Bali Fallout – Moon of Alabama

December 16, 2007

Bali Fallout

The Bali Action Plan will not matter much as it does not include binding commitments. But the conference showed an interesting change in attitude towards U.S. neocon stubbornness.

Earlier Enviro-Bamboozler James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, proclaimed:

We will lead. The U.S. will lead, but leadership also requires others to fall in line and follow.

The arrogance of demanding ‘leadership’ in doing nothing was not appreciated by those ‘others’:

The head of the U.S. delegation, Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, announced the United States was rejecting the plan. Her comments were met by booing from other delegations.

[…]

After Dobriansky’s announcement, a delegate from the developing country of Papua New Guinea challenged the United States to "either lead, follow or get out of the way."

Five minutes later, when it appeared the conference was on the brink of collapse, Dobriansky took the floor again to say the United States was willing to accept the arrangement.

Booing at a diplomatic conference is unheard of. The ‘lone superpower’ surrendering in public is extraordinary.

Dick Cheney may well shoot
Dobriansky for cowardcy in front of the enemy. Papua New Guinea will be added to the Axis of Evil.

But the damage is done. The ‘rest of the world’ has seen weekness and it will follow up on that. International diplomacy just became much more interesting.

Dobriansky is by the way a neo-conservative and member of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). Her sister Lariassa is lobbying for Exxon Mobile. Their father worked for Ronald Reagan and was active in various right wing organizations.

The instigators at the National Review, the Weakly Standard bearers and the AEI arsonists will have to take notice. One of their core members failed to hold the line. From now on it’s retreat.

Posted by b on December 16, 2007 at 09:58 UTC | Permalink

Comments

You think she acted without authorization?
That’s not how these people do things, is it?

Posted by: rjj | Dec 16 2007 13:36 utc | 1

America’s contribution to any and all global warming efforts is obstruction.
America’s royalty are not going to suffer seriously from global warming at any point in time, so why would they countenance expenses to fight it? That wouldn’t be prudent. Why, even ten minutes of delay in implementing global warming treaties is worth many tens of millions in ongoing profit taking.
The purpose and end goal of this Bali conference was for all nations to agree to launch a year or so of Serious Talks toward a treaty. It was a meeting to agree to meetings, nothing more solid than that.
Dobriansky was there to strongly take the position that the USA would not go along with the consensus. When that position became absolutely untenable, Paula moved smoothly on to her fall back position — pre-approved by Dick Cheney and his royal masters — of agreeing to the consensus. She did this in order for America to remain a part of the Serious Talks to come.
Why does America’s royalty want America in on these Serious Talks about global warming? To hollow them out, of course.
During these Serious Talks, constant obstructions to agreement will be raised by the representatives of the USA, 99% of them in closed and private negotiations, unreported. The agreements will come hard, and the consensus will require immense amounts of watering down in order to pass. What emerges out the other end will look, feel, and smell like the night soil that fertilizes the raised garden beds of countless Chinese villages.
This Bali surrender was only a public charade, done only on pain of exclusion from the process, done only to remain part of the process — in order to slow it down, obstruct it, delay it, derail it, hollow it out.
Hollow treaties, hollow regulations, hollow governments is the neocon program. Achieving this, the reign of men over laws begins, and lasts for as long as rapine finds property and lives to feast upon. It is the royal program.
America is in on the Bali consensus now, in order to make it hollow, and keep it hollow, in order to protect royalty, in order to protect profits.
This so called Bali surrender was just another victory for UESLA, for the Upper East Side Liberation Army.
“The rich march on Washington every day.”
— I.F. Stone

Posted by: UESLA | Dec 16 2007 14:47 utc | 2

Why does America’s royalty want America in on these Serious Talks about global warming? To hollow them out, of course.
of course… Bushcult is nothing if not calculating. -These criminals never surrender, and if they do, it’s because they have a knife hiding behind their backs ready to stick it in at any possible moment.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Dec 16 2007 15:06 utc | 3

