"“There are three issues –constraining industry, sending money abroad, and strengthening the UN." Nigel Purvis
1/13/12, "US Republicans stir transatlantic tensions over climate change," EurActiv
"Concerns are growing in Brussels that persistent denial of human-caused global warming among Republican presidential hopefuls
- could damage EU-US relations and even spark a trade conflict.
All the leading challengers for the White House have staked out positions on global warming that defy the international scientific consensus, causing what Thomas Legge, a climate officer for the German Marshall Fund, called “exasperation” in Brussels."...
- (Ed. note: The German Marshall Fund's Board of Trustees includes the Editor in Chief of Politico, the Chairman of a Solar Company, Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg (Bloomberg has large financial interest in global warming), and ex Republican Senator Bob Bennett who mistakenly assumed he had a job in the Senate for life.)
(continuing, EurActiv): "Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in September she was “shocked that the political debate in the US is so far away from the scientific facts.”
“When you hear American presidential candidates denying climate change, it's difficult to take,” she said.
If a Republican president disrupted the EU's inclusion of aviation in the EU’s Emissions Trading System, or its default values ascribed to oil from tar sands, Jo Leinen, the chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee, called for
- “a reaction that would affect transatlantic trade.”
Trade turbulence
“In order to have a fair competition between our industries and theirs, we could talk about broader measures against materials from the US with high energy intensity or output of climate gases like steel, metals, and chemical products,” he told EurActiv.
This could take the form of “a CO2 levy or tax on the border to compensate for the [low carbon] investments in products made in Europe,” he said.
): "He also suggested that “the candidates are taking positions of necessity to win primaries andRather than continue with current EU-US relations, Leinen proposed a move by the EU to
- “orient itself towards a coalition with China.”"...
But Sarah Ludford, the Liberal vice-chair of the EU’s delegation for relations with the United States, disagreed with trade sanctions, while conceding that Republican positions were “a long way from the mainstream of European thinking”....
“I hope that Obama wins the election and we get a more moderate and encouraging position from the US administration,” she added, speaking in a personal capacity.
Six candidates are vying for the Republican party's nomination to challenge Democrat incumbent Barack Obama in the November general election.
Republican brainchild
Ironically, the ‘cap and trade’ idea that underwrites the global carbon market was originally the brainchild of US Republicans [via George Bush #1]. But this changed because of what one senior US climate negotiator at Kyoto described as a collection of “toxic” ingredients.
“There are three issues –
- constraining industry,
- sending money abroad, and
- strengthening the UN –
that are inflammatory on their own right,” Nigel Purvis, a State Department official under the Clinton and Bush administrations, said on the phone from Washington.
More than that, the climate change issue had become a symbol of ‘big government’ for Republicans, Purvis argued, and this had been amplified by “an enormous amount of campaign finance contributions and political advertising” paid for by the fossil fuel industry, and some trades-unions.
- When you put all these factors together, they are a Molotov cocktail,” Purvis said. “It is unfortunate and quite dangerous.”
Durban roadmap
The UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has said leadership changes in the US and elsewhere should not undermine progress towards setting up a globally binding climate deal by 2015, as set down in the roadmap at the recent global climate summit in Durban, South Africa.
However, Republican party presidential contenders may disagree with Figueres' analysis.
Rick Santorum has described global warming as “a liberal conspiracy” for government control, based on “junk science”. Mitt Romney argues that the origins of climate change are unknown, and little should be spent on countering it.
Ron Paul has called global warming “the greatest hoax… in hundreds of years”, while Rick Perry described it as a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight”. Newt Gingrich has recanted past support for climate action.
Only the moderate outrider Jon Huntsman accepts the climate science adhered to by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change and some 98% of the world’s scientific community.
Legge says the current crop of Republican contenders might be less antagonistic to climate science in the White House than they were on the hustings, partly because the government’s civil service is staffed by officials with scientific backgrounds.
- He also suggested that “the candidates are taking positions of necessity to win primaries and they will then tack back to the centre.”
Nigel Purvis, now the president of the Climate Advisers* consultancy in Washington, agreed that there was long-term cause for optimism with progress being made towards tackling US carbon emissions.
