a kilowatt-hour in January.

    ‘In the next 24 months, Equis will aim to expand to at least five gigawatts and is looking to expand into new markets like Taiwan, Australia and Indonesia. On average, 50 megawatts to 100 megawatts will be added to its portfolio every month this year and into the next year, Russell said.

    “We see these markets in Asia needing $1.1 trillion in capital over the next 10 years in renewable energy,” he said.

    Bloomberg

    70

  • #
    gnome

    Two surplus apostrophes in the second line! Eschew the use of apostrophes altogether. None at all is far better than too many.
    Delete comment after taking corrective action.

    30

    • #
      joseph

      ‘None at all is far better than too many’.

      Any proof?

      10

      • #
        gnome

        Yes- none at all can be attributed to laziness, sticky keys, typos…
        Too many is definitely an error- no sticky key’s, no typo’s can excuse it’s misunderstanding of how English is correctly used.

        20

    • #

      Gnome, too right, I saw the apostrophe storm myself first thing this morning. Forgive me, for some reason I seem to be most productive at writing at midnight, though better at editing at other times.

      70

  • #
    David Maddison

    A bit off topic but I visited the Snowy Mountains (Australia) area a couple of years ago. As a child I was taken on a school excursion to visit the Snow Mountains Scheme. As a child I visited many power stations and vising areas but now there is only one visitor area and vising areas are very deteriorated and unvisited. I doubt the average kid now has much of an idea about the SMS or where cheap reliable power comes from although they will know everything “bad” about traditional forms of energy.

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    • #
      David Maddison

      Sorry for the spelling mistakes. I typed it too quickly and didn’t read it before posting.

      10

  • #
    David Maddison

    Snowy Mountains not Snow Mountains.

    20

  • #
  • #
    Ruairi

    Big emitters would like to be seen,
    By alarmists as having turned clean,
    For which they don’t care,
    Just to gain market share,
    And profit from anything Green.

    130

  • #
    pat

    Uhlmann risks being shunned by his colleagues & CAGW fellow-travellers…again:

    4 Oct: ABC: Chris Uhlmann: Renewable energy: Tom Koutsantonis July letter said solar, wind uptake in SA makes electricity security ‘complex’
    The South Australian Energy Minister acknowledged high take-up of wind turbines and rooftop solar cells in his state was making electricity security “a complex matter”, in a letter to the Energy Market Commission in July.
    “Issues with managing the transition are already emerging in South Australia,” the letter said.
    Tom Koutsantonis wrote to commission chairman, John Pierce, on July 12, just days after the shutdown of transmission lines to Victoria saw South Australia’s wholesale power price spike from a year-long average of $60 a megawatt hour to $9,000.
    The Minister’s letter proposed a series of changes to the national electricity market rules, “to manage security challenges that may emerge as Australia’s electricity supply transitions to a carbon constrained future”…
    Mr Koutsantonis’s letter acknowledged renewables had forced conventional generators out of a market that could not operate without them, because their “synchronous” energy was still needed to ensure power system security…
    READ FULL LETTER
    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-04/electricity-security-complex-in-sa-says-koutsantonis/7899302

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    Tim Talbot

    I wish governments would publish a list of the benefits all the trillions of dollars spent on fighting climate change has done so far. We keep hearing how important it is to throw everything in the world’s mints at fighting the climate bogeyman, but rarely if ever what benefits all this money-gobbling has done so far.

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    RoHa

    India is doubling its coal use.

    Not “it’s”.

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    David Maddison

    O/T

    Victoria is in flood but Dear Leader Dopey Dan Andrews just spent $27 million of taxpayer money purchasing water from the otherwise unused desal plant….

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    tom0mason

    OT —
    The Pigeon That Came in from The Cold

    India is arresting its pigeons.
    Are pigeons importing too much Pakistani CO2 or maybe they’re the masterminds of something worse…
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/pigeon-arrested-in-india-on-suspicion-of-being-used-to-spy-for-pakistan-10285424.html

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    mark

    David, you are on the right track. It is grass roots that will short circuit the leftist dogma taught currently. It is up to us parents to show our kids how the world realy works. The experience of walking around the back of Murray 2 when she is turning knots into volts. To physically feel the power in the air, to feel your hair stand on end. Kids do not forget that.

