Snouts out of the trough

It’s a drop in the ocean, to be sure, but at least it is in the right direction. The ABC, naturally, is inconsolable:

The Federal Government has slashed funding to a key United Nations environment agency by more than 80 per cent, stunning environmental groups ahead of a global climate change summit in Peru.

The ABC has learned the Government cut $4 million from the UN Environment Program (UNEP), which provides advice on environmental policies and climate change negotiations.

“Whether it’s air pollution, whether it’s ozone depleting substances, what’s happening in the world’s oceans, the conservation of biodiversity – for a relatively small amount, Australia benefits from leveraging well over $500 million in contributions that other countries make,” UNEP’s executive director Achim Steiner said.

Australia was due to contribute around $1.2 million this year, but has only offered $200,000.

Over the next four years it will scale back its funding by $4 million. (source)

Only a few billion to go, then…

Life is tough on the climate bandwagon…

Billions of taxpayer dollars will be pissed up the wall yet again, sending environmental rent-seekers and trough-feeders to an exotic luxury hotel to tell the world how to control the weather.

But don’t forget, the big one is in Paris next year, so this is just the warm-up. Hopefully, Paris will be just as successful as Copenhagen.

Typically, the ABC has one of its regular enviro-gasms:

Representatives from almost 200 nations have begun arriving in the Peruvian capital, Lima, for UN climate talks that get underway on Monday.

Delegates will meet for 10 days to work on a new deal to limit rising greenhouse gas emissions, meant to be agreed at a summit in Paris in December next year.

Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, has described the talks as a “stepping stone” towards a universal treaty.

“Never before have the risks of climate change been so obvious and the impacts so visible,” she said in a statement ahead of the meeting.

“Never before have we seen such a desire at all levels of society to take climate action.

“Never before has society had all the smart policy and technology resources to curb greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience.”

Pledges in recent weeks by China, the United States and the European Union to limit emissions have helped brighten prospects for a new global deal, even though it is likely to be too weak to match UN calls for deep cuts to limit heatwaves, droughts and rising seas. (source)

Worse than Groundhog Day.

Epic fail

UPDATE 2: Christopher Booker writes in The Telegraph:

The great global warming scare has long been dying on its feet, but that sad fiasco of a conference in Rio last week saw it finally dead and buried. “It’s pathetic, it’s appalling,” wailed a spokesman for WWF, one of the thousands of green activists who flew to Rio, many at taxpayers’ expense, to see the last rites read over their lost dream. Their cause has even been abandoned by one of its most outspoken champions, the green guru James Lovelock of “Gaia” fame, who now admits that the warming scare was all a tragic mistake, and that talk of “sustainable development” is just “meaningless drivel”.

UPDATE: George Monbiot describes the draft UN text as “283 paragraphs of fluff” and quotes one of them as follows in the Guardian:

“This paragraph from the declaration sums up the problem for me:

We recognise that the planet Earth and its ecosystems are our home and that Mother Earth is a common expression in a number of countries and regions and we note that some countries recognise the rights of nature in the context of the promotion of sustainable development. We are convinced that in order to achieve a just balance among the economic, social and environment needs of present and future generations, it is necessary to promote harmony with nature.”

It sounds lovely, doesn’t it? It could be illustrated with rainbows and psychedelic unicorns and stuck on the door of your toilet. But without any proposed means of implementation, it might just as well be deployed for a different function in the same room.” (source)

Another pointless gab fest out of the way, and we can be glad that no progress was made towards the UN’s goal of global economic shutdown. The UK Telegraph‘s warmist Geoffrey Lean is not happy:

It is always a bad sign when a UN conference ends on time: if anything substantive is at stake, these unwieldy gatherings of 190 governments invariably overrun, only reaching resolution in the early hours of the morning. So it says much about the inconsequentiality of the agreement in Rio that it was finalised even before the meeting began.

Brazil, as host country, was desperate to avoid a repeat of the Copenhagen climate summit, where the leaders found little agreed when they arrived and had to try to do the job themselves. Confronted with the failure of two years of negotiations to agree even an anodyne and non‑binding accord, Brazil watered it down even further and rammed it through: the 100 or so presidents and prime ministers were effectively confined to self-congratulatory speeches and public relations photo-calls.