11 June 2007

Oh Downer

I know I only have a very small readership, and I'm very fond of all five of you. So being intelligent and sensitive types, you probably already knew this, but I just wanted to point out that our Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, is a liar. Here's some prime porky pies from a recent article in the SMH.
"To reduce China's emissions by 50-60 per cent and to do that in Australia as well - wherever you do it, at least in most countries - would be absolutely crippling."

To live with the effects of climate change would be far more crippling. Wheat, wool, tourism.. you name it, its affected by more frequent storms, unpredictable rains, and heat-waves. And the rate Australia's going we'll have international sanctions against our mineral exports before too long, for being nasty small minded pricks in international negotiations.
Australia could not match a country like Germany in cutting emissions from 1990 levels because of the shutdown of former East Germany's heavy-polluting industry.

What? I thought Germany also did a lot to meet their targets through wind power and energy efficiency. And they started working on it straight after they signed in 1997. Yes, Downer 10 years ago. 10 years in which Australia signed their intention to join, got an exemption to increase emissions, and then refused to ratify.

Mr Downer said if there was going to be a global agreement on climate change, it had to be multi-faceted. "It would be an enormous mistake to think that you could persuade the whole world to accept a one-size fits all approach."

Yes, it does, and yes it would. The approach is called the Kyoto Protocol. It entered into force on 16 Feb 2005. It is an international agreement written between 1990 and 1997 with staged targets, "flexible mechanisms" (that's a legal name for a methodology devised by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Downer, it means "multi-faceted") and a thing called "cleaner development mechanisms" - which is how rich countries can reduce emissions in poor countries, and use them to meet their own targets.

Mr Downer said China and other developing nations had a duty to improve living standards.

"You can't just say they should cripple their economies and people should remain endlessly in poverty. You have to find a way where China can gradually reduce its, if you like, CO2 emissions but at the same time its economy can continue to grow.

We have found a way, you obsfucating liar, liar, liar pants on fire. Its the basic premise of Kyoto. That rich countries have had over 200 years of benefit from industrialisation and wealth from fossil fuels. SO WE GO FIRST. Get it? We work out how to do the reductions, then after a 10 year period, the "developing" nations do too. "We" being nations who are responsible for 55% of the world's emissions. At the time, China and India signed up to say "yes, our time's coming, we'll make cuts too when you have had a red hot go." They are just standing by their international agreements by saying they don't want to hurt their economies right now.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

From the transcript of 4 Corners last night:

SALLY NEIGHBOUR: For the entire six months of Habib's detention in Egypt, and ever since then, the Australian Government has disavowed any knowledge of his rendition and claimed his presence there was never confirmed by the Egyptian authorities.

But a paper trail of Government cables and other documents, many of them marked "secret" but released under Freedom of Information, shows that within days of his transfer, the Government was "aware that Habib was in Egypt", and "in the custody of an Egyptian agency".

(On screen text: "the Australian Government is aware that Mr Habib is in Egypt, and is in the custody of an Egyptian Agency.")

This unequivocal statement stands in stark contrast to the years of duplicity and dissembling that followed.

(Excerpt from "Sunday" program, 13 February 2005):

ALEXANDER DOWNER, FOREIGN MINISTER: The Egyptians have at no time acknowledged that they did actually detain Habib, though we for a long time believe that they did, did detain him to the extent that when he was, we believe, in Egypt, and we know from what Habib said that he was in Egypt, our Ambassador raised his welfare and the fact that we thought the Egyptians had him with the Egyptian Prime Minister and other ministers and officials.

LAURIE OAKES, INTERVIEWER: Did we raise it with the US who took him there? In effect abducted him from Pakistan to send him there?

ALEXANDER DOWNER, FOREIGN MINISTER: Well, I don't have all – I don't have all the details of that. I don't have any evidence that the Americans took him there. To the best of my knowledge the Pakistan ...

LAURIE OAKES, INTERVIEWER: Well, he didn't walk.

ALEXANDER DOWNER, FOREIGN MINISTER: Well, he went from Pakistan to Egypt. There are a lot of different ways you can get from Pakistan to Egypt.

Anonymous said...

Amen sister! I hope your long weekend inproved! I managed to break my fingre but have a lovely time : )

BSharp said...

Hi guys. Nice to see that I'm not going entirely mad. Yeh I got stuff done in the end. And me and my sister got manicures. Kept our political ills at bay for a couple of days with very pretty nails.

alison said...

From today's Telegraph
India will not curb its Greenhouse gas emissions as long as the West continues to treat it as a 'second-class global citizen' with less right to pollute than the developed world, a senior Indian environment official has said. Pradipto Ghosh, who retired last month as India's environment secretary and now sits on a committee advising India's Prime Minister on climate change, warned that the West must "get serious" about its own cutting of emissions if it wanted progress on the issue.