    Greens attack forest management at school. I take my kids up to the back of Baw Baw and show them how big a hundred acre coop looks like and how a forest regrows after planting. I show them Black Spur, planted after the 39 fires. My kids have never forgot.

    The CO2 scam is insidious. Main stream media, our most prominent of.political commentators, MOST of our politicians, all pay lip service to the blob. Science should have laid bare this scam as unscientific zealotry yet, like the professional classes of professors and doctors of pre-third Reich Germany, they accepted the socialist cause as their own to advance their own lives. It is these people who make it the hardest to show the blob for what it is.

    My education as an mech engineering technician showed me the keys to civilization. Cheap abundance of power, be it coal fired electricity or hydrocarbon fuels that were supposed to be gone by 1990…..

    ….rambling again. Show your kids before they think they know everything. Get them to question everything, even yourself.

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    Raven

    It’s interesting to consider the position of India, and more prominently China, both with large populations, and both in the process of fast development from a starting point in the latter half of the twentieth century.

    Someone (thanks, someone ;)) posted David MacKay: A reality check on renewablest the other day and it becomes obvious that wind and solar just aren’t going to cut the mustard in any practical way just in terms of land use alone.

    India and China are well poised to lead the world by adopting the very latest generation of nuclear power technology and leaving the earlier technology behind . . as you would expect.

    Meanwhile, we in the west remain hamstrung by the green blob successfully promulgating their anti-nuclear scare campaign based on that 50 year old technology.

    It’s like arguing a 2016 Holden is dangerous because a 1957 Holden didn’t have seat belts.

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    pat

    Uhlmann well & truly under attack:

    3 Oct: The Conversation: ‘We must keep the lights on’: how a cyclone was used to attack renewables
    by David Holmes, Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies, Monash University
    (Disclosure: Monash University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU)
    But the Coalition campaign got a huge lift from the ABC in the form of an opinion piece by political editor Chris Uhlmann…READ ON

    FROM COMMENTS:
    Michael Coleman: It’s one thing for politicians to misrepresent the truth so blatantly, but entirely another when their ABC’s Chris Uhlmann leads the charge. The credibility of ABC News is shot to pieces…

    reply from Ross Barrell (Aikido student): That is right. Absolutely right. The ABC needs help – ***but help may be just round the corner: https://theconversation.com/the-conversation-working-with-the-abc-66407

    reply from Susan Geason: Let’s hope he goes the same was as the presenter from Catalyst who got the push after her second stuff-up. Aren’t we lucky Uhlmann flunked the 7.30 host try-out…

    reply from Peter Redshaw: Sadly Michael what you say about Chris Uhlmann and his ridiculous blame of renewables for the South Australia’s electricity outage is true and that is coming from a long time supporter of the ABC. Jumping on that crazy anti-renewable bandwagon of the coalition only makes a mockery of himself and the ABC.
    I do have to wonder that his editor signed of on his claims before he made them on air and on line. You do have to wonder about the editorial checks in place at the ABC these days. Have the funding and staff cuts been that bad?

    reply from Christopher Saitta: Hard to believe that Ulhmann works for the ABC after spreading all this nonsense etc…
    http://theconversation.com/we-must-keep-the-lights-on-how-a-cyclone-was-used-to-attack-renewables-66371

    the story linked in comments above:

    ***3 Oct: The Conversation: The Conversation working with The ABC
    by Misha Ketchell, Managing Editor, The Conversation
    (Misha most recently worked as a researcher and producer on ABC TV’s Media Watch. Previously he was editor of Crikey and The Big Issue (Australia) and a reporter for The Age)
    A few weeks ago we
    our collaboration with the ABC to ensure the Australian public broadcaster gets the best from The Conversation authors. For the past six weeks Adam Connors, a senior member of the ABC news team, has been working with us to alert ABC journalists to our upcoming articles and identify opportunities to work with the ABC to inform its audience with deep context and explanation.
    In that time Conversation articles have been viewed more than 1 million times on the ABC and there has also been a terrific appetite to interview authors on TV and radio. It’s a good result for everyone involved: the authors, The Conversation, the ABC and most importantly everyone who wants to better understand what’s going on in an increasingly specialised and complex world.

