Emissions to continue rising
Acres of newsprint have been wasted over the past week trying to convince everybody that Durban really did achieve something, namely that for the first time, China, India and the US have agreed to binding emissions cuts by 2020.
Despite the fact that Australia will have a carbon price for many years before the rest of the world, Julia and Greg have spun this to somehow justify Australia’s unilateral actions.
Graham Lloyd in The Australian falls for the line, in a piece yesterday:
The significance of setting a timeframe for a legal agreement that covers both developed and developing nations – with talks to conclude by 2015 and an agreement to take effect from 2020 – should not be understated. For the first time, large emerging economic powers such as China, India and Brazil agreed to legal constraints on their emissions.
“That would have been unthinkable” at the previous two big UN conferences in 2007 and 2009, says Anthony Hobley, head of climate change at London-based legal firm Norton Rose. “It’s a recognition of the reality of the shifts in global power.” (source – paywall)
But that’s not how India views the deal post-Durban:
Days after the Durban Climate Summit, Government today insisted that India has agreed to no legally-binding commitments to reduce its emissions in absolute terms in 2020.
Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan told Parliament that India has already announced a domestic mitigation goal of reducing the emissions intensity of its output by 20-25 per cent by 2020 in comparison with 2005 level.
“This goal is relative in nature and allows India’s emissions to grow as the economy grows,” she said in identical suo motu statements in both Houses.
She insisted that the decision of the Durban meet “does not imply that India has to take binding commitments to reduce its emissions in absolute terms in 2020.” (source)
The reality is, that whilst they may have vaguely committed to reducing emissions intensity (per unit GDP), they have made no commitment whatsoever with regard to absolute emissions, which will continue to rise. Similarly, China is building dozens of new coal-fired power stations every year, and there is no way on earth that China will bind themselves to reduce emissions, except (perhaps) in terms of intensity.
Which means, in short… emissions will continue to rise. Which means, in short, there will be no effect on the climate (assuming a climate sensitive to CO2 as the alarmists contend), which most of us were under the impression was the main aim.
So far from being a bold agreement to “save the planet”, Durban is a watered-down compromise which will see emissions continue to rise for the foreseeable future, and which will ensure that Australia’s tiny 5% cut by 2020 will be well and truly lost in the noise.
Australia’s unilateral action is pointless and damaging, will send our industries offshore and, thanks to rapidly spiralling energy costs, will consign many to poverty. And by the way, it won’t save the planet either.
Australian Climate Madness 
good for them ! there is no global warming from humans its the sun , every country should do their own thing , stop policing the world and mind your own business
Well done India
Durban achieved SFA!
The wording of the pre-treaty Durban agreement has yet to be ratified and in true bureaucratic fashion will be left to the lawyers to decipher just what it all means for individual countries.
In other words, it’s an agreement to create another Kyoto type agreement by 2015, to come into existence by 2020, however there are no legally binding commitments for any country to do anything, at this time and certainly not before 2020.
The Australian governments carbon (dioxide) tax is therefore unnecessary and should be postponed and put before the next election now that Kyoto is dead and nothing will be binding until 2020, if ever!
The Durban “party” was over….they were all drunk and tired and just wanted to go home. They had not “picked up” a decent looking bed partner because they’re all a bunch of losers and were never going to get one in the first place…so they grabbed the last remaining whore (this “agreement”) and left…
The picture above this article gives the wrong impression.
CO2 is a transparent gas. Not dangerous at all.
We use it in beer and other drinks.
It is plant food.
We need 1000 ppm to optimize the growrh of plants, to feed the increasing worldpopulation.
And CO2 is not the reason of climatevariations.
Hear hear Todd. Screw the globalists!
There is no creditable experiment that shows that the “greenhouse gas effect exists.
The Mann-made global warming is a total political hoax. Those that promote the carbon tax are criminals. OF course we know what the origan of Australia is the prison colony, maybe its time to send some of your criminals back to England. Julia should be the first.
It’s an agrreement to make an agrrement to talk about making an agrrement at some future date that has yet to br agreed on.
It was an agreement to make an agreement to possibly talk about making a binding agreement at a future date yet to be agreed on.