Sure, the US role, and good post, B, but the whole endeavor is a scam.
Money talks in the shape of carbon credits, or emission allowances, it drives me nuts. Reminds me of giving coins to wash away moral sins.
Annex B of the Kyoto prococol (Annex 1 countries or parties, -read ‘developed’ or semi-d’ – just to make it really confusing..) of the protocol emissions standards lists reduction targets in % of emissions.
Minus 8% applies to Austria and Belgium; Estonia and Latvia and Slovenia…many others. Belgium and Slovenia are lodged at the same % ? Why? Following which criteria?
The US* is judged as less sinful as only minus 7% is required.
As far as I can gather – and I am no expert it is the first time I read this ‘Accounting’ manual – the % apply to countries, not to area, built up territory, per capita, present use, or anything else I can discern, though the vague drift is obvious:
Australia* has permission of plus 8 %. Iceland of plus 10%.
The text is impenetrable and has no internal logic (see kafkaesque quote at end, that is the whole point of course…)
What it boils down to is a new tax mechanism on burning FF, or indulgences (sic) to pollute (Aus.) Rich countries that burn and fry can pay poorer countries to refrain, in function of completely fanciful guide lines; or they can ‘invest’ in green initiatives that are supposed to compensate their extravagance and thus keep it going… Eg. As Switzerland is way above its ‘allotment’ it can repair by paying for Philippino children to plant trees, -oh those cute kids and tender tiny green leaves about 3 cms high- which might one day, if watered and maintained, absorb some carbon from the Swiss Chemie (chemical) and Arms industry!
(*not signatories at time of text.)
Annex I Parties must meet specific methodological and reporting
requirements, or criteria, under Article 5, paragraphs 1 and 2, and Article 7,
paragraphs 1 and 4, in order to be eligible to participate in each of these
mechanisms (see section 3). These eligibility criteria help to ensure that a
Party is accounting accurately for its emissions and assigned amount, so that
use of the Kyoto mechanisms will not jeopardize the Party’s compliance
with its Article 3, paragraph 1, commitment. Each Party’s eligibility to
participate in each of the Kyoto mechanisms will be determined as a normal
outcome of reporting, review and compliance procedures under the Protocol.
kyoto accounting manual **PDF**

Posted by: Tangerine | Dec 16 2007 16:59 utc | 4

Oh, nevermind … Climate deal runs straight into trouble with US

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AFP) – A hard-fought deal fixing a 2009 deadline for a new treaty to tackle global warming ran straight into trouble Sunday with the United States voicing “serious concerns” over its provisions.
As negotiators headed home after two weeks of intense haggling, the White House complained that the agreement did not do enough to commit major emerging economies such as China and India to big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
…
An isolated US delegation had backed down during an unplanned 13th day of talks and said it would finally accept the deal, but hours later US President George W. Bush’s administration counter-attacked.
The White House said any Kyoto successor treaty must acknowledge a nation’s sovereign right to pursue economic growth and energy security.
…
The drama of Bali will be minor compared to the poker game when talks on a new treaty reach crunch point, said Fernando Tudela, Mexico’s under-secretary for environmental policy.
“The mother of all battles will be in 2009,” he cautioned. “This is just a warm-up.”

Posted by: b | Dec 16 2007 17:41 utc | 5

It is all just an extension of what has been going on post-colonialist times: IMF, World Bank, free market, human rights demands, indoctrination, pandering to ‘corrupted’ elites or setting them up; with compensation paid in food aid (surplus), cash, NGOs who diddle about with this or that; help with public health, media splashes, lots of earnest talk, obfuscating bureaucracy, white men in Mercedes with guards, black men in Mercedes without guards, starving children on the TV; extraction, corruption, lies.
Global warming, a) will not affect the elites personally, b) may be beneficial here and there, c) is adaptable to in some measure, d) is not perceived as alarming in a free market Friedmanesque pov – btw the Pope just came out and said it was ideological rather than scientific!, e) serves to cover up other problems, GW being ‘world wide’, hard to deal with, rife with controversy, much of it manufactured, not really anyone’s fault, except ‘humanity’, thus implying that a hated ‘world gvmt.’ might be needed, f) overall, a hovering calamity that we don’t know what to do about so let’s have business as usual, with some pious pontificating and lots of rules to show clean hands and continue to extract resources (Iraq, Africa, etc.)

Posted by: Tangerine | Dec 16 2007 18:25 utc | 6

@Tangerine – you are certainly right – but:
Global warming, g) is big business
Building wind energy mills etc can make a lot of money too.
Action probably depends on which lobbyist pays the most …

Posted by: b | Dec 16 2007 19:31 utc | 7

Papua New Guinea! 😀
True, the US will never sign a real anti-global-warming agreement, and will sabotage the talks as much as possible, but THAT strategy depends on successful dissimulation.
When the world, generally, sees through the dissimulation, the American role in the talks will end: The US will be cut out.
How? Compliance will not come through talk. Oil shortages and American economic collapse are two developments to watch. There will be others. That carbon footprint is going DOWN.

