Tuesday 24th of December 2024
Home » Blogs » Gus Leonisky's blog

under the non-magic carpet......

The international climate talks in Egypt — the 27th Conference of Parties to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP27 — have become a dystopian nightmare: Oil companies, dictators and greenwashers captured the process more effectively than ever. 

But there is hope: Alliances are taking shape — between civil society, scientists and labor — that aim to break the fossil fuel companies’ deathly grip on climate policy.

 

BY Simon Pirani

 

Corporate Capture 

This year’s United Nations climate summit, which ends on November 17 at the luxury Sharm el-Sheikh resort, is the first to which oil and gas companies were invited to participate in the official program of events. Rachel Rose Jackson of Corporate Accountability commented that “COP27 looks like a fossil fuel industry trade show.”

At least 636 fossil fuel lobbyists were there, 25 percent more than at last year’s talks in Glasgow. The lobbyists outnumbered the combined delegations of the 10 countries most impacted by climate change, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Mozambique, research by Corporate Europe Observatory, Corporate Accountability and Global Witness showed.

The world’s largest oil producers strutted their stuff. Saudi Arabia ran an event to promote the “circular carbon economy,” under which carbon capture, hydrogen, and other fossil fuel-based technologies are falsely promoted as “clean.” 

Wealth and power were flaunted. Coca-Cola, the world’s top plastic polluter, sponsored the talks. Delegates flew in on private jets: Thirty-six arrived at Sharm el-Sheikh as the summit began, and another 64 flew into Cairo. The Egyptian authorities ignored the international campaignto free dissident Alaa Abd El-Fattah — who is serving a five-year jail sentence for a social media post — and other political prisoners.

Central to the fossil fuel industry’s PR offensive is the new dash for gas, kick-started by the Russian war on Ukraine and Moscow’s decision to limit gas supplies to Europe. For the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, an alliance of 17 big gas producers including Egypt, COP27 was “a great opportunity to make a case for gas in the energy transition.”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, plans to build 26 new import terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) have been announced in Europe; the EU has signed a deal with Egypt and Israel to support gas extraction in the East Mediterranean Sea; and European politicians have sought gas project deals with African nations.

Once a gas project is decided on, it can take up to 10 years before production starts. So Europe’s supply gap this year and next will be filled, if at all, by existing producers such as Qatar, the U.S. and Australia, not by new projects. The danger is that, over the next decade, those projects will push the world still further from the goal of limiting global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius (1.5°C) above pre-industrial levels.

The International Energy Agency saysthat, to hit “net zero” targets, there can be no new gas or oil fields, and that gas demand must be slashed; UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in June that investing in oil or gas production was “delusional.”

Although natural gas produces only about half the carbon emissions per unit of energy that coal does, climate science says it must be phased out. Moreover, leakages of methane (i.e. gas) have been recognized as a significant climate threat: Methane’s greenhouse effect, over a 20-year timespan, is 86 times as powerful as carbon dioxide’s. And yet in May, the European Commission classifiednatural gas as a “sustainable” source of energy under its investment taxonomy rules, and in September the U.K. government offered new licences for North Sea oil and gas fields. It was these greenwashing, wealthy country governments that, with oil companies, turned COP27 into a climate disaster.

At Sharm el-Sheikh, African governments presented gas projects on the continent as a means of economic development — but they “will not deliver for African communities,” warned Don’t Gas Africa, an alliance of civil society groups that advocate large-scale renewables as opposed to export-focused fossil fuel production. 

Nigerian climate justice campaigner Nnimmo Bassey, coordinator of Oilwatch International, denounced the African governments’ pro-gas stance as “ecocide and intergenerational crime” that “perpetuates colonialism and ecological irresponsibility.”

 

Governments’ Inaction and Civil Society Response

The fossil fuel PR circus at Sharm el-Sheikh has obscured the frightful crisis at the heart of the talks: that the door is closing on the possibility of keeping global heating to 1.5°C, as Climate Action Tracker researchers showed in an authoritative report on climate inaction.

Nations’ current policies will produce global heating of between 2.2°C and 3.4°C by the end of the century, the report showed. Commitments made at last year’s Glasgow talks to toughen up national targets (Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs) have been broken; commitments made to exit from coal have been disrupted; and rich countries have again broken promises to finance the energy transition in the Global South.

In Sharm el-Sheikh, talks about implementing already-inadequate decisions went at snail’s pace. Delegates from outside the rich world fumed at slow progress on Loss and Damage, the principle that rich countries should pay for the billions of dollars in damage already done by climate change — for example, by the floods in Pakistan this summer. Campaigners urged a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies for this purpose. 

