Sure - but it does get difficult when you can't tell where the corporation ends and the government begins.
Durban Climate Change Conference 2011
- Thread starter mentalfloss
- Start date
Sure - but it does get difficult when you can't tell where the corporation ends and the government begins.
Don't vote Conservative if you want to avoid that problem.
Durban talks progress as hosts urge Canada not to bully
DURBAN, South Africa — Signs of progress emerged Saturday at international climate change negotiations as thousands took to the streets urging global leaders to step up their efforts.
The demonstration came one day after China indicated it was considering joining a “legally binding” deal to reduce emissions. At the same time, the conference also received a draft text that offered different options for negotiators for achieving a $100-billion-per-year green fund by 2020 to help developing countries tackle the causes and impacts of global warming.
Developed countries have pledged to offer “fast-start” financing over the first few years, but the text suggested new taxes in shipping and aviation as other options to consider.
Canada already pledged about $1.2 billion over three years to help kick-start the fund, Environment Minister Peter Kent had said before the conference got underway.
But the host country of the conference also urged Canada to reconsider turning its back on the Kyoto Protocol, suggesting Kent was “bullying” poorer countries to support the Canadian government’s anti-Kyoto Protocol stance.
Kent has described Kyoto as an agreement of the “past” and that Canada, as with Japan and Russia, will not take on new targets beyond the existing commitment period that ends in 2012.
Mohau Pheko, South Africa’s high commissioner to Canada, said she was particularly disturbed by Kent’s recent suggestions that he would take a hard line approach against developing nations and challenge founding principles of the existing international climate change agreements that require developed countries to take responsibility for causing the environmental threat over the past 150 years.
“That’s bullying,” she said in a wide-ranging interview with Postmedia News in Ottawa. “How does a developed country say something like that? That is absolute bullying in the system. You don’t do that.”
She said her country has been approached by other nations in vulnerable positions that have been lobbied by Canada to leave the treaty. “We must also recall that many of things are linked to aid packages and there’s arm-twisting,” she said.
Pheko, echoing comments from other emerging economies such as Brazil, suggested it would be more practical to fix problematic elements of the Kyoto agreement rather than starting from scratch on a new deal.
“It’s our job to come in and restructure it as we see fit,” she said. “But to lobby other countries to pull out of the instrument and leave nothing in place is far more dangerous.”
She said extending the treaty also would encourage reductions in industrialized countries to continue as international negotiators work on building a more comprehensive agreement that resolves major concerns. “That way, it buys us enough time to fix these issues and to put in place, properly, agreed ways of what we mean when we say a legally binding agreement should mean the same thing.”
Pheko said South African government officials also have asked Canada to be more transparent about its national concerns and objectives, beyond its existing public skepticism about emissions from major economies such as China, the U.S. and India.
Although she said the Canadian government in recent years has acted like a “brat” that pulls out of multilateral discussions when it doesn’t get its way, she said her government still has faith Canada will re-engage with the international community. “Canada for us, is not a lost cause, despite all the speculation,” she said. “We believe that the system works when we are at the table and it’s better to come to the table with your problems and allow other parties to listen. And what we’re going to create is an environment that enables everyone to listen to your issues.
Kent is expected to join the negotiations in Durban up until the conference wraps up on Friday.
How many evil companies are partly owned by Canadian taxpayers and Canadian govt investments?
YOU ARE THE EVIL CORPORATION!!!
YOU ARE THE EVIL CORPORATION!!!
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I hope to do this right
www.behindthenumbers.ca/2011/07/13/deconstucting-bcs-carbon-nuetral-government/
hope that works .
this is not the article I originally was thinking about,but being from the left leaning centre for policy alternatives you might
pay more attention than anything from say the fraser institute.
Lots more info where thta came from just google .
Easy, tiger. This is a 404 page.
You are totally in the wrong place. This is an error page. You might have stumbled here by accident or the post you are looking for is no longer here.
Please, try one of the following:
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Durban: The early skirmishes
Japan itself sits at one diagonal extreme - very keen to get cracking on a new agreement, very unkeen on more cuts under the KP. Russia sits alongside.
At the opposite extreme is the powerful Basic bloc - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - very keen on seeing Japan and its rich counterparts get fully back inside the KP, not keen on starting talks on a new agreement.
Small island states want a bit of both; the US and Canada want neither.
A number of developing countries believe there's no place for a new mandate leading to a new global agreement, because the world should still be working on the mandate agreed at the Bali summit four years ago.
"I exchanged views with my European colleagues before I came here and told them very clearly that a mandate is too much," Li Gao, a senior Chinese negotiator, told the AFP news agency.
Come next year's meeting, they'll be in the last chance saloon for deciding their KP approach, as the meeting will take place just a few weeks before the protocol's current targets expire at the end of 2012.
If the EU wants to begin talking about a new global deal, maybe the price will be to keep the KP going.
Whether that gets the Basics on board with a new mandate given that Japan, Russia and Canada will not be taking the KP route is another matter.
If not, the talks won't begin - period.
