Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Brazil won’t host next UN Climate Conference in the interest of maintaining Brazil’s sovereignty over the Amazon, per president-elect Bolsonaro-Euractiv, 12/3/18

.
Brazil’s [so-called] far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro said on Wednesday (28 November) that he pushed the government to withdraw its offer to host the United Nations climate conference next year, maintaining that his country’s sovereignty over the Amazon was at stake.”
 
12/3/18, Macron threatens to scupper EU-South America trade deal over climate,” Euractiv, Sam Morgan

French President Emmanuel Macron has warned that he will oppose a trade deal between the EU and Mercosur [South American trade group] if Brazil’s incoming [so-called] far-right president pulls his country out of the Paris Agreement [in which countries and organizations “agree” to receive part of $100 billion yearly from “developed” countries (ie, US taxpayers) beyond the trillion+ already taken from US taxpayers by the US political class since 1990 and which theft will continue in perpetuity in the name of excess global CO2 which, even if it were a bad thing, can only be remedied by Communist China].


Negotiations 20-years-in-the-making are still ongoing between the EU and Mercosur, whose active members are Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, and the current sticking point is the issue of agricultural imports. 

“I cannot ask French farmers and workers to change their production habits to lead the ecological transition, only to sign trade agreements with countries that do not do the same, Macron said. “We want balanced agreements.” 

France is one of the EU countries, along with Ireland, that are most apprehensive about the prospective deal, which could include beef imports and compete with domestic production. 

The EU’s list of protected products is also a bone of contention in the talks. 

Prospect of higher Mercosur meat quotas angers French farmers 

Meat imports were a significant obstacle in brokering the EU’s trade deal with Canada. Now, the same issue has cropped up in the ongoing Mercosur talks, infuriating French livestock farmers and politicians. EURACTIV France reports. 

Although the European Commission is tasked with negotiating EU trade deals, far-reaching agreements need the full support of the member states. That system verged on farcical in 2016, when the Belgian regional parliament of Wallonia temporarily blocked the CETA deal with Canada. 

Brazil’s president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, said before his election that he would pull the South American powerhouse out of the 2015 climate agreement. 

Although later backtracking on his pledge to mirror US President Donald Trump’s decision, Bolsonaro’s current stance is still not clear cut ahead of taking office in January. 

On Brazilian television at the weekend he said that he would respect the Agreement, so long as “Brazil doesn’t lose sovereignty over most of the Amazon”.

Brazil might not be the only country to pay a heavy trade price as a result of not honouring its Paris Agreement commitments, as Australia has also cast doubt on its involvement. The EU is currently negotiating a commercial deal with the southern hemisphere nation.

Australia’s new prime minister will not walk away from the Paris climate agreement, although his new policies now make it unlikely the country will meet its emissions reduction goal. 

Ongoing trade talks with the EU could also hinge on how climate policy continues to develop. 

Cast-iron commitment

As UN climate talks get underway in Poland at the COP24 summit, the hunt is still on for a replacement host to jump into the seat vacated by Brazil last week, after Bolosnaro announced that the 2020 edition would not happen as planned. 

The [so-called] far-right politician, who has been labelled the South American Trump, said he had instructed his future foreign minister, who says climate change is “a Marxist plot” to nix the plans. 

Brazil scraps plans to host UN climate summit 

Brazil’s [so-called] far-right president-elect Jair Bolsonaro said on Wednesday (28 November) that he pushed the government to withdraw its offer to host the United Nations climate conference next year, maintaining that his country’s sovereignty over the Amazon was at stake. 

Argentina may step into the void left by Brazil, after it showed that its capital of Buenos Aires is capable of hosting high-level talks like the G20.

Climate matters were included in the final conclusions of the meeting, with the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies (except Trump’s US) reiterating that “the Paris Agreement is irreversible”. France and China also signed their own climate declaration to the same effect.

The G20-1 leaders also recommitted themselves to the “full implementation” of the climate pact, although that is not the current state-of-play, as the majority of G20 countries are nowhere near on track to meet the Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 or even 2 degrees Celsius.

According to a new report released by Climate Transparency in November, 15 of the G20 nations reported rises in emissions levels last year, while 82% of energy needs are still met by fossil fuel sources.

EU efforts to stick to the Paris Agreement were crystallised last week, when the  European Commission released its long-term strategy for 2050.

It is now up to national leaders to decide which of the strategy’s eight scenarios is the best option, although climate experts insist that the EU should be producing net-zero emissions by 2050 at the very latest to stick to the Agreement.”
…………………………………….

Added: Seeking “climate action?” Look no further than US taxpayers and the Executive branch of US government (no voters allowed):

Thanks to George HW Bush, the entire US political class, and their access to unlimited US taxpayer cash, “climate action” exploded in 1990 and will continue as long as US taxpayers exist.  (Chart below, page 4, pdf, is an underestimate, doesn’t include congressional appropriations):

..........
“Note and Sources: The data shown here are funding disbursements by the White House U.S. Global Change Research Program and its predecessor, the National Climate Program, available at NCP 1988, 43; Climate Science Watch 2007; and Leggett, Lattanzio, and Bruner 2013. These data, however, do not represent congressional climate science funding appropriations to other government agencies. As we show later in a more detailed assessment of U.S. government climate science funding, the numbers here, especially those for more recent years, greatly underestimate the actual level of funding.” pdf p. 4

Fall 2015, Causes and Consequences of the Climate Science Boom," independent.org, Butos and McQuade

Government policies and funding as well as the emergence of a scientific “Big Player” [UN IPCC] that has aggressively championed the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming (AGW)1, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have together fomented a boom in climate science that began in the early 1990s and has grown markedly over the past decade.”…



.........

No comments: