'Soft' Socialism Regulatory Agenda at UN is Thrown Upon Us
The UN, Europeans and Democratic Party are climbing all over each other to impose upon us more of the same: UN centered global environmental regulations.
In addition to holding tomorrow’s climate change conference in NY, they recently convened a meeting in Montreal this weekend which is claimed to have spawned another political declaration and agreement for new regulatory commitments. See below:
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=23918&Cr=climate&Cr1=change
22 September 2007 – An historic agreement to tackle the twin challenges of protecting the ozone layer and combating climate change has been agreed by governments meeting in Montreal on the 20th anniversary of a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) treaty established to control the release of harmful substances into the atmosphere.
Participating countries signed up to an accelerated freeze and phase-out of substances known as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) under the pact, according to UNEP.
The decision, including an agreement that sufficient funding will be made available to achieve the strategy, follows mounting evidence that HCFCs contribute to global warming, the agency said.
HCFCs emerged as replacement chemicals in the 1990s for air conditioning, some forms of refrigeration equipment and foams, following an earlier decision to phase-out older and more ozone-damaging chemicals known as CFCs or chlorofluorocarbons.
Governments meeting in Montreal ended their meeting on Friday with an agreement to freeze production of HCFCs in 2013 and bring forward the final phase-out date of these chemicals by 10 years.
The acceleration may also assist in restoring the health of the ozone layer — the high flying gas that filters out damaging levels of ultra-violet light — by a few years.
UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said the meeting’s outcome is an “important and quick win” for combating climate change.
“The precise and final savings in terms of greenhouse gas emissions could amount to several billions of tonnes, illustrating the complementarities of international environmental agreements,” he said.
Mt. Steiner said the spotlight now moves to New York where, on Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is hosting a summit meeting on climate change.
The gathering aims to build confidence in the run up to the UN Climate Convention negotiations scheduled for Bali, Indonesia, in December. That meeting will be tasked with hammering out an international greenhouse gas emissions reductions agreement to kick in after 2012, when the current legally binding Kyoto Protocol is set to expire.
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=23919&Cr=climate&Cr1=change
UN official says global climate change meeting should produce call for action
22 September 2007 – Just two days before national leaders from across the world gather at United Nations Headquarters in New York for the largest-ever high-level meeting on the problem of climate change, a senior UN official today said the event should produce a strong call for action to address the problem.
Yvo De Boer, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the upcoming gathering bringing together more than 80 heads of State and Government “is a sign of the growing consensus that the international community needs to act on climate change.”
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon convened the high-level event with a view to increasing international momentum toward a planned intergovernmental meeting this December in Bali, Indonesia, where participants will work to determine future action on mitigation, adaptation, the global carbon market and financing responses to climate change for the period after the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol – the current global framework for reducing greenhouse gas emissions – in 2012.
Mr. De Boer said today that the Bali conference must respond to the conclusions of the expert Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has predicted an increase in climate-change related impacts, such as changes in temperature and rainfall, increasing sea level and more frequent droughts, floods and other extreme weather events.
But the Bali meeting, he said, “cannot get to that point without the support of Heads of State and Government that will be gathering here on Monday.”
He voiced confidence that the Secretary-General’s initiative “will serve that purpose” and expressed hope that the meeting would produce “a clear call from heads of State and Government for real negotiations to begin in Bali in December with a view to completing them in 2009.”
The Secretary-General has said that a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol must be ready for ratification three years before its expiration in 2012 to allow countries to make it law in time.
A breakthrough in Bali, said Mr. De Boer, “is absolutely essential.”
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=23882&Cr=climate&Cr1=change
Businesses must support emissions reduction, top UN official says
20 September 2007 – The private sector must support industrialized countries’ serious emission reduction commitments to curb climate change and maintain the momentum of the system of exchanging emissions on the ‘carbon market,’ the top United Nations climate change official said today.
“Without binding commitments and the resulting downward pressure on greenhouse gas emissions, there is no carbon market. What’s worse, we might fail in our battle against climate change, and that would result in costs that are much higher than the cost of action now,” UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said at this year’s Carbon Finance World conference in Chicago.
Last year, the international carbon market – spawned by the 1997 UN-backed Kyoto Protocol – was worth more than $30 billion, triple its size in 2005, and is expected to grow significantly this year.
