The Mouse That Roared in Copenhagen
Alemayehu G. Mariam
The “delegation of African negotiators” rumbled into Copenhagen rubbing their palms and licking their chops to load up tens of billions of dollars in carbon blood money and make a quick exit. They were disappointed. There was no gold at the end of the Copenhagen rainbow. At the end of the day, the industrialized countries pledged chump change in the amount of USD$30bn to the poor countries for the 2010-2012 period.
In the run up to the Copenhagen Conference, the trumpeted bravado to the world was that the “African delegation” will “walk out” and “de-legitimize” the proceedings unless the industrialized countries forked up a cool $40bn. The delegation and its leader, Meles Zenawi, were prepared to strong-arm, outwit and outplay the industrialized countries in their usual zero sum game. This time the game backfired. The wily “neo-colonial” Westerners outmatched, outplayed, overpowered and slickly finessed the African negotiators and others from the developing world.
Nobody walked out of the Conference. The “African negotiators” let off a whole lot of steam and huffed and puffed in the frigid Copenhagen winter, but they stayed in. Zenawi’s vaunted Copenhagen Showdown at High Noon with the rich countries never materialized. The bravado about “walking out” and “challenging” the industrialized countries proved to be just hot air. When push came to shove, all the bravado was replaced by servile groveling. Some representatives of African countries refused to walk into (“boycotted”) the conference. But they did their “boycott” during their lunch hour. They complained that the industrialized countries were railroading them into signing a deal that would be “against the interest of Africa.” A couple of days later, chief African negotiator Zenawi stood attentively clutching the podium at a farcical French-Ethiopian press conference as President Nicolas Sarkozy harangued his industrialized country partners for not being more forthcoming on emissions limits and mitigation aid.
At the press conference, Zenawi and Sarkozy buttered up each other. Zenawi said that he and Sarkozy mirrored each other so much on the issues that they were “preaching to the converted.” In a joint communiqué, they declared, “France and Ethiopia, representing Africa” appeal to all participants “to adopt an ambitious agreement limiting the increase of temperatures to 2°C above preindustrial levels.” They proposed “the halving of global CO2 emissions by 2050 compared to 1990 levels.” This would require the developed countries to commit to an 80 per cent emissions reductions by 2050.
On the cold cash end of things, Zenawi and Sarkozy proposed “the adoption of a ‘fast-start’ fund of 10 billion dollars per year covering the next 3 years.” The fund will be used for “adaptation and mitigation actions, including the fight against deforestation.” Africa would get a cut of “40% of the fund.” They called for the “creation of a tax on international financial transactions and consider other sources such as taxes on sea freight or air transport.” They proposed “the development of carbon markets, which will be a major source of capital flows and investments between the North and the South.”
Throughout the negotiations, the rich countries threw out dollar figures at the poor countries as one would throw bones to hungry dogs. The U.S. offered the developing countries $85 million as part of a combined donation of $350 million from the industrialized countries to support clean energy technologies (wind, solar). Japan said it will kick in $15bn a year over the coming decade. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton promised a contribution of a $100bn a year to a long-term fund by 2020 to help poor countries deal with worsening floods, drought, storms and rising seas. The catch was that the developing countries had to sign on the Copenhagen deal and agree to transparency and emissions verification standards.
Other African countries and negotiators saw the Sarkozy-Zenawi deal as an outrage, an unconscionable trick to sell “Africa’s future” down the proverbial river. To borrow Zenawi’s pre-Conference phrase, they said the deal would lead to another “rape of our continent.” Rising to Africa’s defense was Algeria, with the support of South Africa and Nigeria. The trio accused the industrialized countries of conspiring to “kill” the Kyoto Protocol and get away with an agreement in Copenhagen that does not have strict and legally binding commitments on emissions cuts.
Zenawi was whipsawed by various representatives of the developing countries for bare-faced double-dealing. Lumumba Di-Aping, the chief negotiator of the G77 bloc of countries, representing some 130 nations, mauled Zenawi for selling out Africa to the rich countries:
Meles [Zenawi] agrees with the EU perspective and the EU perspective accepts the destruction of a whole continent plus dozens of other states… The EU’s very moral foundation is deeply questionable because she accepts that a large section of the human family should suffer in order for her to continue to thrive and prosper… The African Union has not accepted this. Meles is not the author of this proposal, the EU definitely is, along with the UK and France.