What has been highlighted yet again is the disjointed nature of many governments' approaches to energy and climate issues. The past and the present abound with instances where the right hand is trying to do something to restrain emissions while the left does something in a completely different context to boost emissions.
So the UK, for example, has been slammed by campaigners over its behind-the-scenes lobbying on Canada's oil sands - a fuel that if it is exploited on a big scale will mean "game over for the climate", according to US climate scientist James Hansen.
And the latest example comes in the form of a report from a coalition of campaign groups on banks' sustained investment in coal.
The BankTrack network attempted to unravel just how much leading banks are putting into mining coal and using it to generate electricity.
Its report covers 93 leading banks, 31 major coal producers (accounting for almost half the global total) and 40 companies running coal-fired power stations (more than half the global total).
The combined investment in coal from these banks amounts to 232bn euros (£199bn, $309bn) since 1997 - the year of the Kyoto Protocol's birth.
Part of the campaigners' strategy is to "name and shame" the banks involved. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and the Bank of America head their list, with more than 10bn euros invested each in coal, according to the group's calculations.
But maybe there's a bigger issue than dissecting out the individual players.
As Heffa Schuecking of the German campaign group urgewald puts it: "If banks provide money for these projects, they will wreck all attempts to limit global warming to 2C."
So is it consistent for governments aiming for tight curbs on greenhouse gas emissions to allow banks to make such big investments in coal - especially when the G20 has pledged to end fossil fuel subsidies? If you're a government that doesn't profess a desire to constrain carbon emissions, then it makes perfect sense to allow banks operating on your territory to make these coal investments.
BBC News - Durban: The early skirmishes
Again, the point is continued to be reiterated by scientists and environmental policymakers - the more you focus your policy around a particular resource, the more you are dependent on it.
Japan itself sits at one diagonal extreme - very keen to get cracking on a new agreement, very unkeen on more cuts under the KP. Russia sits alongside.
At the opposite extreme is the powerful Basic bloc - Brazil, South Africa, India and China - very keen on seeing Japan and its rich counterparts get fully back inside the KP, not keen on starting talks on a new agreement.
Small island states want a bit of both; the US and Canada want neither.
A number of developing countries believe there's no place for a new mandate leading to a new global agreement, because the world should still be working on the mandate agreed at the Bali summit four years ago.
"I exchanged views with my European colleagues before I came here and told them very clearly that a mandate is too much," Li Gao, a senior Chinese negotiator, told the AFP news agency.
Come next year's meeting, they'll be in the last chance saloon for deciding their KP approach, as the meeting will take place just a few weeks before the protocol's current targets expire at the end of 2012.
If the EU wants to begin talking about a new global deal, maybe the price will be to keep the KP going.
Whether that gets the Basics on board with a new mandate given that Japan, Russia and Canada will not be taking the KP route is another matter.
If not, the talks won't begin - period.
What has been highlighted yet again is the disjointed nature of many governments' approaches to energy and climate issues. The past and the present abound with instances where the right hand is trying to do something to restrain emissions while the left does something in a completely different context to boost emissions.
So the UK, for example, has been slammed by campaigners over its behind-the-scenes lobbying on Canada's oil sands - a fuel that if it is exploited on a big scale will mean "game over for the climate", according to US climate scientist James Hansen.
And the latest example comes in the form of a report from a coalition of campaign groups on banks' sustained investment in coal.
The BankTrack network attempted to unravel just how much leading banks are putting into mining coal and using it to generate electricity.
Its report covers 93 leading banks, 31 major coal producers (accounting for almost half the global total) and 40 companies running coal-fired power stations (more than half the global total).
The combined investment in coal from these banks amounts to 232bn euros (£199bn, $309bn) since 1997 - the year of the Kyoto Protocol's birth.
Part of the campaigners' strategy is to "name and shame" the banks involved. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and the Bank of America head their list, with more than 10bn euros invested each in coal, according to the group's calculations.
But maybe there's a bigger issue than dissecting out the individual players.
As Heffa Schuecking of the German campaign group urgewald puts it: "If banks provide money for these projects, they will wreck all attempts to limit global warming to 2C."
So is it consistent for governments aiming for tight curbs on greenhouse gas emissions to allow banks to make such big investments in coal - especially when the G20 has pledged to end fossil fuel subsidies? If you're a government that doesn't profess a desire to constrain carbon emissions, then it makes perfect sense to allow banks operating on your territory to make these coal investments.
BBC News - Durban: The early skirmishes
Again, the point is continued to be reiterated by scientists and environmental policymakers - the more you focus your policy around a particular resource, the more you are dependent on it.
Did you read the article?
It's the banks - and environmentalists are shaming them. They don't want to give them more money.
So you want to set up a whole new banking system to deal with Carbon taxes? That ought to be cheap like borscht.
I'm still waiting to see how BC's Carbon Tax has reduced consumption and has been a benefit to the average British Columbian.
I'm still waiting to see how BC's Carbon Tax has reduced consumption and has been a benefit to the average British Columbian.