Author: admin

by Yanna Myrat

It is a sad reality that while Greeks have been brought to their knees by the politics of austerity and befuddled by the terrorism of “what is going to happen with the debt, with wages….” etc. etc., certain individuals are proceeding unperturbed with their crimes against the people and organizing conferences for better imposition of Agenda 21 and for defence of their own particular interests.

A Global Conference on Global Warming will be held in Athens from 24th to 27th May 2015, with generous sponsorship from the Mytilineos group of companies.

Who is organizing this conference?

The key organizer is CERTH, the CENTRE FOR RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY HELLAS.

All of this is no more or less than Agenda 21 and the way it is being implemented. NGOs are set up which, although they are not state-run, function under the aegis of the state. They appropriate funding and sign contracts with companies. This is the species of corruption that is called Agenda 21 – (sustainable development).

Some of the subjects that will concern the conference:

Namely:

• “Making Europe stronger in energy and innovations through a more active science-policy dialogue”, Prof. Peter Lund, Chair Energy Programme European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC).
• “Energy Technologies for minimum carbon footprint”, Prof. Shozo Kaneko, Professor of the Endowed Research Unit : Advanced Energy Conversion Engineering, Institute of Industrial Science, the University of Tokyo, Deputy Director, Collaborative Research Center for Energy Engineering.
• “Transport sector adaptation actions and prospects”, Prof. George A. Giannopoulos, Professor Emeritus Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Director of the Hellenic Institute of Transport, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas.
• “First-Mover Advantages of the European Union’s Climate Change Mitigation Strategy”, Prof. Pantelis Kapros, E3MLab, National Technical University Athens.
• “Reduce CO2 emissions by using the UN FoRFITS tool”, Konstantinos Alexopoulos, Secretary Rail Secretariat Transport Trends and Economics Secretariat UNITED NATIONS Economic Commission for Europe.

Now, all of these people agree on one thing: that the planet is overheating and we have climate change. Without this assumption they would not be able to sell their new products. They would not be able to introduce changes in transport that would go so far, in the near future, as abolishing the drivers of every species of vehicle, to “propose” new Green taxes, to make deals and put their lobbyists to work. For Agenda 21 and all these vested interests we MUST have climate change, whatever needs to be sacrificed!

And the sacrifice is occurring. It is being achieved through the spraying of the planet, night and day. We see it happening before our eyes every day. And with the high-tech resources available to the globalists the climate is being manipulated, producing the required extreme phenomena everywhere on earth.

The other sacrifice is the financial investment being made in the global propaganda of climate, the global Climategate.

Here the global elite is divided. On the one side are those who think we should have industries, for them to make profits from them. On the other are those who want degrowth and investment in “innovative ideas”, renewable energy sources, new technologies of robotics and informatics that will enable abolition of millions MORE jobs, to add to the growing catalogue of global unemployment and hunger.

They are divided, but still winning. Both tendencies stand to profit. The former are demanding wage reductions and “reforms”, brandishing the threat that this is the only way to stay competitive. The other side wants the same, so as to be able to launch new companies, with limited numbers of employees, so that they too can be competitive. In other words, everything for the elite.

And this their reason for spraying the climate, the climate which irrespective of propaganda from scientists is said to be cooling, as the warming stopped eighteen years ago and carbon dioxide plays no role in the heating of the planet.

(Comment by Enouranois: there are grounds for believing that this cooling could also be the result of climate modification: the reverse side of the warming of the Arctic. Cooling is engineered for the places where it is politically expedient to encourage global warming skepticism, e.g. in the United States.) Yanna continues: But these views are not so easy to find. You have to go looking for them. Because the United Nations, with whose blessing the spraying is taking place, wants Agenda 21 to go forward and Rockefeller is investing large sums to achieve just this. The ideas are not heard because Russians, Americans, Norwegians and Canadians are doing what they can technologically to melt the ice and gain access to the mineral resources of the far North.

Why Mytilineos?