    The Conversation: Partners and funders
    Strategic Partners include COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA, law firm Corrs Chambers Westgarth, The Myer Foundation etc
    Media Partners includes REUTERS

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      David-of-Cooyal-in-Oz

      G’day Pat,
      From your second link:

      “The consequences of the superstorm could have been dire – both from the direct effects of the wind and floods but also for the life support systems that depend on electricity. 1.7 million residents lost power as winds reached 120km/hour.”

      Unfortunately they left out a phrase, which I now add:

      “The consequences of the superstorm could have been dire – both from the direct effects of the wind and floods but also for the life support systems that depend on electricity. 1.7 million residents lost power as winds reached 120km/hour”, at which point the wind turbines closed down for safety reasons.

      The SA turbines I’ve checked so far have cutout speeds of either 20 or 25 metres per second, i.e. 72 or 90 kms/ hour.

      Cheers,
      Dave B

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      • #
        ianl8888

        1.7 million residents lost power as winds reached 120km/hour”, at which point the wind turbines closed down for safety reasons

        Cassandra suggested days ago that would be the first casuality of war. Of course the AGW advocates don’t want this widely known.

        One of the idiot meeja class, a columnist from the Aus, opined yesterday that no one had known this. No one he ever talks to, is all. Such people are genuinely destructive in their wilful ignorance.

        The Victorian Heywood connector is another casuality of “don’t mention the war”. There is no real way of avoiding constant edge-of-the-seat situations while this deliberate disinformation in the MSM persists.

        And any opinion by a Professor of Media Studies or equivalent dipstickery is dangerously misleading unless ignored. Even now, experienced grid engineers and mining geologists (supplying the correct quantities and qualities of raw fuels to reliable generators) are completely ignored in the meeja rush to bury hard analyses.

        Straight through the Looking Glass with Alice.

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          ianl8888

          Your comment is awaiting moderation

          I should have written id!ot – forgot, and used the actual word. Oh dear ..

          Catallaxy doesn’t seem to have this sens1it1vity …

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    Dennis

    Why did the transmission line towers collapse in SA during the storm?

    Because they were lightly constructed to save on costs, wind turbines connected to the electricity grid require many more towers and they were below the standard normally applied to these structures.

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    • #
      tom0mason

      Made down to price instead of up to a specification?

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      Dennis.

      It only needs one of those towers to ‘fold’, for whatever reason.

      Once that happens, the immense weight, under strain of the high tension wires ‘strung’ between the towers, by a combination of weight and strain, will just bring them down one after the other.

      Those high tension wires do not ‘snap’ or break, they just pull the other towers down.

      Only one needs to go, and the rest of them will just fold like a cheap suit.

      Once that happens, that ‘circuit’ and everything connected to it, in the way of power plants, is isolated from the grid. The remaining grid goes looking for replacement power , which overloads the next ‘circuit’, taking it offline, and then the remaining grid goes looking for replacement power, overloading that circuit and then tripping that off line, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, all done in virtually seconds.

      The only ‘solid’ link would then be the Heywood Interconnector, now hopelessly overloaded as more is demanded than it can supply, and to stop it turning into ‘an expensive brown odour’ it also trips offline.

      Viola, total Statewide power blackout, probably all stemming from the one tower collapse, for whatever reason.

      I would like to see an aerial photo of that row of towers which came down. Only one of them will be at an angle. The remainder will be ‘folded’ in the same direction as the transmission wires ‘strung’ between them.

      Tony.

