Critiques of Sham, Fraud‏

HERE IS A GOOD COLLECTION OF SCATHING CRITIQUES OF THE
SHAM, COOKED UP "COPENHAGEN AGREEMENT"
--- Soumya Dutta
------------------------------------------------------
With climate agreement, Obama guts progressive values

* Bill McKibben
18 Dec 2009 4:20 PM

The President of the United States did several things with his agreement today with China, India, Brazil and South Africa:

* He blew up the United Nations. The idea that theres a world community that means something has disappeared tonight. The clear point is, you poor nations can spout off all you want on questions like human rights or the role of women or fighting polio or handling refugees. But when you get too close to the center of things that count the fossil fuel thats at the center of our economy you can forget about it. Were not interested. Youre a bother, and when you sink beneath the waves, we dont want to hear much about it. The dearest hope of the American right for 50 years was essentially realized because in the end coal is at the center of Americas economy. We already did this with war and peace, and now weve done it with global warming. What exactly is the point of the U.N. now?

* He formed a league of super-polluters, and would-be super-polluters.

China, the U.S., and India dont want anyone controlling their use of
coal in any meaningful way. It is a coalition of foxes who will together govern the henhouse. It is no accident that the targets are weak to nonexistent. We dont want to get too far ahead of ourselves with targets, he said. Indeed. And now imagine what this agreement will look like with the next Republican president.

* He demonstrated the kind of firmness and resolve that Americans like to see. It will play well politically at home and that will be the worst part of the deal. Having spurned Europe and the poor countries of the world, he will reap domestic political benefit. George Bush couldnt have done thisthe reaction would have been too great. Obama has taken the mandate that progressives worked their hearts out to give him, and used it to gut the ideas that progressives have held most dear. The ice caps wont be the only things we lose with this deal.

******************************************
ALBA and G77 Denounce Copenhagen Sham
December 19, 2009
*
Obama, acting the way he did, definitely established that theres no
difference between him and the Bush tradition

(from Links International Journal of Socialist Revewal)

Speaking on behalf of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA), President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela took the floor at the plenary of the COP15 climate talks in Copenhagen to denounce the final deal that was soon to emerge and be imposed on the majority poor-country delegates, and which would fall far short of their demands.

Chavez accused US President Barack Obama of behaving like an emperor
who comes in during the middle of the night & and cooks up a document that we will not accept, we will never accept.

Chávez declared that all countries are equal. He would not accept that some countries had prepared a text for a climate deal and just slipped [it] under the door to be signed by the others. He accused them of a real lack of transparency.

We cant wait any longer, we are leaving & We are leaving, knowing that it wasnt possible getting a deal, he said.

Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, also took the floor to express
annoyance at the way a climate deal was being thrashed out by a small
group of world leaders at the last minute. If there is no agreement at this level, why not tell the people?, he said at the plenary meeting. He called for further consultations with the people.

Who is responsible?, Morales asked. Concluding that the
responsibility lies on the capitalist system we have to change the
capitalist system.
****************************************

Sham deal

The so-called Copenhagen Accord was pushed by the US and Australia,
and sealed in meetings behind closed doors with the leaders of China,
India, Brazil and South Africa. It was announced by Obama late on the
evening of December 18, and presented as final even before the COP15 delegates had a chance to vote on it. It does not commit governments to interim 2020 carbon emissions-reduction targets, or to legally binding reductions and only expresses a general aim of limiting the global warming increase to 2 degrees Celsius well above the 1 degree C-1.5 degree C target most delegations were calling for.

Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, delegation head of the G77 group of
developing countries, rejected the accord and vowed to fight it. Obama, acting the way he did, definitely established that theres no difference between him and the Bush tradition, he told Time magazine.

******************************************
Nnimmo Bassey, prominent Nigerian environmentalist and chair of Friends of the Earth International, described Copenhagen as an abject failure.

Justice has not been done. By delaying action, rich countries have
condemned millions of the worlds poorest people to hunger, suffering
and loss of life as climate chang accelerates. The blame for this
disastrous outcome is squarely on the developed nations. We are
disgusted by the failure of rich countries to commit to the emissions
reductions they know are needed, especially the US, which is the worlds largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases.

In contrast African nations, China and others in the developing world deserve praise for their progressive positions and constructive
approach. Major developing countries cannot be blamed for the failure of rich industrialised countries.