The Mytilineos group of companies “came out of the crisis unscathed”. Apart from the fact that Mytilineos clearly has a direct line to God and advises Him on business strategy, it has reasons to be interested in the climate:

• With its METKA company it undertakes big EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) projects to build electrical power installations, involving every form of energy.
• Its Protergia company runs thermal installations, burning natural gas, but it also employs renewable energy sources.
• Its M&M Gas company promotes alternative means for supplying natural gas.
• Its Aluminium of Greece company produces various metals, but mainly aluminium, which it also exports.
• And despite the fact that this Group of companies is deeply involved in energy questions, for the sake of Aluminium of Greece it lodged an appeal with the European General Court and secured annulment of the European Commission’s decision whereby the pricing of electricity by the Greek Public Power Corporation S.A. to Aluminium of Greece during the period from January 2007 to March 2008 was qualified as State aid. The initial court action had been launched by the Public Power Corporation. Now the patriotic Group is demanding that it be reimbursed to the amount of €17.4 million, (but, with interest, in total, €21.3 million) and for the situation, and the performance, of the Group to be assessed on this basis.

I cannot but reflect on a peculiar association of ideas: aluminium – spraying. Spraying with large quantities of aluminium. Mytilineos – aluminium. Climate manipulation – spraying – climate change – aluminium. Aluminium – sponsorship. Global warming.

I could continue until tomorrow. But it all boils down to Agenda 21 and some strange business.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/adviser-to-australian-pm-says-climate-change-movement-is-a-un-scam-to-establish-new-world-order

The climate change movement wants “a new world order under the control of the (United Nations),” and is “opposed to capitalism and freedom,” according to the Australian prime minister’s chief business adviser, Maurice Newman.

Newman argued in a May 8 Australian opinion article that while the climate-change movement presents itself “as an independent, spontaneous consensus of concerned scientists, politicians and citizens,” its “real agenda is concentrated political authority.”

Newman also claims “they [climate-change activists] have captured the UN and are extremely well funded. They have a hugely powerful ally in the White House. They have successfully enlisted compliant academics and an obedient and gullible mainstream media to push the scriptures regardless of evidence.”

Australia’s federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, distanced himself from these comments in an interview on Friday.

“It’s not been something that I’ve expressed, it’s not something that I would express.”

Newman’s article also drew condemnation from the opposition Labor party’s environment spokesperson, Mark Butler, at a media conference.

“I’ve never been particularly clear why Maurice Newman holds the position he does hold given how central climate change is to the future economic prosperity of Australia.”

Butler added, “As the senior business adviser, what Maurice Newman said in the Australian newspaper this morning is no different to the sorts of things he’s been saying for years about this incredibly important policy.”

Newman has a history of controversial statements regarding climate change.

These kinds of comments would be laughable if he didn’t have the prime minister’s ear

In a 2010 speech to senior Australian Broadcasting Corporation staff members, Newman, then chairman of ABC, attacked the media for “uncritical group-think” on climate-change issues.

Newman also wrote a number of controversial opinion articles in 2014 targeting the climate-change movement.

In a January column, Newman claimed “the climate-change establishment” is solely focused on “exploiting the masses and extracting more money.” He concluded that the “theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution.”

In August, Newman argued the world is cooling, not warming. Newman’s article drew the ire of many academics and politicians, including Butler who said, “These kinds of comments would be laughable if he didn’t have the prime minister’s ear.”

Newman has held his advisory role to Prime Minister Tony Abbott since 2013.

A range of groups have criticized Abbott for his perceived inaction on environmental issues, as well as his decision to appoint a self-identifying climate-change “skeptic” in 2014 to review Australia’s renewable energy target.

In 2009, Abbott described climate-change science as “crap.”

Comment from Enouranois

The fact that Tony Abbott and his climate advisor are clowns does not mean that there is not an element of truth in SOME of their claims. If there were not they could not be so impassioned about them. Under way at this moment, to culminate at the Climate Summit in Paris at the end of this year, is a campaign to legitimate geoengineering, and specifically solar radiation management, i.e. the distribution of aerosols in the upper atmosphere to diminish levels of incoming sunlight.

Here is the IPCC engaged in precisely this in Melbourne, in response to a question from the audience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtbRDAwjaNM

Friends of the Earth is opposed to this project: http://www.foe.org/news/news-releases/2015-02-geoengineering-unjust-unproven-and-risky

This is not what Abbott and Newman are hyperventilating about. But they do have a grievance with the  IPCC, which they accuse of making a mockery of scientific method. One does not need to be a climate change sceptic to agree with this assessment. The exposés of the climate change sceptics contain a significant proportion of fact, along with the ideology. They could not be effective if they did not.

For a start none of the data of the IPCC takes into account the massive effects of decades of climate engineering. This is not one of the accusations of the climate change sceptics, but it is sufficient grounds to justify a single-issue campaign allying critics of solar radiation management with critics of IPCC methodology and claims to scientific status.

Divide-and-rule is an age-old method for preserving the domination of unaccountable power. Today it exacerbates the divisions between Shia and Sunni Muslims, and between Ukrainians and Russians. It is doing the same in the climate debate: one lobby is fed certain half truths. The other lobby is fed the opposite half truths and they are left to fight each other, facilitating the real business, which is climate engineering to produce extreme phenomena that can then be attributed to “Mother Nature”.

From: Hugh Steadman

Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2015 7:42 AM

Actually, I haven’t read a single ‘exposure of a climate change sceptic’ which I find convincing – much as I yearn to do so.

If, as here claimed, geoengineering is being done by one nation without international agreement, it would be contrary to international law.  Not only that, but done secretly, one cannot but fear that it would be inadequately managed and could lead to some disastrous and irretrievable overdoses!

Successful and well-managed geoengineering might end up as the only solution and that would, or (if it actually works to some degree)  possibly might be, better than letting the current lack of policy run out to its logical-end game of an un-, or barely, habitable planet.

There are two facts which I regard as incontrovertible.

Firstly, a rapid change of the climate is, or appears to be, taking place at a pace that is likely to endanger life on Earth. Whether it is, or is not, actually happening, the evidence is sufficient, given the extreme nature of the risk involved, to demand action according to the precautionary principle.

Secondly, no solution, whether geo-engineering or by alterations to economic behaviour,  is feasible without coordinated international agreement.

My conclusion is that we have to put in place the mechanism by which such international cooperation can  become effectual.

This is a blog on the subject – which I posted today. http://www.khakispecs.com/?p=848

 Comment from Enouranois

Dane Wigington isn’t a climate change sceptic but he is opposed to solar radiation management on the grounds that it is exacerbating, not mitigating, global warming.

The public relations campaigns (1) that support an extension of emissions trading to aviation and (2) that promote solar radiation management, are contradictory. The former claim that jet emissions contribute to global warming. The latter claim that jet emissions can mitigate global warming) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX52VTYTAj0   (minutes 2.30 to 7.06). The conclusion is inescapable that this kind of “science” is in the service of immediate, and conflicting, political agendas. What is lost is rationality. People one regards as sane begin to defend the indefensible.

On the subject of the IPCC, Donna Laframboise’s “The Delinquent Teenager” is full of right-wing ideology that few on this list will probably find edifying, but it also contains what are almost certainly facts about the IPCC that do not deserve to be overlooked.

Closer to us, this rave from Berkeley is confused, but it is justified: http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2014-11-14/article/42701

Voices much more worth listening to than Tony Abbott and/or his advisors are being kept out of the debate, and kept out using very low-level, in fact disgraceful, methods.

If solar radiation management (and the numerous black projects for which it undoubtedly serves as a cover) comes to be legitimated, this will not be because of any scientific legitimacy it may possess. It will have been legitimated through the same methods that nuclear weapons and nuclear power have been “legitimated”, to the extent that they have been. SRM is the brainchild of Freeman Dyson, and was later adopted by Edward Teller: both central personages in nuclear weapons development and both climate change sceptics.

