Image: "France in Defeat, 1940," "Frenchman weeps as German troops march into Paris, June 14, 1940, "It took only six weeks for France to capitulate to the German invaders. A stunning defeat - particularly since before the war the French army was considered the most powerful in Europe."...Eyewitness to History.
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6/1/15, "Climate deal must avoid US Congress approval, French minister says," AP in Bonn, UK Guardian
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| French FM Fabius |
"The global climate agreement being negotiated this year must be worded in such a way that it doesn’t require approval by the US Congress, the French foreign minister said on Monday.
Laurent Fabius told African delegates at UN climate talks in Bonn that “we know the politics in the US. "Whether we like it or not, if it comes to the Congress, they will refuse.”
If negotiators follow his plan, that would exclude an international treaty that has legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions — something some countries still insist on but which would have no chance of being ratified by the Republican-controlled Congress.
“We must find a formula which is valuable for everybody and valuable for the US without going to the Congress,” said Fabius, who will host the UN climate summit in Paris in December where the new agreement is supposed to be adopted.
Those pushing for a legally binding deal in Paris include the European Union and small island nations who fear being wiped out by rising seas."...
[Ed. note: Fact check AP: The EU is incapable of administering climate or any large program. It knowingly misspent a quarter of $500 billion taxpayer dollars diverted to it for the purpose of saving the climate. EU's total efforts had "no climate benefits," per Harvard environmental expert Stavins.]
(continuing): "Amjad Abdulla, a Maldives delegate who is the chief negotiator for the small-island group, said while the group still wants a binding agreement. “I think it’s important that we get everyone on board. We are still looking into options,” he said.
One possible outcome in Paris is a deal in which some elements are binding but not the emissions targets set by individual countries. The Obama administration has pledged to reduce US emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025.
The Peruvian environment minister, Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, said he was “completely sure that we will have an agreement in Paris”, despite the complex political situation in the US.
Jennifer Morgan, a climate policy expert at the World Resources Institute, said it was encouraging that Fabius was raising the legal issue now so it can be dealt with before the Paris conference.
“It’s a sign that he’s really pushing countries to come to terms with what the agreement can and cannot be,” she said.
Negotiators also need to decide how to differentiate between what rich and poor countries should do to fight climate change, and how to verify that countries are doing what they say they would.
The main goal for the two-week session in Bonn that began on Monday is to shorten the sprawling climate change negotiating text.
Ahead of the meeting, six European oil and gas companies called for a global price on carbon [dioxide].
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In a letter to Fabius and the UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, the chief executives of Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Eni, Total, Statoil and the BG Group said carbon markets should be introduced around the world and eventually linked into an international system."...
[Ed. note: Prince Charles is a patron of Royal Dutch Shell via his sponsorship of EU Corporate Leaders Group on Climate Change (EUCLG). The UK monarch also mobilizes CO2 profiteering via, "Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group," which is housed at University of Cambridge and whose members include Royal Dutch Shell, 3M, Coca Cola, Lloyds Bank, Unilever, Glaxo Smith Kline, EDF Energy, United Technologies, BT, Land Rover, Sky, and others. The Prince of Wales’s Corporate Leaders Group (CLG) was actively involved in UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in Sept. 2014 Climate Week in New York. The financial futures of Prince Charles and the UK monarchy are staked on profits from offshore wind farm leases and other products of the imaginary global CO2 danger industry.]
(continuing): "Carbon markets set limits on the pollution a company can release and allow them to trade emission permits using the market to set the price.
“Our companies would like to open direct dialogue with the UN and willing governments,” the companies said.
Some environmental groups were suspicious of the letter, with Greenpeace calling it a “smokescreen”, and the role carbon markets will play in the Paris agreement is still unclear.
“In the long term, they have the wrong business model. And that’s something they have to acknowledge,” said Martin Kaiser, a Greenpeace climate policy expert.
Image: "The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius: ‘We know the politics in the US. Whether we like it or not, if it comes to the Congress, they will refuse.' Photograph: Martin Meissner/AP"
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"Europe has used renewables to drive up the cost of climate protection, suppress carbon prices and “simply relocate emissions from one sector under the cap to another sector under the cap or from one geographic area to another under the cap, so they have no incremental climate benefits,” Robert Stavins, the director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, said Jan. 31."...
