Aggressive beggars can be rather creepy. Some don't just ask for money, but demand it as if you're in possession of what should rightfully be theirs. They try shame, intimidation, etc. to gain a few bucks, which sadly few of them will spend wisely. Is it still a month until Copenhagen?
Keeping up pressure in Barcelona, the final preparatory session for the December meeting, the poor said that even the most ambitious offers by the European Union, tougher than most nations, were far too weak for a new U.N. climate pact.
"The result of that is to condemn developing countries to a total destruction of their livelihoods, their economies. Their land, their forests will all be destroyed. And for what purpose?" said Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping of Sudan, chair of the Group of 77 and China, representing poor nations.
"Anything south of 40 (percent) means that Africa's population, Africa's land mass is offered destruction," he told a news conference.
Developing countries at the Barcelona talks insisted that rich nations should cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 -- far more than on offer.
The Sudan? Let's think...multiple conflicts, human rights abuses, disease, drought, malnutrition, on and on, in a nation in the tropical latitudes where--despite the hyperbole--climate change will be at its mildest. Heavy sigh.
Many a Third World leader nowadays focuses upon climate change to distract folks from the magnitude of their day-to-day failures. Blame the industrialized nations for causing the problem and not sharing more of their wealth to help its victims. And bear in mind that the Sudan is now reaping billions from oil. China gets 10 percent of its oil from the Sudan, which spends a lot of that money buying arms from China.
In Washington, the top U.S. diplomat on climate change, Todd Stern, criticised entrenched positions in talks since the world agreed the U.N. climate convention in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro."The divide between developed and developing countries that has run down the center of climate change discussions for the past 17 years is still alive and well," he told a panel in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The bigger the CO2 cuts imposed on industrialized nations, the bigger the market for emissions credits, many of which will come from developing nations. We'll pay them not to cut their forests, allow their farms to turn to desert, etc. Never mind the fact that the powerful will pocket the lion's share of that money because the poor in most of those nations don't have land rights. And, let's ignore the fact that the certification process has suffered from rampant incompetence and corruption.
About 100 activists blocked the exit of the U.N. climate summit building in Barcelona for an hour to demand urgent, ambitious carbon reductions by 2020, chanting "no way out".
Wow, about 100. As the tea parties are teaching us, it's not the size of the protest but whether the media wants to cover it.
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