Even ostensibly radical critics of geoengineering projects such as Naomi Klein seem destined for leadership of a future toothless anti-geoengineering movement modelled on today’s toothless anti-nuclear movement.

 

 

Greek Activist Addresses Geoengineering And The Climate Change Movement

Wayne Hall is a veteran in the fight to expose the ongoing climate engineering atrocities. Below is a correspondence between Mr. Hall and Pablo Solon, the former Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations.

Dear Pablo Solon,

Thank you for this contribution.

Is there going to be any room in the discussion for inputs like the following? http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/climate-science-is-built-on-a-foundation-of-lies-and-omissions/?inf_contact_key=bcb92e00b29ace0257abcaef7e7fb0c05c07aac75d773b66c8238032a771a63a

When is the “mainstream” climate change movement, centred on the IPCC, but also the activist component, going to acknowledge that there are two kinds of “climate change sceptic”, those that say that anthropogenic climate change is fraud and those that say that anthropogenic climate change is largely a product of global spraying of aerosols? (Dane Wigington does not belong in either of these categories because he is one of the minority of anti-geoengineering activists who is not a climate change sceptic of any kind.) But in any case these two types of climate change sceptic have absolutely no contact with each other: both focus on the sins of the IPCC, ecologists, the climate change movement and direct all their fire in that direction, each for their own separate reasons. Naomi Klein is calling for a climate change movement that can “kick ass” but how can this ever be when the two types of climate change sceptic are not confronted, told to start talking with each other and decide what they want, and not only what they are against? The climate change movement has been on the defensive since Copenhagen and this is set to continue. It is the sceptics are who are self-confident and aggressively “kicking ass”.

At the moment two parallel processes appear to be under way: a campaign to strengthen the climate change movement, and a campaign to legitimate geoengineering, including solar radiation management. The mainstream climate change movement is not capable of preventing the legitimation of global aerosol spraying because they do not have an adeqate understanding of the other side. The most single minded advocates of solar radiation management as a means of “mitigating” anthropogenic climate change have always been people and institutions who deny the reality of anthropogenic climate change. And both sides of the mainstream climate debate also deny the reality of ongoing planetary spraying, and have done so for decades.

Climate change activists and the IPCC are losing the debate at the level of public opinion. There are activists who can be mobilized but they are increasingly regarded as clueless and deluded by wide strata of the population. The public has lost trust in the authenticity of the climate debate. The climate change movement has developed on the basis of a recipe for failure pioneered by the anti-nuclear-weapons movement.

Can you address these issues, or will the growing movement against the global spraying continue to see you as part of the problem rather than part of the solution?

Wayne Hall
Aegina, Greece
http://enouranois.eu

From: Pablo Solon
Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2015 4:55 AM
To: mailto:—-@—–.net ; —@—-.net ; ——–@——.org
Subject: [International] Behind the climate negotiating text for COP21

Behind the climate negotiating text for COP21
Pablo Solón

The future lies in the past. What has happened will determine what will come. The idea that we can change everything and save the world at the last minute is exciting in movies but it does not work in real life. It particularly applies when we speak about issues like climate change where the consequences of what we did in the past century are just beginning to manifest.

This principle applies also to climate negotiations. What is now on the table after the climate negotiations held in Geneva from 8-13 February 2015 is setting the scope and the range of possibilities for the climate agreement at the upcoming COP 21 in Paris this December.

The good news

The good news is that in Geneva the climate negotiations have finally really started. Smoothly and quickly, delegations from different countries avoided long speeches and went directly to work to compile their different proposals for a future climate agreement in Paris. At the moment, the negotiating text has 86 pages and 1,273 brackets. The task for the next 10 months is to streamline this bracketed draft and come out with a text of around 20 pages without annexes and zero brackets.

In the current text there are good and bad proposals that yet need to be negotiated and agreed. The final result will be something in between the most ambitious and the weakest proposals. So how good are the more positive proposals on the table? Are they going to put us on a path that limits the increase of the temperature to 1.5 ºC or 2 ºC?

