Factbox: U.N. climate talks seek to avoid hype in Cancun
(Reuters) - A U.N. climate meeting in the Mexican beach resort of Cancun is taking a low key approach to unblocking U.N. climate talks after last year's much hyped Copenhagen summit ended acrimoniously.
Following are a comparison of the numbers of delegates at the two meetings, and of the costs of the U.N. climate talks in 2010 and 2009. The Cancun gathering of nearly 200 countries runs from November 29-December 10.
The Copenhagen summit was billed as the world's best chance to agree a global climate deal to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose present round ends in 2012, but ended with a non-binding agreement rejected by a clutch of countries on a bad-tempered final day.
The Cancun conference aims to agree on funds and approaches to preserve rainforests and prepare for a hotter world, and to formalize existing targets to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
DELEGATES AND OBSERVERS
* Cancun, 2010: Mexican authorities expect up to 22,000 people, including 9,000 official delegates plus journalists, environmentalists and others
* Copenhagen, 2009: more than 45,000 delegates and observers
COST
* The total cost of the U.N. climate talks, not including bills for many of the delegates, was about $238 million in 2009 and $82 million in 2010, or $320 million for the past two years combined.
* Cancun conference, 2010: cost about 841 million Mexican pesos ($67.33 million) to the Mexican government.
* Copenhagen summit, 2009: the Danish finance ministry said total costs were about 1.2 billion Danish Krone ($213.3 million)
* U.N. meetings: the United Nations climate change agency estimates that the cost of smaller meetings are about $5 million each. It organized five such meetings in 2009 and three in 2010.
(Reporting by Gerard Wynn, Editing by Jackie Frank)
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Last year’s “climategate” scandal began with the publication of thousands of U.N. climate scientist e-mails that revealed their eco-biases. These biases may be mitigated by the Inter Academy Council (IAC) reforms that would end the chronic exaggerations about global warming coming from the U.N.
What remains as disturbing about the U.N.’s climate culture is the socialist governance that has now been openly advocated by members of the IPCC. Several members meeting this week in Cancun at the annual conference to replace the 2012-expiring Kyoto Protocols have spoken in pure Marxist-socialist principles – wealth redistribution.
A Chinese member said that multi-billion dollar Western developed-nation payments would be the key to success of the Cancun meeting. And, co-chairman of the IPCC’s third working group, Ottmar Edenhofer, has stated, “One must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy…. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.”
The IPCC meeting in Cancun is not expected to accomplish much more than to subtly shift the operative regulatory language from “climate change” to “global biodiversity,” and attempt to shakedown developed countries for billions in order to fund underdeveloped countries under the guise of environmental and social justice. Karl Marx would be most proud.
It is clear that socialist ideologies and cultish environmentalism have replaced prudent science and economics in U.N. climate policy. Militant environmentalism and green-obsessed bureaucrats have become an “axis of antagonism” that we can no longer afford.
The deniers are SUCH a bunch of utter lunatics! Too bad they seem to have such a hold on the know-nothing — literally – so-called conservative politicians and public in the U.S. But, after all, stupid is as stupid does …
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