Instead of committing to deep cuts in emissions and putting new, public money on the table to help solve the climate crisis, rich countries have bullied developing nations to accept far less. Those most responsible for putting the planet in this mess have not shown the guts required to fix it and have instead acted to protect short-term political interests.

The only real leadership at the conference has come from the hundreds of thousands of ordinary people whove come together to demand strong action to prevent climate catastrophe. Their voices are loud and growing and Friends of the Earth International will continue to be part of the fight for climate justice.

Greenpeace criticized the accord for not having targets for carbon cuts and no agreement on a legally binding treaty.
Oxfam International called the deal a triumph of spin over substance. It recognizes the need to keep warming below two degrees but does not commit to do so. It kicks back the decisions on emissions cuts and fudges the issue of climate cash.

The accord confirms the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol and the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Developed
countries commit collectively to providing US$30 billion in new,
additional funding for developing countries for the 2010-2012 period. It also says developed countries support a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 from a variety of sources.
------------------------------------------------------------
Erich Pica, president of the Friends of the Earth (USA), said:

The climate negotiations in Copenhagen have yielded a sham agreement
with no real requirements for any countries. This is not a strong deal or a just one it isnt even a real one. Its just repackaging old positions and pretending theyre new. The actions it suggests for the rich countries that caused the climate crisis are extraordinarily
inadequate. This is a disastrous outcome for people around the world who face increasingly dire impacts from a destabilizing climate.

With the future of all humans on this planet at stake, rich countries must muster far more political will than they exhibited here. If they do not, small island states will become submerged, people in vulnerable communities across the globe will be afflicted with hunger and disease, and wars over access to food and water will rage.

The devastation will extend to those of us who live in wealthy
countries. The failure to produce anything meaningful in Copenhagen must serve as a wake up call to all who care about the future. It is a call to action. Corporate polluters and other special interests have such overwhelming influence that rich country governments are willing to agree only to fig leaf solutions. This is unacceptable, and it must change.

Fortunately, while the cost of solving the climate crisis rises each
day we fail to act, the crisis remains one that can largely be averted.
It is up to the citizens of the world especially citizens of the
United States, which has so impeded progress to mobilise and ensure
that true solutions carry the day. I firmly believe that together, we
can still achieve a politics in which climate justice prevails.

*************************************
Press release - La Via Campesina

Traders failed in Copenhagen
The future lies in peoples hands

(Copenhagen, 19 December 2009) The Copenhagen climate talks ended up in failure. Governments of the world showed themselves incapable or unwilling to make the changes necessary to find a just solution to the climate chaos. The talks have been driven by self interest and trade solutions that have so far proven useless and even damaging.
------
Josie Riffaud, a leader of the farmers movement Via Campesina said: Money and market solutions will not resolve the current crisis. We need instead a radical change in the way we produce and we consume, and this is what was not discussed in Copenhagen. The governments of the industrialized and industrializing countries showed themselves to be unwilling to tackle the model of development which has created and economic and environmental disaster.

They were incapable to consider real solutions and to see that carbon
markets will not solve the climate crisis.

The drastic emissions cuts (included in a binding deal), reorientation of agro-export economies, agrarian reform and other measures which could really contribute to slowing the heating of the earth were not discussed or considered. Once again governments acting in individual self interest have failed to consider the real alternatives offered by International social movements, environmental groups, indigenous peoples and others in creating a more just and fair society.

Even though the Copenhagen deal doesnt mention agriculture explicitely, it seemed during the two weeks talk that the UNFCCC wanted to include soils in the carbon capture methods, and include agriculture in it's technology transfer opening up space for transnational companies to receive subsidies for introducing GMO seeds and industrial agricultural methods such as non-till agriculture. This is exactly the type of agricltural development that has led us to the current environmenent and social crisis in the countryside.
-------------------------------------
The real power in Copenhagen was expressed in the streets and in the halls of the Bella centre on the 16th of December, when activists, community groups, international and local social movements and NGOs from the North and south pushed to meet each other in a symbolic 3rd space outside the Bella center.

The vicious repression of the police, including the preemptive arrest of many of the spokespeople of the movement Climate Justice Action further showed the desperation of governments to prevent the voices of real solutions to be heard.

We cannot look to governments to provide a magical solution to the Climate Crisis. Under the guidance of transnational corporations, they only prepare a further round of capital speculation, this time using Carbon, the building blocks of life itself as their stocks and shares.