Disturbing omissions

By now, it is well known that to achieve the goal to limit the temperature increase to below 2ºC, we need to leave 80% of the current known fossil fuel reserves under the ground. This has been stated in many studies, reports and interventions, but not one single country has submitted this proposal in the current text of negotiations. The word “fossil fuels” only appears twice throughout the text and only in reference to the reduction of fossil fuel subsidies. How are we going to cut back greenhouse gas emissions if we don’t have an agreement to leave under the soil, the 80% of the “black gold” that has been discovered?

The other disturbing omission is the short-term target for 2025 and 2030. In the text there are 13 references to zero emissions by the mid and end of the century. But when it comes to this decade and the next, there are no concrete targets and just general references about “enhancing the mitigation ambition” that appears 61 times in the text. The targets that are needed are very clear in different studies. The UNEP Emissions Gap report and other studies show that to be consistent with a trajectory that limits the increase of the temperature to 2ºC, global greenhouse gas emissions have to be reduced to 44 Gigatons (Gt) of CO2e by 2020, 40 Gt by 2025 and 35 Gt by 2030. This is the cap the world needs to avoid a future too dire to imagine. Now, in the text there are no references to these figures. There are only proposals in terms of percentages for the next half of the century. The most ambitious for the near term says, “Developed country Parties shall take mitigation commitments for the post-2020 period that are more ambitious than emission reductions of at least 25–40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020”. In other words, the next decade you have to be more ambitious than this decade. That is not really a clear target.

These omissions in the text are not an accident, they reflect an agreement that for the coming years until 2030, every country will do what they can/want and the UNFCCC will just summarize the “intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs)”. No single country has challenged this suicidal path by putting in the negotiating text that we need a global target to reduce global emissions to only 40 Gt of CO2e by 2025 to avoid an increase in the temperature of 4ºC to 8 ºC.

The center of the debate?

Looking at the negotiating text, it is clear that what seems to be the center of the controversy is not about how much to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but around the supposed conflict between developed and developing countries. The word “development” appears 247 times in the negotiating text, “developing” countries 410 and “developed” countries 342 times. The debate in the text is more about who should do what in the reduction of green house gas emissions (developed and developing), what flexibility mechanisms (carbon markets) are going to be in place, how each one is going to report, what kind of verification process will be established for the different type of countries and what kind of financial and technological support there will be to implement the mitigation actions.

The position of developed countries in general tends to water down the difference between developed and developing countries, promoting more the use of “all parties” (134 mentions in the text). On the other hand, developing countries want to keep the firewall between developed and developing countries.

The group of Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) that includes Algeria, Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, China, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Dominica, Ecuador, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela has included the following paragraphs in the negotiating text that show their approach to developed and developing countries:

“Developed country Parties shall commit to undertake Absolute Emission Reduction Targets during the period of 2021-2030, in accordance with a global emission budget including their historical responsibility, through quantifiable, economy-wide mitigation targets, covering all sectors and all greenhouse gases, implemented mainly domestically, which can be aggregated and which are comparable, measurable, reportable and verifiable, with the type, scope, scale and coverage more ambitious than those undertaken under the Convention and its Kyoto Protocol during the pre-2020 period, and communicated and implemented without any conditions”.

On the other hand, “Developing country Parties should commit to undertake Diversified Enhanced Mitigation Actions (DEMAs) during the period 2021–2030. They may include, inter alia, relative emission reductions; intensity targets; REDD-plus activities and other plans, programmes and policies; joint mitigation and adaptation approaches; net avoided emissions, or also manifested as adaptation co-benefits, in accordance with their special circumstances and specific needs.”