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    Neville

    Let’s list a few random facts about co2 emissions, because we’ve just had more of our idiot pollies telling us that OZ must reduce emissions to stop more severe weather/climate in the future. They’ve already blamed the Coalition govt for cyclones and bushfires in the past.
    Of course Flannery and BOM scientist David Jones told us that we must expect more droughts and we would never get enough rain to fill our dams. Unbelievable but true.
    So here are some facts about co2 emissions and co2 levels.
    1. OZ emits just 1.3% of the world’s co2 emissions.
    2. The Concordia Uni study found that OZ was responsible for 0.006 c of the temp increase since 1800. Unbelievable but true.
    3. Most of the world’s co2 emissions increase until 2040 will come from the non OECD countries like India, China etc.
    4. Obama’s own 2016 EIA report tells us that co2 emissions will increase by 34% by 2040.
    5. The CSIRO tells us that the NH is the main source of human co2 emissions and the SH ( like OZ) are the main co2 sinks. So when do we get our reparations for absorbing more than our share of those co2 emissions?
    6. Satellite imagery over the last 30 years shows that the planet’s coastal land is actually increasing. Yet co2 emissions have increased heaps over that period.
    7. We’ve had much worse droughts and floods in the past when co2 levels were about 280 ppm.
    8. Co2 levels in the 1920s were about 300 ppm, yet Goklany’s studies show that the death rate from extreme weather events have dropped by 97% over the last 90+ years.
    9. CSIRO studies have shown that the planet is actually greening because of increased co2 emissions.
    10. Here is Matt Ridley’s Greening Planet talk about the benefits of extra co2 emissions over the last 40 years. This is full of facts and the latest research/studies. Well worth 18 minutes of your time.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-nsU_DaIZE

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      TdeF

      Neville, this thread has ended but I would like to write that increased ’emissions’ does not mean increased CO2. This is a common presumption simply because it is ‘obvious’. It isn’t. The biosphere for life on earth is earth, sea and sky. Free CO2 is 98% in the sea and the level of CO2 in the air is dependent on water temperature and nothing else. Any CO2 introduced is immediately in this equilibrium and half vanishes into the oceans in a mere 14 years. We could not make CO2 go up much if we tried.

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    pat

    3 Oct: The Hill: Jessie Hellmann: DiCaprio: Climate change deniers shouldn’t hold public office
    Politicians who don’t believe in climate change should not hold public office, said actor Leonardo DiCaprio Monday at the White House before the screening of his new climate documentary.
    “The scientific consensus is in and the argument is now over,” DiCaprio said at the White House’s South By South Lawn event.
    “If you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in facts, or in science or empirical truths and therefore, in my humble opinion, should not be allowed to hold public office.”…
    Ahead of the screening, he spoke on a panel with President Obama…
    “Climate change is almost perversely designed to be really hard to solve politically. It is a problem that creeps up on you,” Obama said.
    “The political system in every country is not well designed to do something tough now to solve a problem that people will really feel the impact of in the future.”…
    They plan to show it on college campuses and across swing states. It will be released via National Geographic later this month.
    FIRST COMMENT: I think it’s time to take his private jet away from him.
    http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/299097-dicaprio-climate-change-deniers-shouldnt-hold-public-office

    Daily Beast – obsessed with celebrity:

    4 Oct: DailyBeast: Matt Wilstein: Leo DiCaprio Praises Obama, Shades Donald Trump in Climate Change Talk at South By South Lawn
    The president and the socially-conscious movie star came together at the White House on Monday to draw attention to the rapidly-warming climate.
    On Monday, DiCaprio and Obama were joined by climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe from Texas Tech University. DiCaprio, who took on the role of interviewer for the evening, began by thanking Obama for his “extraordinary leadership” on environmental issues. “If you do not believe in climate change, you do not believe in facts,” the actor said, noting that anyone who doesn’t agree with the settled science “should not hold public office.” That comment, a clear dig at candidates like at Donald Trump who has called climate change a hoax perpetrated by China, was met with loud cheers from the crowd in attendance…
    “Climate change is happening at a faster rate than what was predicted even 5 years ago,” the president said, adding that we’re in a “race against time.” While the idea of a carbon tax also got a big ovation from attendees, the president admitted the likelihood of any “immediate” action in that area is still a “ways away.”
    Senator Bernie Sanders weighed in with his two cents on Twitter during the event…
    Choosing to take a back seat to those who know more about the issue than him, DiCaprio said so little during the the panel that you could almost forget he was one of the biggest movie stars in the world…
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/03/leonardo-dicaprio-praises-obama-shades-donald-trump-in-climate-change-talk-at-south-by-south-lawn.html