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2/15/15, "EU Policy Mash Roils Markets Before Paris Climate Deal," Bloomberg, Mathew Carr
"The European Union’s carbon market, designed to save the environment, is being undercut by a patchwork of national subsidies for renewables and misaligned energy policies that have helped cut in half the volume of power being traded.
The bloc wasted a quarter of the $550 billion spent on renewable energy, according to analysis by consulting firm Bain & Co. presented last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Some energy-saving policies cost more than 18 times the price of the region’s carbon allowances, Bain said. Power-trading volume in 2014 was 46 percent that of three years previously, broker data show.
Overspending lowers the chance other nations will emulate the bloc’s plans for emissions cuts as they prepare climate pledges under a United Nations process during the next six weeks, leading to a meeting in Paris in December, according to Bain. The International Energy Agency says the region, which failed to meet its own target for creating a united energy market by last year, risks losing investment in energy-intensive industries to those in the U.S.
Uncoordinated national incentives prodded investors to build too many wind farms in Spain and led to a surplus of solar panels in Germany. This wouldn’t have happened to such an extent had the bloc relied more on its carbon market, Julian Critchlow, partner at Bain, said by phone Jan. 23 from Davos.
EU benchmark carbon allowances dropped 2.5 percent last month, their biggest decline since September. Lawmakers haven’t yet agreed on rules of a reserve that’s designed to deal with a 12-month glut in the world’s biggest greenhouse gas market. Permits were stable at 7.72 euros ($8.80) a metric ton on ICE Futures Europe at 9:53 a.m. in London.
Contending with the possible exit of Greece from the euro area, the region’s lawmakers are simultaneously seeking to redefine the so-called “energy union” of the bloc to make manufacturing more profitable and improve security of supply. EON SE, ThyssenKrupp AG and Dow Chemical Co. are among companies to have warned investment in the region is at risk.
Europe needs to rely more on the most cost-effective solutions to entice investment, Russel Mills, director of energy and climate policy at Dow Chemical, the biggest U.S. chemicals maker, said Feb. 6 by phone from Horgen, Switzerland. “At the end of last year, there was an emphasis to get a low-cost, low-carbon strategy for Europe, but now it’s back to mainly low-carbon.”
The bloc will examine the cost of its policies as it proposes by Feb. 25 rules to improve the energy union, Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, spokeswoman for the commission in Brussels, said Feb. 4 by e-mail. It may offer new laws to improve uncoordinated national policies and state support of renewables, according to an EU document obtained by Bloomberg.
It’s difficult to be sure the bloc has overspent, according to Richard Sandor, who helped invent interest-rate futures more than 30 years ago and was the founder of Climate Exchange Plc in London before selling it to Intercontinental Exchange Inc.
European countries and U.S. states including California are currently acting as laboratories to inform federal government structures how to best regulate for larger, more efficient markets being set up to reduce climate change through 2050 and beyond, Sandor said Jan. 30 by phone from Chicago. While claims of wasted money “might be true in the short term; it certainly might not be true in the long term,” he said.
Europe has used renewables to drive up the cost of climate protection, suppress carbon prices and “simply relocate emissions from one sector under the cap to another sector under the cap or from one geographic area to another under the cap, so they have no incremental climate benefits,” Robert Stavins, the director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, said Jan. 31 by e-mail.
The region has “deeply embedded differences” between member states, some of whom favor markets, with others preferring interventionist approaches, according to a report published in April and part-funded by the EU. That means reform, even after 2020, will be “difficult to achieve.”
About 10 percent of the installed power capacity in Germany, the region’s biggest market, is unprofitable, Sanford C Bernstein Ltd. estimated in October. The nation produced 157 terrawatt hours or renewable power last year, 50 percent more than in 2010, according to Agora Energiewende, an energy researcher in Berlin.
Warring policies mean power trading levels have been hurt because Europe’s investment in renewable resources “came on so fast that it left a lot of existing plant sitting silent before the end of its life,” said Bain’s Critchlow.
The volume of power trades shrank 6 percent last year to a level equivalent to less than half 2011 levels, according to data from the London Energy Brokers’ Association.
