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A Typo Almost Derailed Paris Climate Deal (nytimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: On Saturday, world leaders completed an ambitious international agreement to address climate change. But when the officials received the first copy of what was supposed to be the final draft, a one-word mistake threatened to derail their progress. Part of the agreement involved language that encouraged wealthy nations to provide monetary aid to poorer nations in order to help transition to more sustainable systems. But the draft used the word "shall," which would have made it a legally-binding requirement. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry pushed back on the change, noting that previous versions of the document had used the word "should" instead. Officials tried to quickly figure out whether the swap had been made intentionally. Ultimately, they classified it as a typo, and hurriedly prepared a corrected version of the document, which was adopted without incident.
They tried to pull a fast one...
Dear Microlimp: I give you 2 valid product keys for win7 and you reject both of them. Piss off you wankers!!!
Diplomacy at work.
This story perfectly illustrates why the climate agreement is completely useless.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Negotiating a treaty between 100s of nations ... Children do that;
But then, you repeat yourself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The whole climate change debate worries me. First I'm not a climate change denier nor am I asserting man cant change the climate. What worries me is when the right things get done for the wrong reasons it distorts the policy objectives. Climate change is not a threat to life on the planet. There have been previous brief (1000 year) warming periods with temperatures 3 to7 degrees warmer than today. such as the period 300 to 1100 AD. That period was a time of relative food abundance and population growth and even if it overlaps the dark ages it was a period cultural expansion. The key difference between now and then is how close we are to the resource limits of the planet. Back then we were not using every drop of water, and if crops didn't grow one place one could move. National boundaries were more fluid. So basically the difference with today is fragility.
I utterly discard the idea of some shallow island nations going under water as any sort of logical reason to curtail the economic development of a gazillion more people. Sand bar or reefs have always been an ephemeral place to stake a claim. They are impermenant by nature. If they flood in this modern time it won't have to result in death, just the ending of a nation state. Perhaps a shame culturally yes, but not something that hadn't happened many many many times. The difference today is we know it is happening. But those cultures will integrate into others like has always happened. All that is lost is a microcosm of soverignty. Yes it's emotionally and economincally painful for the families who live there. Would be nice to prevent it if that was possible. But it should not be a driver of the discussion.
WHile any one microcosm may not be important, at a larger scale there a very related issue is the driver. If crop growing regions and water supplies shift they may shift across national borders and that will create all sorts of strife. Crops may not evolve quickly enough. FLooding coatal cities doesn't mean we lose the shoreline it just means the shoreline moves inland. The problem is the time scale. Many large cities have evolved in place for centuries (millenia). uprroting these is going to be terrifically economically and resource intensive. Depending on terrain and fresh water and harbors they may have to go elsewhere not just shift. There will be tremendous upheaval world wide. Not all of it will be equally distributed pain. Some nations will benefit others will utterly fail. If all this happens in the space of a century it's going to be catastrophic in terns of world civilization.
Carbon fuels are the easy way to raise standards of living for all pre-industrila nations. The problem with using less carbon fuel unilaterally is that if everyone is not on board then as the price falls it becomes even easier for developing nations to import it. SO in the end it all gets burnt. We can quibble about if this makes it get burnt more slowly but I'd be surprised if were talking orders of magnitude in rates.
At the present time we see so many alternative energy projects labeled failures in the US. The DOE is ridiculed for funding Solyndra and the Spanish company that built the Mojva solar thermal. We see the Solar-PV industry gutted by cheap imported PV. Wind isn't working well with our current Grid, and with fracking there's little incentive to build grids in the boonies. The price point of Alagal or Cellulosic biofuels can't compere with $36/barrel. So we can expect every gov't investment in alternative energy to look terrible if you just look at it as a return on investment. Sadly that's how some politicians do. That's why the DOE gets beat up.
Yet we need these alternative fuels and energy sources if were going to stop using coal and gas.
Thus to avoid one has to use these even if they are not the cheapest. That's probably an easy sell in rich nations. But it's a sell based more on clean air, or not fighting wars for oil, and access to fresh water: e.g. your nuclear plan and your electric c
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I know I shouldn't feed the trolls... but on the off chance that you are ignorant and not just an angry little elf.
He didn't go "full on Republican retard" - he knew he could not get a binding treaty past the Republican-controlled Senate. This forced him to sign an agreement that is non-binding. If that single word had been allowed to pass, it would have triggered a Senate vote and inevitable rejection of the entire agreement.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
When they literally have to fix an "agreement" so that it isn't enforceable, is it really an agreement?
Maybe it would be better termed a "wishlist".
in other words, the agreement has no legs to stand on, and never would, so it was as i said, nothing but an excuse for rich people to go on vacation on the taxpayers dime
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same