    WaPo: To avoid the worst climate impacts, Obama tells Leo DiCaprio, ‘We’re really in a race against time’
    HuffPo: Obama And Leonardo DiCaprio Warn There’s No Time Left For Climate Change Denial
    news.com.au: Obama, DiCaprio unite over climate change

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    Earl

    My name is Flymm Tannerri, of the Australian Klimate Kouncil, you can all me “Chairman Flymm”
    It gladenns my heart and fills my hole with soap, correction, soul with hope, to read and hear that India is to kommit to the Paris Agreement..
    With India on board, the other recalcitrant nations will follow the lead of this great nation.
    Further, myself, kommrad Kavid Daroly, and the polit bureau, formally known as the Bureau of Manipulation, [ BOM ], have determined that the weather pattern, now dominating the east of Australia, is the new normal.
    Dams and water storage can now be abandoned, there will be no need for supplementary storage, pipelines or desalination plants.
    This have been determined by reference to possum entrails, and the prognostic pendulum, [ rock on a string ].
    This pronouncement has been made in good faith, and The Kouncil bears no responsibility for the catastrophic failures of any enterprise using the information in the operation of the enterprise.

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    pat

    what to makes of this? who pays for it? more dogs in the videos – Easty & Mojo. only the Ridgy one seems to make any explicit reference to “warming”. hate to admit it, but i watched them all & can’t say i learned a thing. someone will probably recognise the narrator – he sounds familiar but i haven’t identified him:

    6 VIDEOS: 4 Oct: QueenslandCountryLife: Climatedogs Ridgy, Enso, Indy and Sam muster climate science
    WEATHER EXPLAINED:
    MEET Ridgy, Enso, Indy, Sam, – the four new national climatedogs that explain the latest science behind the key climate drivers bringing wetter and drier years to Australia’s farms.
    And while they may look cute, these dogs round up our biggest droughts and floods.
    Launched today on the Climate Kelpie website(LINK), this playful litter of animated sheepdogs help farmers and anyone reliant on the weather understand what influences the variation in Australia’s seasons…
    The new national climatedog video animation series was funded by the Managing Climate Variability (MCV) program and builds on the local climatedogs concept initiated by Agriculture Victoria.
    “The climatedogs have been redone to be relevant to all regions of Australia,” says climate specialist Graeme Anderson, with Agriculture Victoria.
    The videos have also been updated with the Bureau of Meteorology’s latest science through research funded by MCV…
    http://www.queenslandcountrylife.com.au/story/4205059/climate-dogs-off-the-leash-videos/?cs=4790

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    pat

    early celebration:

    3 Oct: ScientificAmerican: Global Climate Accord Will Take Effect Wednesday
    Europe’s vote will push the Paris Agreement across the finish line
    by Jean Chemnick, ClimateWire
    It’s a deal.
    The Paris Agreement on climate change is expected to meet all criteria to enter into force Wednesday when the European Union submits its ratification papers to the United Nations.
    The move brings to a close an effort by the Obama administration, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and others to set the global climate deal into motion before key leadership in certain countries—most obviously the United States—changes hands…
    The European Parliament is now expected to formally endorse the deal tomorrow in Strasbourg, France, and submit official papers to the United Nations on Wednesday…
    But it doesn’t mean that all of the bloc’s emissions can be counted toward the deal’s 55/55 threshold. Only seven E.U. countries have completed their domestic processes so far, including France, Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Portugal and Malta. The World Resources Institute (WRI), a Washington, D.C.-based environmental think tank, estimates that those countries will bring an additional 5 percent of the world’s emissions into the deal…
    But that’s enough…

    Poland and Italy tried to use the urgency other members felt to gain leverage over legislation that will determine which countries must deliver what share of the European Union’s promised emissions reductions. The bloc pledged to cut its carbon output by 40 percent compared with 1990 levels by 2030. Those cuts are to be delivered via a reformed emissions trading scheme and through an “effort-sharing” plan that would require Italy to cut its emissions by a third by 2030 and Poland to slash its emissions by 7 percent…

