Green Subsidy Sharks

From Benny Peiser’s Global Warming Policy Forum

1) EU Wants India To Contribute To $100 Billion UN Climate Fund – The European Union Sunday said it expects India and other emerging economies to contribute to the Green Climate Fund after 2020, stating that "geopolitical realities have changed significantly". South Africa, speaking on behalf of G-77 plus China, and supported by BASIC, LMDC and other groups of small nations, warned that "any attempt to re-negotiate, re-write or re-define" the basic principles of the UNFCCC would delay the process of reaching the Paris agreement Press Trust of India, 9 February 2015

2) Business As Usual At UN Climate Talks - Climate change negotiations started at Geneva on Sunday, working to draw the rough blueprint for the global Paris agreement, which will be agreed upon by the end of the year. The signs of solidarity over select issues, which had emerged in the developing country block, G77+China, at Lima last year, reverberated at the Geneva venue too. On Monday several of the groups that fall within the umbrella of the G77 demanded that the ‘Loss and Damage’ track of negotiations be treated separately from the talks on the issue of adaptation. At the same time, the European Union (EU) demanded that the preamble of the Paris agreement not have any reference to the existing provisions of the United Nations (UN) Framework Convention on Climate Change or to historical responsibility of the developed countries. --Nitin Sethi, Business Standard, 10 February 2015

3) UN Climate Deal Complicated As Length Of Draft Text Balloons - Almost 200 nations complicated a drive for a UN deal to combat climate change in 2015 on Wednesday by more than doubling the length of a draft negotiating text to about 100 pages of radically varying solutions. The new text, of about 100 pages, swells a draft of 38 pages from talks in Lima last year, complicating the task ahead of a Paris summit starting in November that is due to agree a UN deal to limit global warming. Geneva is the last session for adding texts. Under UN rules, an official draft as the basis for talks has to be ready six months before the summit. The text lists a huge range of options that are unlikely to be resolved before Paris. --Reuters, 12 February 2015

4) UN Official Reveals Real Reason Behind Warming Scare - The alarmists keep telling us their concern about global warming is all about man's stewardship of the environment. But we know that's not true. A United Nations official has now confirmed this. At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.'s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism. "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution," she said. Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: "This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history." --Investor's Business Daily, 10 February 2015

5) Climate Skepticism in British Newspapers, 2007–2011 – After analyzing more than 3200 articles, it finds that skeptical voices increased their presence markedly across all newspapers and all types of articles in the second period, and maintained a significant presence in many in the third. Clearly, over a considerable period of time, and judged by their ongoing presence in the UK’s print media, skeptics have been successful merchants of doubt. Previous studies have shown that since its formation in 2009, the GWPF has been particularly adept at achieving a very significant presence in the UK print media. --James Painter & Neil T. Gavin, - Environmental Communication, 27 January 2015

6) Europe Turning Cold On Wind Farms - A wave of political and regulatory uncertainty sweeping across the EU has caused the rate of wind farm installations to plummet by as much as 90 per cent in some countries. Investments have been severely undermined by “erratic and harsh” changes to renewable energy policies in several previously large wind markets, according to the European Wind Energy Association. The rate of installations plunged by 90 per cent in Denmark; 84 per cent in Spain and 75 per cent in Italy, the association has reported in its latest annual assessment of the industry. --Pilita Clark, Financial Times, 10 February 2015