The fossil fuel companies’ brazen grandstanding, and governments’ acquiescence, has tested the faith of campaign groups, climate scientists, and others in the prospect of top-down solutions to the climate crisis.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg stayed away from Sharm el-Sheikh, describingthe negotiations as “an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing.” Rather than the COP’s incremental steps, “system-wide transformation” is needed, she said at a London book launch, infuriating right-wing commentators and techno-utopians.

But Thunberg was reflecting deeply felt anger among campaign groups, including those who have for years invested hope in the COP process. More than 450 organizations supported a call for a UN Accountability Framework to “end corporate capture”; throw “big polluters” out of the climate talks; require delegates publicly to disclose their interests; ban partnership or sponsorship of talks by the polluters; and ease restrictions on civil society access.

As the climate talks have lurched towards greenwashing, protests and direct actions over governments’ failures are gaining momentum again after being disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Pascoe Sabido, researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory, said:

There is a movement on the streets [about climate change], but it has not been translated into political power. The problem is the power of governments, and their alliance with fossil fuel companies. Until we break open that relationship, there will not be a transition away from fossil fuels.

 Outside the Talks

So are the climate talks part of the problem, or part of the solution? It is not only activists who are asking. The authors of the UN Environment Programme’s latest “Emissions Gap Report” described their findings as “testimony to inadequate action on the global climate crisis, and is a call for the rapid transformation of societies.”

There had been “very little progress” since the 2021 Glasgow talks, and governments’ current policies are on track to cause 2.8°C rise in temperature by 2100, the report says. “Multiple major transformations must be initiated in this decade, simultaneously across all [fossil fuel-based technological] systems.”

Thirty-plus years of history matters. Prior to the talks in Egypt, climate scientists shared on social media a graph showing the relentless rise in the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content, from about 360 parts per million (ppm) when the Rio climate treaty was signed in 1992, to 420 ppm now. The inexorable rise in fossil fuel use is the main cause.

The alliance of the world’s most powerful states, who negotiated the climate agreements, is not only unwilling, but also unable, to do what is needed. To prevent dangerous global heating, systems must change — not only technological systems, but economic and social ones. And those governments’ function is to defend and manage those systems, not transform them. Society as a whole will have to deal with climate change, in defiance of those governments.

 

 

READ MORE:

https://truthout.org/articles/greenwashing-governments-and-oil-companies-turned-cop27-into-a-climate-disaster/

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.........••••••••••••••••••••#####!!!

between rocks.....

THE WORLD IS CAUGHT BETWEEN INTERPRETATIONS OF OUR CHANGING CLIMATE.

SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATIONS HAS TOLD US THAT THE EARTH CLIMATE IS CHANGING: WARMING UP CONTRARILY TO OTHER WELL-HEEDED SCIENTIFIC THEORIES TELLING US WE SHOULD BE ON OUR WAY TOWARDS ANOTHER NATURAL ICE-AGE.

SO WHAT INFUENCES ARE "CHANGING (WARMING) THE CLIMATE"? FOR ABOUT 130 YEARS, SINCE SVANTE ARRHENIUS CALCULATIONS, WE HAVE KNOWN THAT CO2 (CARBON DIOXIDE) IS THE MAIN PART OF THESE INFLUENCES. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION WAS DEEEMED THEN, 130 YEARS AGO, AS THE FACTOR THAT WOULD INCREASE THE TEMPEARTURE OF THE SURFACE OF THE PLANET BY 2 DEGREES CELSIUS.

I REPEAT: WE'VE KNOWN THIS FOR 130 YEARS. 

 

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION:

BURNING COAL

BURNING OIL AND GAS

HUSBANDRY OF CATTLE AND HERDS

DESTRUCTION OF NATURAL HABITATS (FOREST AS CARBON SINKS)

POLLUTION OF OCEANS AND LANDS

MECHANISED WARS

IGNORANCE OF HUMAN INFLUENCES ON THE STATUS OF THE PLANET

PROFIT MAKING FROM GROWTH

 

BY THE TIME OF ARRHENIUS CALCULATIONS, THE HUMAN POPULATION WAS ABOUT 1.6 BILLION.

WE ARE NOW 8 BILLIONS

 

MORE TO COME.

rock one and rock 2......

THERE ARE SEVERAL DYNAMICS AND MANY OPINIONS BEING PROPOSED IN REGARD TO "CLIMATE CHANGE" AKA ANTHROPOMORPHIC GLOBAL WARMING. 

HUMANS ARE WARMING THE PLANET.

HUMANS WANT TO MAKE MONEY.

SOME HUMANS DECIDE TO MITIGATE GLOBAL WARMING WHILE MAKING MONEY. OTHERS HUMANS SEE THIS AS A CROCK — MOSTLY BECAUSE MAKING MONEY (AKA PROFITEERING FROM INDUSTRIALISATION) HAS BEEN AT THE SOURCE OF THE PROBLEM. OTHERS SEE BASKET-WEAVING AS/(OR NOT) A SOLUTION... 