Posted by: Gaianne | Dec 17 2007 3:01 utc | 8

Monbiot: We’ve been suckered again by the US. So far the Bali deal is worse than Kyoto

In both cases, the US demanded terms that appeared impossible for the other nations to accept. Before Kyoto, the other negotiators flatly rejected Gore’s proposals for emissions trading. So his team threatened to sink the talks. The other nations capitulated, but the US still held out on technicalities until the very last moment, when it suddenly appeared to concede. In 1997 and in 2007 it got the best of both worlds: it wrecked the treaty and was praised for saving it.
Hilary Benn is an idiot. Our diplomats are suckers. American negotiators have pulled the same trick twice, and for the second time our governments have fallen for it.
There are still two years to go, but so far the new agreement is even worse than the Kyoto protocol. It contains no targets and no dates. A new set of guidelines also agreed at Bali extend and strengthen the worst of Gore’s trading scams, the clean development mechanism. Benn and the other dupes are cheering and waving their hats as the train leaves the station at last, having failed to notice that it is travelling in the wrong direction.

Posted by: b | Dec 17 2007 10:34 utc | 9

Global warming, g) is big business
…that is true as well. There are many opportunities.
Investors Bet on Global Warming
quote:
“(Global warming) started out as an environmental issue, but it crossed over to become a quite fundamental financial and economic issue,” said Nick Robins, head of SRI (Socially Responsible Investment) Funds for Henderson Global Investors in London.”
wired.com
Turn a Profit From Global-Warming Stocks
the street
Etc.

Posted by: Tangerine | Dec 18 2007 17:38 utc | 10

walden bello

Perhaps the best indication on whether the conference was right to bend over backward almost 180 degrees to accommodate the United States will come next month in Honolulu during the Major Economies Meeting, a Washington-initiated conference originally designed to subvert the UN process. The question on everyone’s lips is: Will the Bush administration revert to form and use the conference to launch a separate process to derail the Bali Roadmap?

Posted by: b real | Dec 18 2007 19:35 utc | 11

We humans can be very self congratulatory about our achievements. After a piss up in Bali where acquaintances who are lucky enough to live there permanently (fortunately well away from the south end’s gridlock) tell me they saw Javanese and Sulawesi women shipped in by the ferry load in the weeks beforehand, attendees at that bachannal assure:

““This is a real breakthrough, a real opportunity for the international community to successfully fight climate change,” said UNFCCC Secretary General Yvo de Boer. “Parties have recognized the urgency of action on climate change.” . . .

So a mob of sleekly rotund spruikers for the insane philosophy of ever expanding consumption go to a piss up just about as far away from where they live as can be possibly found. Denpassar airport was landing a large or jumbo passenger aircraft every 16 minutes for the 36 hours prior to the ‘conference’ Mostly from Europe and North America, one can’t help but think whatever comes out of the piss-up probably won’t even offset the ‘carbon footprint’ created by the event. Note the hookers who were dragged in on overcrowded ferries then herded into buses for the ride to the southern tip where the party was to be held, made a much smaller carbon contribution. kinda makes a mockery of the BushCo claim that it is so called developing nations who need to lift their game.
Compare the achievements of the Bali conventioneers with the bar-tailed godwits we saw wading and foraging at low tide today. They are flat out feeding up on mussels pipis and cockles. They have fully recovered from their journey to NZ which is a non stop flight of 11,000 kilometres all the way from their breeding site in Alaska.
When these waders arrive during September, often in the middle of the night, they are so exhausted by their effort they can’t close their wings which remain stiffly jutting out from their bodies as if the bird has been shot or drugged.
The trip back to the Arctic, to Siberia or Alaska, is meant to be less rigorous. Undertaken towards the end of summer (Late February) the birds head north west towards the Chinese Korean border where they make a rest and refuelling stop. That journey is a little over 10,000 kilometres non-stop. Here is the annual journey of a mature female bar-tailed godwit.
However, given the third point of this triangle up in asia, is as much about refuelling as resting, and given the Alaskan and NZ stops aren’t as rich a harvest as they once were, one can’t help but wonder how much longer this amazing bird with it’s casually incredible annual journeys will last.
It has picked a rest spot which is heavily favoured by humans as an ideally unloved corner to produce the tat – chintzy, and meaninglessly synthetic shit most so called developed people are currently elbowing and cursing their way to cash registers all over the planet to ‘buy’ as an offering in celebration of their godhead Material Success.
Chromium, zinc, lead, and other metals are filtered from the polluted waterways of southern China by the shellfish that are a bar tailed god-wits sustenence, how long can they live on that staple?
Oh well. Not to worry. Some over educated halfwit will devise a way to keep the genetic material alive while ‘teaching’ this amazing example of endurance to stay in the aviary. That will take the jauntiness out of the godwit wade. Good job too, who do these damn birds think they are, flying around spreading disease?

Posted by: Debs is dead | Dec 18 2007 23:06 utc | 12

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