Mithika Mwenda of Pan-African Climate Justice Alliance, citing a study of the Working Group I to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, lashed out at Zenawi: “The IPCC science is clear – 2 degrees is 3.5 degrees in Africa – this is death to millions of Africans…. If Prime Minister Meles wants to sell out the lives and hopes of Africans for a pittance – he is welcome to – but that is not Africa’s position.”
Zenawi’s befuddled response was drenched in crocodile tears:
I know my proposal today will disappoint those Africans who from the point of view of justice have asked for full compensation for the damage done to our development prospects. My proposal dramatically scales back our expectation with regards to the level of funding in return for more reliable funding and a seat at the table in the management of such funds.
Compare this to Zenawi’s braggadocio in September, 2009:
We will use our numbers to de-legitimise any agreement that is not consistent with our minimal position… If needs be we are prepared to walk out of any negotiations that threaten to be another rape of our continent… Africa’s interest and position will not be muffled as has usually been the case… Africa will field a single negotiating team empowered to negotiate on behalf of all member states of the African Union…. The key thing for me is that Africa be compensated for the damage caused by global warming. Many institutions have tried to quantify that and they have come up with different figures. The sort of median figure would be in the range of 40 billion USD a year.
The farcical saga of the “African delegation” at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP 15) is reminiscent of the story in Leonard Wibberley’s 1955 book, The Mouse That Roared. In that satirical work, the fictional little duchy (territory ruled by a duke or duchess) of Grand Fenwick in the French Alps declared war on the U.S. so that it could lose the war and receive U.S. aid. Following a series of wacky and comic twists and turns, Fenwick wins the war and forms a League of Little Nations which dictates its own peace terms to the U.S. and Russia and blackmails them into a general nuclear disarmament.
The “African delegation” came to Copenhagen with pipedreams of billions of dollars in carbon blood money. They left with pledges and promises of chump change. As the Copenhagen drama drew down its curtains, the “African negotiators” learned a valuable lesson: They may huff and puff and try to blow the Copenhagen House down, but in the climate change theatre, they are nothing more than servile stagehands. After two weeks of hanging around Copenhagen, the “African negotiators” became mere sideline onlookers to a hollow agreement, the “Copenhagen Accord”, signed by the US, China, Brazil, India and South Africa dubbed a “historic step forward” with “much further to go”.
The Accord affirms the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and sets a maximum of two degrees Celsius average global temperature rise. Following a review in 2016, that could be reduced to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The rich countries pledged to commit USD$30bn in new funding to help the poor countries during 2010-2012. They also promised to support “a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year” by 2020. The rich countries committed to a minimum 80 percent emissions reductions by 2050. There were other vague provisions for supporting national mitigation actions and verification procedures.
As the shiny limos scampered in the dark towards the Copenhagen Airport on December 18 with their freight of the world’s high and mighty, John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, lamented: “The city of Copenhagen is a crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport.”
So ended the great adventure of the Mouse that Roared in Copenhagen!
Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. He writes a regular blog on The Huffington Post, and his commentaries appear regularly on Pambazuka News and New American Media.
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Well what do you expect. That is Meles and since when does he care about people and above all the “Environment”? However, in the subject matter at hand, copenhagen conference, meles and his “african friends” were like a “mouse” in the eyes of the rich western countries, literally. They know as long as they throw some billion dollars worth of “change” to us, they know they can do anything at any time. It is better to watch what they do than “moving around and hurt ourselves”.
the midiget cares only about his wallet
MELESE’S DREAM AND AMBITION, AT THIS TIME OF ECONOMIC CRISIS, WAS TO GET ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY TO BUY BULLETS AND GUNS TO KILL AND OPPRESS THE ETHIOPIAN POPULATION.
LEAVE ALONE PROTECTING THE COUNTRY FROM DEFORESTATION, LARGE PART OF THE COUNTRY’S FERTILE LAND BECAME ARID SINCE THEY COLONISE THE COUNTRY,May 1991.