OVERALL, WE OFFER CASH TO THE POOR COUNTRIES THAT ARE GOING TO SUFFER WHILE WE'RE GOING TO DO LITTLE ABOUT REDUCING WORLDWIDE EMISSIONS. WHERE IS THE CASH GOING TO COME FROM, IN A WORLD THAT IS ALREADY MORTGAGED TO THE EYEBALLS? MORE DEBT? MONEY EXTRACTED FROM THE FOSSIL FUELS MULTINATIONALS? YOU'RE KIDDING. FROM SELLING CAKES AT A LOCAL CHURCH BAZZAR?

AND IS REDUCING CO2 EMISSIONS DOWN TO ZERO BY 2050 ENOUGH? HERE, THE POINT IS THAT THERE IS ALREADY ENOUGH CO2 AND OTHER WARMING GASES IN THE ATMOSPHERE TO WARM IT UP BEYOND 6 TO 9 DEGREES CELSIUS BY 2150....

SOME HUMANS KNOW THIS AND THEY DECIDE TO PROFIT FROM THE CARBON EMISSION REDUCTION INDUSTRY, WHILE THERE IS TIME TO DO SO.

ENTER BLACKROCK....

SOME PEOPLE POINT THE FINGER AT IT FROM TWO DIFFERENT ANGLES.....

ROCK ONE:

How Blackrock Investment Fund Triggered the Global Energy Crisis"Adherence to UN 2030 Sustainability Agenda". Colossal disinvestment in the trillion-dollar global oil and gas sector.

By F. William Engdahl 
Global Research

November 19, 2022

 

Most people are bewildered by what is a global energy crisis, with prices for oil, gas and coal simultaneously soaring and even forcing closure of major industrial plants such as chemicals or aluminum or steel. The Biden Administration and EU have insisted that all is because of Putin and Russia’s military actions in Ukraine. This is not the case. The energy crisis is a long-planned strategy of western corporate and political circles to dismantle industrial economies in the name of a dystopian Green Agenda. That has its roots in the period years well before February 2022, when Russia launched its military action in Ukraine.

Blackrock pushes ESG

In January, 2020 on the eve of the economically and socially devastating covid lockdowns, the CEO of the world’s largest investment fund, Larry Fink of Blackrock, issued a letter to Wall Street colleagues and corporate CEOs on the future of investment flows. In the document, modestly titled “A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance”, Fink, who manages the world’s largest investment fund with some $7 trillion then under management, announced a radical departure for corporate investment. Money would “go green.” In his closely-followed 2020 letter Fink declared,

 

“In the near future – and sooner than most anticipate – there will be a significant re-allocation of capital…Climate risk is investment risk.” Further he stated, “Every government, company, and shareholder must confront climate change.” [i]

 

In a separate letter to Blackrock investor clients, Fink delivered the new agenda for capital investing. He declared that Blackrock will exit certain high-carbon investments such as coal, the largest source of electricity for the USA and many other countries. He added that Blackrock would screen new investment in oil, gas and coal to determine their adherence to the UN Agenda 2030 “sustainability.”

 

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/11/no_author/how-blackrock-investment-fund-triggered-the-global-energy-crisis/

 

SO: BLACKROCK IS "SAVING THE PLANET", MAKING HUGE PROFITS AND SABOTAGING YOUR PETROL PUMP.

 

ROCK TWO:

By James Corbett

If you read Part 1 of the How BlackRock Conquered the World series, you will know how BlackRock went from an obscure investment firm in the 1980s to one of the most powerful asset managers in the world after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007—2008. You will also know how BlackRock’s CEO, Larry Fink, wasted no time in using the company’s immense riches—with over $10 trillion under management and a position as one of the top three institutional investors in seemingly every Fortune 500 company—to gain political power.

But Fink and his lackeys were not interested in accruing power merely for its own sake. No, the point of getting power is to use it. So the question is: how did they use this newly acquired political power?

Well, did you hear about a little thing called the COVID-19 pandemic? If you’re reading The Corbett Report, then you likely already know that the events of the last three years had nothing whatsoever to do with a virus. But if the pandemic was actually a scamdemic and it was never really about a viral contagion, then what was it about?

https://www.activistpost.com/2022/11/how-blackrock-conquered-the-world-part-2-going-direct.html

SO, IS THE GAME MAKING MONEY OR SAVING THE PLANET?