In front of the failure of the COP 15 international social movements are more ready than ever to tackle the problems of the world and will mobilise for the next climate conference in Mexico due at the end of 2010; their time has come and governments will have no choice but to listen.

********************************
Johann Hari
Columnist, London Independent
Posted: December 18, 2009 06:54 PM

So that's it. The world's worst polluters - the people who are
drastically altering the climate - gathered here in Copenhagen to
announce they were going to carry on cooking, in defiance of all the
scientific warnings. They didn't seal the deal; they sealed the coffin for the world's low-lying islands, its glaciers, its North Pole, and millions of lives.

Those of us who watched this conference with open eyes aren't suprised.
----------
Every day, practical, intelligent solutions that would cut our emissions of warming gases have been offered by scientists, developing countries, and protesters - and they have been systematically vetoed by the governments of North America and Europe.

It's worth recounting a few of the ideas that were summarily dismissed - because when the world resolves to find a real solution, we will have to revive them.

------------------------------------------------
Discarded Idea One: The International Environmental Court.

Any cuts proposed at Copenhagen were purely voluntary. If a government decides not to follow them, nothing will happen, except a mild blush, and disastrous warming. After all, Canada signed up to cut its emissions at Kyoto, and then increased them by 26 percent - and there were no consequences. Copenhagen could unleash a hundred Canadas.

The brave, articulate Bolivian delegation - who have seen their glaciers melt at a terrifying pace - objected. They said if countries are serious about reducing emissions, their cuts need to be policed by an International Environmental Court that has the power to punish people who endanger our shared stable climate. This is hardly impractical. When our leaders and their corporate lobbies really care about an issue - say, on trade - they pool their sovereignty this way in a second. The World Trade Organization fines and sanctions nations severely if (say) they don't follow strict copyright laws. Is a safe climate less important than a trade-mark?
------------------------------------------------

Discarded Idea Two: Leave the fossil fuels in the ground. At meetings
here, an extraordinary piece of hypocrisy has been pointed out by the
new international chair of Friends of the Earth, Nnimmo Bassey and the environmental writer George Monbiot. The governments of the world say they want to drastically cut their use of fossil fuels, yet at the same time they are enthusiastically digging up any fossil fuels they can find, and hunting for more. They are holding a fire extinguisher in one hand and a flame-thrower in the other.

Only one of these instincts can prevail. A study published earlier this year in the journal Nature showed that we can only use - at an absolute maximum - 60 percent of all the oil, coal and gas we have already discovered if we are going to stay the right side of catastrophic runaway warming. So the first step in any rational climate deal would be an immediate moratorium on searching for more fossil fuels, and fair plans for how to decide which of the existing stock we will leave unused. As Bassey put it: "Keep the coal in the hole. Keep the oil in the soil. Keep the tar sand in the land." This option wasn't even discussed by our leaders.
--------------------

Discarded Idea Three: Climate debt. The rich world has been responsible for 70 percent of the warming gases pumped into the atmosphere - yet 70 percent of the effects are being felt in the developing world. Holland can build vast dykes to prevent its land flooding; Bangladesh can only drown. There is a cruel inverse relationship between cause and effect: the polluter doesn't pay.

So we have racked up a climate debt. We broke it, they paid. At this
summit, for the first time, the poor countries rose in disgust. Their
chief negotiator pointed out that the compensation offered "won't even pay for the coffins." The cliche that environmentalism is a rich
person's ideology just gasped its final CO2-rich breath. As Naomi Klein put it: "At this summit, the pole of environmentalism has moved South."

When we are dividing up who has the right to emit the few remaining
warming gases that the atmosphere can absorb, we need to realize that we are badly overdrawn. We have used up our share of warming gases, and then some. Yet the US and EU have dismissed the idea of climate debt out of hand. How can we get a lasting deal that every country agrees to if we ignore this basic principle of justice? Why should the poorest restrain themselves when the rich refuse to?

A deal based on these real ideas would actually cool the atmosphere. The alternatives championed at Copenhagen by the rich world - carbon
offsetting, carbon trading, carbon capture - won't. They are a global
placebo. The critics who say the real solutions are "unrealistic" don't seem to realize that their alternative is more implausible still: civilization continuing on a planet whose natural processes are rapidly breaking down.