But “it is really regrettable that we have gone from being on the brink of a major success in 2009 with the election of a strong climate champion [Obama] and Democrat control of the Congress,
- back even further than we were when George W. Bush was elected.”
“The revisiting of the basics on science is depressing,” he said."*
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*"In 2008, Mr. Purvis served as a senior adviser on climate diplomacy to the Obama-Biden campaign." He is founder and president of Climate Advisers.
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Ed. note: EurActiv itself has reported on murders by 'climate militias' in poor countries where demands of European carbon offsets deals are met. UN personnel can't be prosecuted by US courts no matter what crime they commit with our money.
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5/25/11, "Contract Dispute With United Nations Could Lead to End of Diplomatic Immunity," Fox News Ed Barnes
"A federal judge in New York has issued an order that could lift the U.N.’s long-recognized diplomatic immunity in the United States involving contract disputes, opening the doors for claims of “hundreds of millions of dollars” against the world body, according to lawyers involved in the case.
Following a ruling by Judge P. Kevin Castel, both the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times on Wednesday published legal notices on behalf of Kahraman Sadikoglu, a Turkish billionaire businessman who is suing the U.N. Development Program (UNDP) for $150 million.
Click here to read the notices: 1 and 2.
The notices are a legal substitute for the process of officially serving the lawsuit to U.N. officials, who have refused to accept the authority of U.S. courts in this and other legal matters.
Sadikoglu was hired by the UNDP to clear the Iraqi harbor of Um Qasr, Iraq’s largest port in 2003, so that supplies could be delivered to the war-shattered nation. He has fought since that time to be paid for the work, and according to his lawyers is suing now because the U.N. failed to honor the terms of a 2008 agreement that would have settled the matter.
“But when they learned that money would come from their own funds,” according to George G. Irving, Sadikoglu’s attorney at the time, “they just ignored him.” Most of the reconstruction funds had either come from American or Iraqi coffers.
According to Irving, who once worked in the Legal Affairs Office of the U.N. Secretary General, it could open up the floodgates for hundreds of similar lawsuits.
“It is not unusual for the U.N. to play these kinds of games with contractors. They try to frustrate them at every turn so they give up and go away,” he said. But because those contractors would now have access to the courts, the amounts the U.N. could be forced to pay could “amount to hundreds of millions of dollars in claims.”
One officer at an international aid organization said the problem of non-payment is so bad that organizations now mockingly say the UNDP acronym really stands for “U.N. Don’t Pay.”
UNDP has since rebuffed efforts to reach a settlement, rejected the idea of arbitration, and has even refused to accept notice a lawsuit had been filed.
It was that defiance of legal procedure, and the failure of the organization to follow its own procedures, that prompted Castel to allow Sadikoglu’s lawyers to circumvent the normal requirements of serving notice of the suit. If Castel goes on to hear the case, it would set a precedent by erasing the U.N.’s diplomatic immunity,- at least on contract disputes.
Asked about the new development, Stanislav Saling, a public affairs officer with the U.N., emailed this response: “We are aware of the case regarding Mr. Sadikoglu and have been in discussions with him for a number of years in an effort to come to some common understanding. However, since this matter is now under consideration in court, I cannot comment further.”
Sadikoglu’s story was one of the rare cases of early reconstruction in Iraq actually working. Originally hired by Saddam Hussein to clear Um Qasr of wreckage from the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, Sadikoglu’s work was suspended because of U.N. sanctions against Saddam and other problems. But he was asked to continue with the project by UNDP after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq forced Saddam from power.
The project was massive. Nineteen sunken ships had to be cleared from the harbor, cut up and sold for salvage. Sadikoglu brought in nine of his own ships to house the recovery crews and perform the work. Despite the chaos and terror of the early years of the invasion, Sadikoglu was able to raise the ships and open the harbor.
Officials from the Coalition Provisional Authority, who had oversight of the port at the time, said Sadikoglu not only completed the work on time, but managed to meet the changing demands of the UNDP as the work progressed. They, too, said they
- cannot understand why he was never paid."
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