    India is currently throwing its weight around in discussions ahead of a meeting of parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer this month in Kigali, Rwanda, which seek to deliver an amendment that would phase down the production and use of hydrofluorocarbons used in air conditioning and cooling… India has insisted that poor countries should be allowed to grow their HFCs for another 15 years…
    But Durwood Zaelke of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development said Modi would need to communicate his commitment on the HFC issue to his environment team if India were to avoid being viewed as an obstructor in this process. He also noted that financial luminaries including Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates have backed a more stringent amendment in line with proposals advanced by the United States and other countries, which would freeze emissions for poor countries much sooner than India has envisioned…
    Gates, hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer and others have offered funding pledges to help poor countries make a swift transition to less climate-forcing coolants.
    ***“If Modi wants to be included among the big guys on climate, he has to step up his game,” Zaelke said…READ ALL
    http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/global-climate-accord-will-take-effect-wednesday/

    ***”BIG GUY” Zaelke:

    Durwood Zaelke
    Durwood Zaelke is founder and President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) in Washington, DC and Geneva; Director of the Secretariat for the International Network for Environmental Compliance & Enforcement (INECE) in Washington, DC and Geneva; and the co-Director and co-founder (with Dr. Oran Young and Matthew Stilwell) of the Program on Governance for Sustainable Development at the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California, Santa Barbara…READ ALL
    http://www.igsd.org/about/people/durwood-zaelke/

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    pat

    reminder: can’t access this at Business Standard, but here is the cached version:

    20 Dec 2015: Times of India: Sunita Narain: Paris – The endgame for climate justice
    (The writer is at the Centre for Science and Environment)
    The Paris climate conference has been feted as historic and ambitious. US President Barack Obama has personally called Prime Minister Narendra Modi to thank him for India’s cooperation to make the deal successful. But read the fine print, and it becomes clear that poorer countries have lost big time…

    But, if the world wants to cap temperatures then it must also agree to an ambitious plan to cap greenhouse emissions – which trap heat and cause increases in temperatures. The Paris agreement fails in this totally. In fact, the aggregate of all the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) adds up to a minimum increase of 3°C or much more. There is no target set for developed countries to take more aggressive cuts to reduce their contributions to the growing stock of emissions in the atmosphere…
    What is even worse is that Paris cements climate apartheid – so that the historical responsibility of the developed world of creating the problem of emissions is erased. Worse, the burden of future transition moves to the still developing world…
    Nowhere in the Paris draft, other than a weak sentence about “enhanced pre-2020 ambition that can lay a solid foundation for enhanced post-2020 ambition” is the fact mentioned that the already rich countries have to reduce now to leave space for the rest to grow. It is a known fact that the US action plan on climate change is nothing more than business as usual. It is also known that countries like the US have already appropriated some 21 per cent of the budget already spent and will use up another 10 per cent by 2030. The Paris agreement wipes this clean. In fact, what it does is to universalise action to reduce emissions, without apportioning the responsibilities or rights of countries for creating the problem or reducing emissions.
    In this situation, what countries like India have got are sweet nothings about ‘equity’ and ‘climate justice’, which the agreement says is important for ‘some’. The agreement does not operationalise equity by asking for the carbon budget to be shared fairly between nations. All it does is to make some vague promises about funds and technology that will be available in the distant future to developing countries for low-carbon growth. In this way, justice is kept as an illusion. The reality is that it is a deal that is inequitable and unambitious…

    The US non-governmental organisations’ allegiance was absolute because they (genuinely and naively) believe their government is doing all it can in spite of Republican Party opposition. Their media was in full attention – the likes of The New York Times and BBC had been seconded to scold and reprimand the governments of developing countries like India for misbehavior. So, what US government officials could not say, their media spelt out…
    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CHpR3vXYcR4J:www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/sunita-narain-paris-the-endgame-for-climate-justice-115122000640_1.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au

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