Throughout the negotiations here, the world's low-lying island states
have clung to the real ideas as a life-raft, because they are the only way to save their countries from a swelling sea. It has been
extraordinary to watch their representatives - quiet, sombre people with sad eyes - as they were forced to plead for their own existence. They tried persuasion and hard science and lyrical hymns of love for their lands, and all were ignored.

Yet their discarded ideas - and dozens more like them - show once again that man-made global warming can be stopped. The intellectual blueprints exist just as surely as the technological blueprints. There would be sacrifices, yes - but they are considerably less than the sacrifices made by our grandparents in their greatest fight. We will have to pay higher taxes and fly less to make the leap to a renewably-powered world - but we will still be able to live an abundant life where we are warm and free and well-fed. The only real losers will be the fossil fuel corporations and the petro-dictatorships.

But our politicians have not chosen this sane path. No: they have chosen inertia and low taxes and oil money today over survival tomorrow. The true face of our current system - and of Copenhagen - can be seen in the life-saving ideas it has so casually tossed into the bin.

-------------------------------------------------
Copenhagen negotiators bicker and filibuster while the biosphere burns

George Monbiot
The Guardian (UK)
19 December 2009

First they put the planet in square brackets, now they have deleted it
from the text. At the end it was no longer about saving the biosphere: it was just a matter of saving face. As the talks melted down, everything that might have made a new treaty worthwhile was scratched out. Any deal would do, as long as the negotiators could pretend they have achieved something. A clearer and less destructive treaty than the text that emerged would be a sheaf of blank paper, which every negotiating party solemnly sits down to sign.

This was the chaotic, disastrous denouement of a chaotic and disastrous summit. The event has been attended by historic levels of incompetence.

Delegates arriving from the tropics spent 10 hours queueing in sub-zero temperatures without shelter, food or drink, let alone any explanation or announcement, before being turned away. Some people fainted from exposure; it's surprising that no one died. The process of negotiation was just as obtuse: there was no evidence here of the innovative methods of dispute resolution developed recently by mediators and coaches, just the same old pig-headed wrestling.

Watching this stupid summit via webcam (I wasn't allowed in either), it struck me that the treaty-making system has scarcely changed in 130 years. There's a wider range of faces, fewer handlebar moustaches, frock coats or pickelhaubes, but otherwise, when the world's governments try to decide how to carve up the atmosphere, they might have been attending the conference of Berlin in 1884. It's as if democratisation and the flowering of civil society, advocacy and self-determination had never happened. Governments, whether elected or not, without reference to their own citizens let alone those of other nations, assert their right to draw lines across the global commons and decide who gets what. This is a scramble for the atmosphere comparable in style and intent to the scramble for Africa.

At no point has the injustice at the heart of multilateralism been
addressed or even acknowledged: the interests of states and the interests of the world's people are not the same. Often they are diametrically opposed. In this case, most rich and rapidly developing states have sought through these talks to seize as great a chunk of the atmosphere for themselves as they can – to grab bigger rights to pollute than their competitors. The process couldn't have been better designed to produce the wrong results.
--------------------------------------
I spent most of my time at the Klimaforum, the alternative conference set up by just four paid staff, which 50,000 people attended without a hitch.

(I know which team I would put in charge of saving the planet.) There the barrister Polly Higgins laid out a different approach. Her declaration of planetary rights invests ecosystems with similar legal safeguards to those won by humans after the second world war. It changes the legal relationship between humans, the atmosphere and the biosphere from ownership to stewardship. It creates a global framework for negotiation which gives nation states less discretion to dispose of ecosystems and the people who depend on them.

Even before the farce in Copenhagen began it was looking like it might be too late to prevent two or more degrees of global warming. The nation states, pursuing their own interests, have each been passing the parcel of responsibility since they decided to take action in 1992.

We have now lost 17 precious years, possibly the only years in which climate breakdown could have been prevented. This has not happened by accident: it is the result of a systematic campaign of sabotage by certain states, driven and promoted by the energy industries. This idiocy has been aided and abetted by the nations characterised, until now, as the good guys: those that have made firm commitments, only to invalidate them with loopholes, false accounting and outsourcing. In all cases immediate self-interest has trumped the long-term welfare of humankind. Corporate profits and political expediency have proved more urgent considerations than either the natural world or human civilisation. Our political systems are incapable of discharging the main function of government: to protect us from each other.