The carbon market “can help us achieve the necessary shifts to green investment and contribute to the additional hundreds of billions of dollars that are estimated to be needed to address this problem,” Mr. de Boer noted.
Emissions trading and other Kyoto-inspired and market-based systems, such as the clean development mechanism (CDM), which allows projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries to earn certified emission reduction credits, engage the business world and create low-cost opportunities to cut back emissions.
The CDM has grown considerably, with nearly 800 projects in 48 developing countries. It has “provided developed countries with a degree of flexibility in how they meet their commitments under the Kyoto Protocol,” the Executive Secretary said. “For the CDM to be truly effective, however, it must be scaled up substantially. This also applies to the carbon market as a whole, and for any other market mechanism Parties might choose to create as part of a post-2012 agreement.”
In a related development, the head of the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO) today said that the debate on combating climate change must not only focus on mitigation, but also on adaptation.
Speaking in advance of the high-level informal dialogue to be convened by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 24 September, WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said that all socio-economic sectors – influenced in some way by weather and the climate – will be impacted by the frequency and intensity of extreme events such as droughts and floods brought on by global warming.
Mr. Jarraud also called on the international community to step up support for countries without the necessary technology or resources to allow them to make the most optimal decisions on infrastructure building possible given the most current and accurate weather information.
Next week’s high-level meeting will set the stage for a major December summit in Bali, Indonesia, which will seek to determine future action on mitigation, adaptation, the global carbon market and financing responses to climate change for the period after the expiry of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.
http://www.un.org/climatechange/2007highlevel/about.shtml
About the High-Level Event
Secretary-General’s High-Level Event on Climate Change
The Secretary-General has identified climate change as a defining issue of our era and seeks to help facilitate international efforts to address the problem. The reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change this year show clearly that the warming of the earth’s climate system is unequivocal and attributable to human activities. Climate change is already having significant impacts in certain regions — particularly in developing countries — and on most ecosystems and can affect developing countries’ ability to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The reports also show that the problem can be addressed and solutions are affordable. Economic assessments indicate that the cost of inaction will exceed the cost of taking early action, probably by several orders of magnitude.
More concerted multilateral action is essential to address climate change, and the time for decisive action is now. Many initiatives are being launched and commitments undertaken by Member States, groups of States, civil society and the private sector in this respect. These are essential but not sufficient. A comprehensive, re-energized international response, complemented by such national and regional efforts, is needed. The United Nations and its Framework Convention on Climate Change offer the institutional framework within which a global solution to this global problem can be reached. Negotiations must be advanced this December in Bali so that a comprehensive package is ready by 2009 and legally in force by 2012. The May 2007 meetings under the UNFCCC in Bonn made good progress and suggest a willingness of governments to work together towards a breakthrough in Bali. The outcome of the G-8 and the G-8 +5 Summit in Heiligendamm last week also sent an encouraging signal and is seen by some as marking a shift in the political landscape.
Earlier this year, the Secretary-General appointed three Special Envoys to assist him with consultations with Governments on how he might facilitate progress in the multilateral climate change negotiations within the UN, as well as their views on a possible high-level event later this year. The Secretary-General and the Special Envoys have since sought the views of a representative group of Heads of State and Government. It was clear that for many of the leaders, climate change is a high priority issue — politically and personally. Widespread support was expressed for both the Secretary-General’s active involvement in this area and his convening of a high-level event.
Based on these consultations, the Secretary-General has decided to convene a high level event in New York on the day before the opening of the General Debate of the sixty-second session of the General Assembly, that is on 24 September 2007, to galvanize political will for the Bali Conference. The high-level event will seek to advance progress towards a global agreement under the UNFCCC but will not seek to engage Governments in negotiations.
The high-level event will build on progress made as of now in the framework of the UNFCCC process and recent initiatives by other organs of the United Nations, notably the thematic debate that the President of the General Assembly has announced her intention to convene. The Secretary-General encourages the participation of all Heads of State or Government in the High-Level Event and will soon be sending invitations to this effect. The event will be open to the media and considerable media attention is expected. The modalities of the High-Level Event will be determined fully through further consultations that the Secretary-General and his Special Envoys will conduct in the period leading up to the event.
Objective of the event
To promote dialogue, highlight priority issues within four broad thematic areas, and mobilize support at the highest level for a strong political signal to the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali that Governments are ready to accelerate work under the UNFCCC
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