COP16, the 16th edition of Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol, began Monday in Cancun, Mexico, with little notice from most of the world. This is a stunning but welcome letdown from the breathless adoration heaped upon the opening of last December's COP15 in Copenhagen.
Copenhagen, you may recall, was supposed to result in the complete reordering of international affairs, especially in funneling hundreds of billions of dollars from the First World (coff, United States) to the rest. Copenhagen's aim was literally to set up a world government, which was made explicit in the language of the proposed treaty. As Britain's former chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Monckton, explained at the time, the Copenhagen treaty was designed to eliminate true national sovereignty altogether, especially that of the United States.
It didn't happen of course, not least because no matter how much money developing nations were offered - $100 billion was the opening buy in - it wasn't enough. If Copenhagen was the Super Bowl of the new world order, it was as if the teams, the bands, the crowds all came, got off two or three plays, and then did nothing else but argue about how the TV money would be divided.
President Obama and more than 100 heads of state were elbowing each other at Copenhagen. At Cancun, the head of a national delegation is typically something like the fifth deputy assistant undersecretary to the vice-associate minister of thermostat settings. So even the Left-Green BBC has sent only one reporter. The New York Times does not even have a reporter down there for the full conference.
Three years ago UN Secretary-General warned the delegates at Bali, “We are at a crossroad. One path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other to oblivion. The choice is clear.”
Oblivion, the man said. And so the frenzy began to write treaties that would regulate almost everything we do, culminating in the Copenhagasm of COP15, a Treaty of Everything (but most of all of slurping wealth away from the United States and Europe).
What Copenhagen would have done was set up a new nomenklatura of bureaucracies and factotums and commissioners, providing them with near-unlimited political power, a luxurious lifestyle and upward mobility for their children and political allies, accountable to no one. In other words, the old Soviet system writ global.
Blessedly, it didn’t happen. In only one year, the COP series have become irrelevant, which is unsurprising considering that they are, after all, sponsored by the United Nations. Cancun is nothing but a soapbox for "bell the cat" proposals, like that of Prof. Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, who, according to the Telegraph, announced that the only way to save the planet is to "halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years." He conceded that this "would not be easy."
Masters of clipped understatement, those Brits!
Martin Luther once remarked that the one redeeming virtue of the papacy was that it provided splendid hunting estates for the bishop of Rome. Likewise, the one redeeming virtue of the annual COPs is that they provide splendid vacations for the delegates: Bali (COP13), Nairobi (COP12), Montreal (COP11), Nagoya (COP10), and now Cancun. The obvious question is voiced by Walter Russell Mead,
Ever wonder why more diplomatic gasfests aren’t scheduled for horrible or dull locations? If delusional green treaty addicts must waste time, money and resources on worthless, no-hope diplomatic engagements, obviously they don’t intend to spend time in unpleasant surroundings.You have to understand, you see, that saving the planet from oblivion is simply not the sort of work (or play, whatever) that can be done in Brazzaville. Thankfully, establishing a global nomenklatura is no longer even a gleam in the delegates’ eyes anymore. Since it is obvious that they will never have both power and perks, well, they’ll settle for the perks. As long as they can keep COP conferences going annually until they retire, all will be well.
I say let ‘em have them. It’s a small bribe to pay to keep them both ineffective and ineffectual.
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