“Meshet Yelemede Enatun Yasmamal”……..Look here Ethiopians know who Zenawi is. It too bad these African just find out. This man will sell his mother for anything.
Where The Whole Truth Is Our Only Goal.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Pat Buchanan On Climategate
If you would know what Copenhagen is all about, hearken to this nugget in The Washington Post’s report from the Danish capital.
“Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi – who is representing all of Africa here – unveiled his proposal Wednesday for a system in which rich countries would provide money to poor ones to help deal with the effects of climate change. …
“Zenawi said he would accept $30 billion in the short term, rising to $100 billion by 2020. … This was seen as a key concession by developing countries, which had previously spurned that figure … as too low.”
There was a time when a U.S. diplomat would have burst out laughing after listening to a Third World con artist like this.
But not the Obamaites. They are already ponying up.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack just pledged $1 billion at Copenhagen to developing countries who preserve their forests. Thus, America, $12 trillion in debt and facing a second straight $1.4 trillion deficit, will borrow another $1 billion from China to send to Brazil to bribe them to stop cutting down their trees.
When you slice through the blather about marooned bears and melting ice caps, oceans rising and cities sinking, global warming is a racket and a crock. It is all about money and power.
Copenhagen has always been about an endless transfer of wealth from America, Europe and Japan and creation of a global bureaucracy to control the pace of world economic and industrial development.
End game: enrichment and empowerment of global elites at the expense of Western peoples whose leaders have been bamboozled by con artists.
When Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and Rita came ashore in Texas in 2005, we were told this was due to global warming, and hurricane seasons would now get worse and worse until the world radically reduced the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
President Bush ignored the hysteria. What happened?
As Michael Fumento reports, the 2009 hurricane season ended quietly, with the fewest hurricanes since 1997, and not one hurricane made landfall in the United States.
When the feds sought to list the polar bear as an endangered species, Gov. Sarah Palin protested this “politicized science” and sued, claiming the polar bear was a healthy species whose numbers had doubled in recent years.
Was she wrong?
Is the Arctic ice cap melting? So we are told. But what harm has befallen mankind other than to have a Northwest Passage opened up to maritime traffic in the summer?
The Antarctic ice sheet is nine times as large as the Arctic, and here is what the British Antarctic Survey wrote last April:
“(D)uring the winter freeze in Antarctica this ice cover expands to an area roughly twice the size of Europe. Ranging in thickness from less than a metre to several metres, the ice insulates the warm ocean from the frigid atmosphere above. Satellite images show that since the 1970s the extent of Antarctic sea ice has increased at a rate of 100,000 square kilometres a decade.”
One hundred thousand square kilometers a decade?
This would mean Antarctic sea ice expanded by 300,000 square kilometers since the 1970s, or 116,000 square miles, which is an area larger than all of New England.
How can the Antarctic ice cap grow for three decades as the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has steadily increased, unless carbon dioxide has little or nothing to do with global warming?
Unlike the Arctic, Antarctica is a continent, and while chunks of ice are cracking off in Western Antarctica, in Eastern Antarctica, four times larger, the ice sheet is thickening and expanding. The Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research reported last April that the South Pole had shown “significant cooling in recent decades.”
In April 1992, as the alarm over the Earth’s end times began, scientists worldwide issued what was called the Heidelberg Appeal, aimed at just the kind of hysteria we are witnessing now in Copenhagen.
“We are … worried … at the emergence of an irrational ideology which is opposed to scientific and industrial progress and impedes economic and social development,” said the scientists.
“We contend that a Natural State, sometimes idealized by movements with a tendency to look towards the past, does not exist and has probably never existed since man’s first appearance in the biosphere. … (H)umanity has always progressed by increasingly harnessing Nature to its needs and not the reverse.
“We do, however, forewarn the authorities in charge of our planet’s destiny against decisions which are supported by pseudo-scientific arguments or false and non-relevant data.”
Since then, 4,000 scientists and 72 Nobel Prize winners have signed on. Again, it needs be said: Global warming is cyclical, and has been stagnant for a decade. There is no conclusive proof it is manmade, no conclusive proof it is harmful to the planet.