Philip Stott over klimaatconferentie Durban

Philip Stott heeft onlangs zijn evaluatie gepubliceerd van de klimaatconferentie in Durban (officieel COP 17). In een ver verleden schreven Philllip Stott en ik voor dezelfde Amerikaanse website: Tech Central Station, TCS. Hier vind je zijn erfenis en hier de mijne.

Philip, die nogal linksig is, voelde zich toch niet thuis in het rechtse TCS-gezelschap en hield het al gauw voor gezien. Dat was jammer, want hij schrijft de sterren van de hemel. Van een oersaai en nietszeggend gebeuren weet hij in zijn verslaggeving nog een boeiend theater te maken, waarbij hij uitbunding blijk geeft van zijn kennis van de klassieken.

Dat gold niet voor de Nederlandse reguliere media. De berichtgeving over Durban was nogal droog. Het valt echter positief te waarderen dat zij niet in huilie-huilie toonaarden over dit nieuwe echec rapporteerden. Vroeger was dat wel eens anders.

Onder de titel, 'The BASIC Truth About Durban' volgen hier enkele passage's uit Stott's nabeschouwing van de recente poppenkast in Durban.

Philip Stott:

The basic truth about Durban, the latest and 17th Feydeau farce passing as serious UN climate talks, is simple: the BASIC countries - Brazil, South Africa, India, and China - played a blinder. They outwitted comprehensively the ever-zealous, naive, and hypocritical EU to ensure that they achieved their fundamental goals, which were to delay any agreement on a replacement for the failing Kyoto Protocol until at least 2015, and any actual action to cut emissions until at least 2020.

And, of course, by then, the plate tectonics of world politics may have altered even more radically, so that further delays will be eminently possible, or the global warming narrative - we can only hope - will have withered away permanently into perennial greenhouse history.

I watched their basic tactics with growing admiration. First it would be China, then India, to raise objections, while South Africa, the host nation, often seemed to lack “urgency” or “ambition”, as certain commentators bemusedly observed. Meanwhile, the US simply tagged along, playing the game to adapt the BASIC strategy to their own advantage. In the end, the BASIC countries got precisely what they wanted, and, in doing so, saved us all from the immediate imposition of billions of dollars of further debt. We owe them a lot.

Of course, the BBC and other media with a basic global-warming agenda have tried to ‘Pangloss’ and ‘Polyannaerise’ the whole debacle, although even they have had a harder job this time round, so comprehensive are the built-in delaying mechanisms achieved by the BASIC bloc. ...

Erg positief over de NGO's is Stott ook al niet.

Regrettably, the global-warming Ship of Fools carries so many spouting Kyoto-like nonsense; witness the barmy desire of Oxfam and the WWF to add further economic burdens in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions onto international shipping, the very agent for trade and growth in the developing world. I confess to have given up entirely on global-warming embracing charities like Oxfam and Christian Aid. I thought that they were about preventing poverty.

Maar zijn giftigste pijlen bewaarde Stott toch voor Chris Huhne.

But, above all, there is the UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the absurdly-dire Chris Huhne, who is more and more worthy of Swiftian parody and scorn. Unfortunately, Huhne is beyond a mere joke, because his energy policies could well cause lasting damage to UK competitiveness, and to life on this island. We must devoutly hope that, like one of his overly-expensive turbines, he goes down very soon in flames, as the winds of change blow dramatically over the global warming madness. But, at least, we now have the BASICS in place to build a defensive wall against such suicidal policies.

Lees verder hier.

Grappig ja! Maar het is toch in wezen diep treurig dat het soort wereldvreemde mensen, dat in COP 17 de toon aangeeft, er in slagen de wereldgemeenschap maar voortdurend in gijzeling te houden met hun sprookjes, waardoor er inmiddels jaarlijks honderden miljarden in een bodemloze put verdwijnen.