Europe’s energy plan “is not the strategy a country would pursue if it was taking an optimal pathway,” Bain said. “It’s a depressing picture and one that can’t be continued if the bloc wants to avoid driving more jobs out of Europe.”"
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EU fails audit for 19th consecutive year:
11/4/14, "EU auditors refuse to sign off more than £100billion ($150 billion US) of its own spending," UK Telegraph, by Bruno Waterfield. Peter Dominiczak
"Brussels accounts have not been given the all clear for 19 years running."
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Prince Charles even involved himself in Texas politics by "personally addressing" state legislators there on global warming via video in 2009: "A conference was also held at the Texas Capitol in Austin (in 2009) in which a video of Prince Charles personally addressing Texan politicians on the subject of climate change was shown."...
4/3/12, "(Texas Gov.) Rick Perry criticises UK initiative to influence US climate sceptics," UK Guardian, Leo Hickman
"Rick Perry, the governor of Texas and former Republican presidential candidate, has criticised the UK's Foreign Office for funding an environmental group which aimed to "educate" Texan policymakers about climate science and "move them from a state of denial and inaction to one of acceptance and effective action"
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In 2009, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) gave £13,673 to the US-based Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to part-fund a project entitled "Influencing climate security policy and legislation in Texas", the Guardian has learned. The money was used to fly two Texan state politicians, including the climate sceptic Republican Troy Fraser, to the UK to receive a briefing with climate scientists and government officials. A conference was also held at the Texas Capitol in Austin in which a video of Prince Charles personally addressing Texan politicians on the subject of climate change was shown.
Perry, a vocal climate sceptic, described the FCO's spending on the project as "misdirected". His spokeswoman told the Guardian: "In Texas, we base our policy decisions on sound science and what is ultimately best for our citizens. Man-made global warming remains but a theory and one where thousands of scientists remain sceptical. It would be irresponsible to put our entire economy at risk based on unproven science. Our state has one of the best success stories in cleaning our air, all while remaining the nation's leading energy producer and job creator. Given these achievements, it would seem those UK tax dollars were misdirected."...
"UK experts on climate change science, economics and policy (including emissions trading) met with and gave testimony to Texas House and Senate committees in advance of and during the legislative session in response to a direct request from key Texas legislatures."
Details about the FCO's spending on climate change and energy projects were obtained by the Guardian after a Freedom of Information request."...
Image from Prince of Wales's Corporate Leaders Group
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Comment: Pathetically, Texas legislators agreed to fly to the UK to allegedly receive a "briefing with climate scientists and government officials."
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10/31/2010, "Andrew’s friend the Abu Dhabi prince - and the £3billion windfarm off Britain that could earn the Queen millions," UK Daily Mail, Ian Gallagher and George Arbuthnott
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A UK citizen suggests Prince Charles renounce the throne if he wishes to continue his political activism:
2/5/2014, "Monckton: Challenge to Prince Charles," WUWT Guest Blogger
"Lord Monckton invites ‘Chazza’ to spar over ‘unroyal’ global-warming remark."
"His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales,
Clarence House, London.
Candlemas, 2014
Your Royal Highness’ recent remarks describing those who have scientific and economic reason to question the Establishment opinion on climatic apocalypse in uncomplimentary and unroyal terms as “headless chickens” mark the end of our constitutional monarchy and a return to the direct involvement of the Royal Family, in the Person of our future king, no less, in the cut and thrust of partisan politics.
Now that Your Royal Highness has offered Your Person as fair game in the shootout of politics, I am at last free to offer two options. I need no longer hold back, as so many have held back, as Your Royal Highness’ interventions in politics have become more frequent and less acceptable in their manner as well as in their matter."...
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10/24/10, “Queen’s £38m a year windfarm windfall,” This is money, by Martin Delgado and Christopher Leake
“Experts predict the growth in offshore windfarms could be worth up to £250m a year to the Crown Estate….’It is wholly inappropriate that the Palace should have such a direct interest in a subject like windfarms, given Prince Charles's obsession with renewable energy. It raises the question as to
- whether he is seeking to increase his own
each time he makes a favourable reference to wind power.’”...
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12/31/10, “One’s in the money! Why Prince Charles’s secret 20-year campaign could make him the richest king in history,” UK Daily Mail, G. Levy
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