Dec. 18, 2014 6:57 p.m. ET, WSJ--Diplomacy is easy as long as the appearance of progress matters more than results and a bad deal is better than no deal. Such a worldview appears to be the price of victory at the roaming international climate talks, which last weekend berthed in Lima. ... The problem for the climate lobby is that the non-OECD carbon share continues to grow because fossil fuels are helping to lift a generation out of poverty. The middle class is growing in China, while some 400 million people in India and 550 million in Africa still lack electricity. Such basic necessities have been a higher priority than a threat that controversial climate models predict will arrive decades from now. So the irony is that the climateers in Lima allowed the developing world to volunteer meaningless carbon promises. Under the four-page Lima agreement and its 39-page annex, all countries will receive a United Nations “invitation” to define a carbon-reduction target of their own choosing, whenever they’re ready, with no specific goals or consequences if they don’t comply. Chinese and Indian delegates demanded that every use of the word “shall” be changed to “may,” or else they would walk. They even succeeded in stripping language that countries should commit to providing “verifiable, transparent, consistent and complete, accurate and comparable information.” In other words, the countries that want to harm their economies in the name of climate change now have the U.N.’s permission to do so. The predictable result will be anti-fossil fuel masochism in the U.S. and Europe in return for vague, unenforceable promises and the status quo in most of the world. ... [Click to read the rest. Subscription required.]
Posted on: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 17:06:39 +0000
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