While it is true that this is a real source of debate – the maintenance of the delineation between developed and developing countries so that developed countries do not escape their historic responsibility, and that countries make commitments according to common but differentiated responsibility, it is also one that serves as a smokescreen for the deals that have been made between polluters – one developed and one developing. China, which has caught up to developed countries on levels of emissions, maintains the developing country title but does the rest of the developing countries a disservice by striking a very bad deal with one of the largest polluters in the world, the United States. The highly publicized US-China deal last year is a reflection of how the US and China, two of the largest polluters, have decided not to do what is needed for 2025/2030. The two big polluters account for more than 40% of global greenhouse gas emissions. This is a “laissez faire” deal in which China will only peak (reduce in absolute terms) emissions in 2030 and the US will reduce 15% of their green house gas emissions in 2025 based on their level of emissions in 1990. As a reference, the EU has committed to reduce 40% of their emissions by 2030 based on their 1990 levels.

This is the heart of the deal in Paris and with these emission cuts from the US and China, the rest of the countries will not do much more because as they have expressed, that would go against their competitiveness in the global economy. The negotiation around the text is about how to package and sell a bad deal to public opinion and how to dilute the responsibility of polluting countries of the developed and the emerging developing world. Probably the issue about “common but differentiated responsibility” will be solved through the addition of some “innovative language” like “in light of different national circumstances” as it happened in COP20 in Peru.

Opening the door for new carbon markets

Even with the failure of carbon markets, the debate is not if this mechanism should continue or not, but how to enhance the current ones and develop new ones. No country has submitted text to avoid carbon market mechanisms or REDD+. Carbon market mechanisms are mentioned 27 times and REDD+ 13 times. In the text there are mentions of an “enhanced Clean Development Mechanism (CDM+)”, the “Emissions Trading System (ETS)”, “REDD Plus”, “market mechanism in the land use sector”, “sub-national and regional emissions schemes” and “carbon pricing”. A reading of the text shows that COP 21 will open the door for new carbon market mechanisms but that the real development of them will be agreed at future COPs.

Finance: the forgotten promise

Finance, which was supposed to be one of the most crucial commitments by the developed countries to the developing countries, has now become an issue relegated to the sidelines. The climate debt owed to those suffering the impacts of climate change, yet who are the least responsible, is on the way to being forgotten. Looking at the text, the word finance itself is mentioned 203 times but when it comes to concrete figures, there are only a measly 14 mentions with only four proposals:

[Developed countries][All countries in a position to do so] commit to provide at least USD 50 billion per year during the period from 2020 to 2025, at least USD 100 billion per year by [2020][2030] for adaptation activities of [developing countries].

The provision of finance committed by developed country Parties to be based on a floor of USD 100 billion per year since 2020.

A short-term collective quantified goal of USD 200 billion per year by 2030 should be committed by developed country Parties,

[Developed country Parties][Parties in a position to do so, considering evolving capabilities] to provide 1 per cent of gross domestic product per year from 2020 and additional funds during the pre-2020 period to the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

If current promises are to be a basis, there is little confidence in these promised numbers. At the COP20 in Lima, there was triumph around the achievement of reaching 10 billion USD – out of the 100 billion USD that was originally promised several COPs ago.

Furthermore, in the text, developed countries prefer to use the term “mobilize” instead of “provide” and they do not limit the obligation of funding to developed countries but to all countries in a position to do so, further diluting the responsibilities of the developed countries as they spread it to developing countries. The term “mobilize” is not associated with any figure in particular and in general includes “from a variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources” which means that even loans and carbon markets will be accounted in the process of mobilization of financial resources.

Rights and compliance

Human rights are mentioned seven times and mainly in the preamble and objectives section. There are no concrete proposals to guarantee human rights in mitigation, finance, market or technology measures. There is only one mention in adaptation and only in general terms. In some cases, the mention of human rights is at the same level as the right to development. Indigenous peoples’ rights appears only two times in the preamble. Migrant rights are not included, and in the loss and damage chapter, there are only two mentions of “organized migration and planned relocation”. The proposal of Rights of Mother Earth or Rights of Nature is not included at all as an option to be discussed. The only mention to Mother Earth is in relation to “protecting the integrity of Mother Earth” without further development.