Goodbye Africa, goodbye south Asia; goodbye glaciers and sea ice, coral reefs and rainforest. It was nice knowing you. Not that we really cared. The governments which moved so swiftly to save the banks have bickered and filibustered while the biosphere burns.

---------------------------------
New Copenhagen accord 'a sham'
YOLANDI GROENEWALD | COPENHAGEN, DENMARK - Dec 19 2009 09:46

The new Copenhagen accord, hammered out late on Friday night, is a sham -- leading climate change observers said. South Africa took centre stage in the accord as one of five countries to broker it, together with the US.
-------------------------------------------------
The European Union has also accepted the accord.

But the accord split nations in the last plenary, which was still going strong on Saturday morning. Many nations was hesitant to sign the deal, and there was a lot of bitterness from Venezuela, many African delegations and the small island states lead by the sad voice of Tuvula.

The accord was negotiated between South Africa, the USA, China, India, Brazil and the US in a day of high drama that saw the Obama illusion shatter into a million pieces.

The onus to get a legally binding agreement has now shifted to Mexico
City in a years time.
------------------------------------------
Scepticism in action

Charismatic Sudanese lead negotiator and chief negotiator for the G77 group Lumumba Di-Aping, called the deal a sell-out.

"This deal will definitely result in massive devastation in Africa and small island states," he said. "It has the lowest level of ambition you can imagine. It's nothing short of climate change Scepticism in action. It locks countries into a cycle of poverty for ever. Obama has eliminated any difference between him and Bush."

It is understood that some of the African delegates were unhappy that
South Africa was involved in the brokering of the accord, as it
presented a break from the unified African position.

The South African delegation was not available for comment. President
Jacob Zuma was reportedly involved in high-level talks with President
Barack Obama among others, in drafting parts of the Copenhagen accord.
---------------------------------------------------
Greenpeace was scathing about the turn of events.

'Not fair' -->
"Not fair, not ambitious and not legally binding," Greenpeace
International executive director, Kumi Naidoo, said of the accord.

"The job of world leaders is not done. The city of Copenhagen is a
climate crime scene tonight, with the guilty men and women fleeing to
the airport in shame," he said.

Naidoo said world leaders produced a poor deal full of loopholes big
enough to fly Air Force One through. "We have seen a year of crises, but today it is clear that the biggest one "facing humanity is a leadership crisis."

In the final document the accord shies away from committing nations to a 1.5C temperature rise, as argued for by small island states and
contained in earlier drafts. Instead the accord commits to 2C. The
earlier 2050 goal of reducing global CO2 emissions by 80% was also
omitted from the final draft.

About $30-billion in funding in 3 years for poor countries to adapt to climate change will start flowing next year, the accord promised and $100-billion a year after 2020.
------------------------------------
Full adoption ? --
It was unclear whether the 192 countries in the full, final plenary
session would adopt the accord.

Oxfam International said the so-called 'climate deal' "is a triumph of spin over substance". It said the deal provides no confidence that
catastrophic climate change will be averted or that poor countries will be given the money they need to adapt as temperatures rise.

"This agreement barely papers over the huge differences between
countries which have plagued these talks for two years," said Jeremy
Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International.

Shorbanu Khatun, a climate migrant at the summit with Oxfam said: "I
came all the way from a displaced persons camp on the flooded coast of Bangladesh to see justice done for the 45 000 people made homeless by cyclone Aila. How do I tell them their misery has fallen on deaf ears?"

Other observer organisations such politicians was not trying to spin a nothing agreement into something that looked acceptable to the world and wrongly convinced them that progress had been made at Copenhagen.
------------------------------
Toothless --
Kate Horner of Friends of the Earth, who had earlier the week been
thrown out of the conference said the accord was a toothless declaration.

"This is the United Nations and the nations here are not united on this secret backroom declaration. The US has lied to the world when they called it a deal and they lied to over a hundred countries when they said would listen to their needs.

She said the accord being spun by the US as an historic success,
reflects contempt for the multilateral process and we expect more from our Nobel prize winning President."

Much had been expected of Obama to save the talks from its impasse, but apart from brokering what critics called a weak deal, Obama did not bring much to the table at Copenhagen that differed from the USs
previous position.

He also chose not to speak to the worlds press corps, but only briefed Whitehouse journalists on his way back to the US, late last night on Air Force One. He blamed the expected bad weather conditions in Washington as an excuse for leaving early.
-----------------------------------------------
China blamed --
It was reported that he told the US journalists that an unprecedented progress had bee made, but he also said "we have much further to go. Though he didnt say it outright, veiled remarks indicated that Obama blamed China for the weak outcome.

