UN Climate Talks In Bonn Fail

The latest round of UN Climate Talks in Bonn have failed with the usual lack of trust between the parties.

The UN Climate Circus met in Bonn, Germany last week, though with the exception of dedicated Green news outlets and blogs the whole event passed with no main stream media attention, such is the state of global warming fear fatigue these days.

The divisions are along the usual lines of who will cut emissions and by how much, the lack of contributions from the so called rich countries to the Green Climate Fund and Loss and Damage, more commonly known as wealth redistribution.

Loss and Damage was the reason that COP19 was dead in the water, even before it had started. Barack Obama instructed US Climate Envoys prior to COP19 that giving away trillions of dollars for years to pay for the guilt of being an industrialized nation would not “float with the voters.”

A few months on little has changed as the latest round of UN climate talks achieved nothing:

Levels of trust between leading developing countries and the USA and EU member states appears to have hit a new low after a week of UN climate talks in Bonn.

India, China and 24 other countries in the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LDMC) group say the brunt of greenhouse gas cuts must be made by industrialised countries.

The US, EU and Switzerland say the global climate deal scheduled to be agreed in Paris next year will only work if all countries make commitments, which they say was agreed in 2011 in Durban.

The problem with who cuts CO2 emissions goes like this, the LDMC group say that the countries who have historically emitted the most CO2 must bear the brunt of emissions reductions, other factions including the industrialized world say the cuts must be based on current CO2 emissions.

The objective of the Bonn meeting was to do ground work on how a Climate deal at COP21 Paris in 2015 could work, instead the meeting quickly broke down into fractious exchanges between delegates.

Switzerland’s Ambassador for the Environment Franz Perrez told RTCC “dogmatic views such as all Annexe 2 have to pay, and it’s only them to have to pay” are preventing the talks from progressing.

He said climate vulnerable countries such as the Philippines should disassociate themselves with the LDMC group, which he accused of trying to slow the talks.

Perrez said: “I do not understand, if you look at what the position of the Philippines should be, they should not defend the interest of China, of India, of Singapore, of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, so it’s surprising how they are arguing in favour of maintaining a regime that is not in their advantage.”

The UN backed Green Climate Fund (GCF) is still struggling for money and there is a GCF board meeting scheduled for May to decide how to distribute the money, always assuming that the GCF board members have decided whether to fly First or Business Class to Bali for the meeting.

The delivery of extra flows of finance – long the subject of bitter exchanged between countries – is likely to depend on when the UN-backed Green Climate Fund comes online.

In 2009 rich nations committed to supplying $100 billion a year by 2020, and delivered $30 billion between 2010-2012.

The world is a far apart as ever, a fact we should all be thankful for, from agreeing a climate deal that would spell disaster for civilization as we know it.

Heads of state in the democratic industrialized world know that they can never sell the idea to voters of declining living standards and giving away billions of pounds, dollars, euros et al to the developing world.

Little wonder then that the head of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres thinks that dictatorship and communism are the best forms of government to force Agenda 21 through.

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