CONSIDERING THE POTENTIAL OF ALL THE WARMING GASES IN THE ATMOSPHERE, THE PRESENT WARMING MOMENTUM, THE PROBABLE IMPOSSIBILITY TO REDUCE EMISSIONS AND ZERO-SEQUESTERING OF WARMING GASES ALREADY UP-THERE, THE ANSWER TO THIS QUESTION IS MAKING MONEY, WITH A "SAVING THE PLANET CONSCIENCE (FAÇADE)"....

MONEY DOES NOT GROW ON TREES, YOU KNOW....

 

ANYWAY...:

 

By Julian Cribb

 

Something of epochal importance happened in Egypt last week – the most significant event since Cheops shoved up his triangular monument, four thousand odd-years ago at the dawn of ‘civilisation’. But the world media, true to form, missed it almost completely.

The nations of the world voted to terminate human civilisation and commit all our grandchildren to bake and starve on an uninhabitable ruin of a Planet.

The failure of the UN Conference of the Parties 27, like the 26 which preceded it, is another fallen domino on the road to civilisational collapse – something the UN itself is now at last daring to voice out loud. (Though nobody is listening yet).

The nations had gathered to try to develop a rational plan of action to prevent a Hothouse Earth and, again, failed to do so. The fact that the second largest contingent at the conference – over 600 delegates – was from the $7 trillion nation of Fossil-fuels may have had something to do with it. The largest contingent was from the UAE, another oil lobby, with 1073 delegates!

Two thirds of the 33,000 delegates were also males, who, when it comes to a preference for catastrophe and war over peace, stability and reason, are not the sharpest tools in the human shed.

You could chart the rising despair and alarm in the utterances of UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who must be close to slashing his wrists by now…

(Nov 4) –  “#COP27 must deliver concrete action on loss & damage caused by the climate crisis.”
(Nov 7) –   “I have just warned global leaders at #COP27: We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.”
(Nov 8) – “The climate crisis is the fight of our lives – and we are losing.”
(Nov 8) –  “The impacts of climate change are here now, and the loss & damage they cause can no longer be ignored.”
(Nov 9) – “The transition to net-zero emissions must be rapid, global, inclusive & just. It must be country-led, country-driven & supported by the international community.”
(Nov 9) –  “Those that have contributed least to the climate crisis are being hit first & hit hardest.”
(Nov 12) – “Global leaders need to put the world back on track to limit global warming.”
(Nov 16) – “We are on the way to a raging food catastrophe, and the world appears to be indifferent.”
(Nov 18) – “I have returned to #COP27 to appeal to all negotiating to deliver the ambitious & meaningful #ClimateAction we so desperately need. This is no time for finger pointing. The blame game is a recipe for mutually assured destruction.”

But of course, hunted, bamboozled, threatened, blackmailed, sabotaged and conned by the relentless Fossil-fuels lobby, little was achieved. De facto, the nations of the world opted for “climate hell” as the easy way out. This was the bit the media seems to have missed.

All this goes to show that nations, as systems for human self-management, are utterly unfitted for coping with the roiling mass of global megathreats, which humanity as whole now confronts. All they really know is how to one-up or fight one another. Their childlike flags, narcissistic anthems and nationalistic bombast only distract from the task of uniting humanity against its common perils.

That nations can opt for self-destruction over stability and wellbeing is increasingly obvious. America, Britain, Australia, Brazil and Russia are all cases of nations which have recently chosen leaders liable to destroy, or at least injure them very badly. And all of them have or had regimes whose policies lead to the wreck of civilisation.

The UN Global Risks Report, issued in May 2022, warned “a dangerous tendency for the world to move towards a global collapse scenario”, which is putting it as bluntly as the UN – an entity founded in the circumlocution of diplomacy – ever likes to go. The end of civilization thus passed almost without comment, by either nations or world media.

Guterres, plainly, agrees. His increasingly colourful language on climate, famine, conflict, refugeeism, inequity, portrays a man fast losing patience with the bovine stupidity and brute self-interest of national governments which, like the oil industry that owns them, are determined to ride the road to ruin. (In Australia, for example, over 100 fossil fuel projects are in contemplation. When it comes to engineering global catastrophe, we ‘punch above our weight’ and our governments, Liberal or Labor, endorse it.)

Is Guterres right – or is he just a tad frustrated? Well, here from lips of the world’s numero uno climate scientist, Johan Rockstrom is what failure at COP27 means: “If we go past 2°C of #global warming, we will enter completely unknown terrain, a planet that is not even resembling our own planet… We can today say scientifically, without any hesitation, that anything beyond 2°C of global warming is nothing but catastrophic. Every tenth of a degree matters.”

 

READ MORE:

https://johnmenadue.com/the-world-votes-for-climate-hell/

 

AND ONE ISN'T CONVINCED THAT UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres ISN'T PLAYING A GAME EITHER... like he is with the Ukraine caper by blaming the Russians.....

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW.

a GW cartoon....

 

From the SMH.....

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW..........