He said if delegates had waited to reach a full, binding agreement, "we wouldn't have made any progress."

There might be such frustration and cynicism that rather than taking
one step forward, we ended up taking two steps back," he told US reporters.
-------------------------------
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she begrudgingly accepted the
accord, calling it a first step. But the small island state of Tuvulu complained bitterly that his country's future was not for sale. President Hugo Chavez from Venezuela also led a trio of Latin American countries that included Cuba and Bolivia who complained that they were excluded from the process and that they believed president Lula da Silva from Brazil didnt represent their interests.
---------------------------------------------------------
The biggest challenge, turning the political will into a legally
(binding agreement has moved to Mexico, WWF said in a statement. After years of negotiations we now have a declaration of will which does not bind anyone and therefore fails to guarantee a safer future for next generations.

The organisation said what was good about Copenhagen was the level of
national pledges for climate action in most countries.

Politically, we live in a world that agrees to stay below the danger
zone of two degrees but practically what we have on the table adds up to 3C or more. It said a gap between the rhetoric and reality could cost millions of lives, hundreds of billions of dollars and a wealth of lost opportunities.

We are disappointed but remain hopeful. The civil society will continue watching every step of further negotiations. Getting a strong outcome of the follow-up process will take a lot of bridge-building between the rich and the poor countries. We expect that the Mexican hosts will be ideally placed to play that role.

*******************************************

... Rasmussen, as head of Venstre, the right wing party, and a coalition including the rabid anti-immigrant party in Denmark, had become the official host of the meeting. Until midway through the second week of the COP, that role had fallen on the more capable shoulders of Denmarks former environmental minister, Connie Hedegaard. With years of experience at the UN, and in the Kyoto process particularly, Hedegaard knew the players, the positions, and was respected as fair and impartial.

Rasmussen would, in contrast, become known for high-handed demands,
back-room wheeling and dealing, mass arrest and detention of protestors on suspicion of future traffic obstruction, demoting Hedegaard on the eve of the final high-level talks, and then abruptly bringing her back in to try to salvage a deal, barring the civil sector IGOs and NGOs from the meeting midway through the second week, after putting them through torturous and repeated dawn-till-dark outdoor linestandings in freezing cold and blowing snow, and then breaking with the EU and G-77 to back the USA's coalition of the willing approach.

Leaving the NGOs out in the cold literally meant that none of civil society's detailed ideas could rise to the surface when they were most needed to break out of government sector's impasse. Instead, the US came in and tried to bully China, and China, in a geopolitical-orbit-shifting rebuke, stood firm and did not blink. The US limped home with a spin-doctored document, while China was revealed as the emerging world power to be reckoned with. Some of that had to do with Chinas massive investments in Africa and the two-thirds world over the past decade, which had built it a large store of political capital. Unfortunately, it spent a big hunk of that when it sold out Africa to the 5-party outcome.

Naomi Klein said, Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G77
negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2C
increase in average global temperatures translates into a 33.5C
increase in Africa. That means, according to the Pan African Climate
Justice Alliance, an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger, and water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people.

Rasmussen and the G8 powers led by the Obama delegation, made their case for colonialism. What was being colonized and divided between occupying powers was not the G77, but the sky. For a mere ten billion dollars per year, G8 shareholders were sold a carbon market worth $1.2 trillion per year. Matthew Stilwell of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable development said that rich countries were allowed to exchange beads and blankets for Manhattan, adding, [They]'ve carved up the last remaining unowned resource and allocated it to the wealthy.

With a $100 billion/year buy-out (first payment 2020, a US election
year) or one army-year in Kabul, shared out between 193 countries,
citizens from the Maldives will be offered hotel rooms in Houston the
way New Orleans hurricane refugees were.

Greenpeace Executive Director Kumi Naidoo said, In a cruel irony I have just learned that the three Greenpeace activists who, posing as world leaders, entered the Danish Palace for the State Dinner on Thursday night to unfurl a banner calling for a real climate deal are to spend the next three weeks in jail. They will be away from their families over Christmas and the New Year. The real leaders, who attempted to get real action are now in jail, while the alleged 'leaders' got clean away, and are fleeing the Copenhagen climate crime scene in private jets and 747s. ...
==================================================