When it comes to mechanisms of compliance, there are those that say, “no specific provisions required” and those that suggest a “Compliance Committee” with “an enforcement branch and a facilitative branch”. The possibility of sanctions is mentioned and also suggested is the “use of economic instruments such as market mechanisms as a way to promote compliance”. Bolivia has included the proposal for an “International Climate Justice Tribunal”.

These token mentions of rights and recognition of those at the frontlines of climate change are empty promises with no concrete commitments attached to them. The negotiations around solutions to climate change need to have the rights of peoples and Nature at its heart.

Fighting for our Future now, not in Paris

The nature of climate change with its feedback mechanism is such that what we did in the past is what we reap now. Following this logic, what we do now is what we will reap in the next 10 years, and if the current text is to be the basis of that future, we will have none of which to speak.

There is no cheating, buying or creating loopholes to delay action until 2030 – the time to act decisively is now. And these are very concrete and clear actions that need to be taken:

§ leave 80 percent of the known fossil fuels reserves under the ground

§ deep emissions cuts to achieve global targets – 44 Gigatons (Gt) of CO2e by 2020, 40 Gt by 2025 and 35 Gt by 2030

§ reduce military and defense expenditures, which account for more than 1.5 trillion dollars globally, and instead channel these funds to provide public finance for developing countries for adaptation, mitigation and for loss and damage

§ the recognition, respect and promotion of the rights of people and nature

A bad deal in Paris will lock in catastrophic consequences for the future of the planet and humanity. The urgency of the task at hand cannot be emphasized enough – we need to act now.

*Pablo Solón is Executive Director of Focus on the Global South.

http://focusweb.org/content/behind-climate-negotiating-text-cop21

by Wayne Hall

http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.gr/2015/01/syriza-voting-to-join-realm-of-shared_28.html

The above analysis of the politics of SYRIZA and its government does not say anything that is untrue, but it leaves out of account a number of points that are relevant in estimating the political potential of the new Greek government.

For a start, SYRIZA does not touch on any taboo “conspiracy theory” issues, such as 911 and/or the militarization of climate. They have systematically and resolutely refused to engage any of them. They line up with the side of the climate debate that attributes all anomalous “natural” phenomena to “global warming” (of course the other side of that debate is also manipulated).

On Ukraine and Russia there are also limitations to what they can say or do. The senior member of SYRIZA most committed to policies not hostile to Russia, Nadia Valavani, who was foreign policy spokesperson before the election, has now been assigned to economic issues.

Giulietto Chiesa, the journalist and former Europarliamentarian who, I would say, has a “Vineyard of Saker” political orientation http://main.cse-initiative.eu/?p=242 , tried to work with SYRIZA in Greece and its equivalent in Italy but has been, and is, treated like a persona non grata by them. I don’t think there is anything personal about this. It is a reflection of political differences.

SYRIZA has continued the traditional Greek “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” orientation towards the Kurds, which in the new post-ISIS geopolitical environment involves a convenient alignment with American and international policies of border changes at the expense of Turkey. Greek and Turkish geopolitical interest are arguably converging, with the two countries having more potential common interests than diverging interests. Of course this is a complex issue but categories of “left wing” and “right wing”, while not entirely irrelevant, also probably do not have as much importance as is attributed to them by SYRIZA.

On the subject of “empowerment of citizens’ participation”, SYRIZA’s declared politics deserve more rigorous thought than they are getting. “Citizens’ participation” in a context of corporate mass media control is no guarantee of politics that are in the objective interests of citizens. It can be a Trojan horse facilitating imposition of policies by foreign-controlled NGOs. Possible first steps towards dealing with this problem have been put forward and discussed to a very limited extent https://epamaegina.wordpress.com/2012/04/02/independent-citizens-assembly/ but the discussion has not acquired any traction within SYRIZA. SYRIZA’s policies in this area are as vague as they are in other parliamentary parties.

Mirror on The Vineyard of the Saker