GWPF | 19 Nov 2014
Tories Fear UK Pledge Of Millions To Climate Fund Could Lead To By-Election Defeat
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Wednesday warned that next year’s landmark climate change summit in Paris will fail if world leaders decide to put cutting carbon emissions ahead of economic growth. “It’s vital that the Paris conference be a success… and for it to be a success, we can’t pursue environmental improvements at the expense of economic progress,” Abbott said. “We can’t reduce emissions in ways which cost jobs because it will fail if that’s what we end up trying to do.” –Jane Aardell, Reuters, 19 November 2014
Plans for the government to donate (sic) hundreds of millions of pounds to a new Green Climate Fund could lead voters away from the Tories in an upcoming by-election. Senior Tories fear that the contribution has jeopardised the party’s chances of obtaining votes from potential UKIP supporters – skeptical of climate change claims and opposed to foreign aid. David Cameron has done little to address these fears, by refusing to disclose the precise amount that Britain plans to donate to the fund, although he stressed that the money would come from existing funds. –Nick Reilly, Metro News, 17 November 2014
We are also told that Paris is the moment when the world will come together to save us from an excess of greenhouse gas emissions. Any “deal” at Paris will merely give China and India a free rein until the 2030s without any binding obligation to be monitored and scrutinised by the west on their actual behaviour. That is why Abbott is wise to make any Australian climate policies conditional on a legally binding, verifiable, enforceable and genuinely global agreement to replace the Kyoto protocol. It’s a fair bet Abbott’s position will be vindicated at the United Nations climate talks next year. –Tom Switzer, The Guardian, 18 November 2014
What is shaping up now, as Benny Peiser of the London-based Global Warming Policy Forum predicts, is a huge blame game over the likely failure to agree to a post-Kyoto treaty. China and India will blame the west for its failure to deliver $100 bn per annum – yes, $100bn – that was promised at Copenhagen. Obama and the left will blame the Republicans. The EU will blame the Americans. Climate enthusiasts and developing nations will blame all and sundry. And Abbott will look like a genius for keeping Australia on the margins of yet another climate summit fiasco. –Tom Switzer, The Guardian, 18 November 2014
David Cameron is to hand at least £650 million to help undeveloped countries cope with climate change on the day the Conservatives will fight a crucial by-election battle with Ukip. The prime minister had hoped to avoid attention being drawn to the UK’s contribution to the Green Climate Fund until after the Rochester & Strood by-election, according to government insiders. The timing is deeply awkward for Mr Cameron, highlighting controversial commitments to both foreign aid and green measures, with Ukip set for another coup in winning its second parliamentary seat. —Francis Elliott and Michael Savage, The Times, 17 November 2014
International climate finance for decarbonisation is a detrimental use of aid money. The international community should be encouraging the development of the cheapest forms of electricity generation that offer populations in the developing world the best chances of escaping poverty. It is irresponsible to be actively promoting expensive alternatives that have already led to increasing fuel poverty in the UK and the EU. We are also concerned about western green investors profiteering from the Green Climate Fund; something that Governments around the world should ensure does not happen. –Benny Peiser, Global Warming Policy Forum, 19 November 2014
The Queensland government, as host of last weekend’s G20 summit, is incensed over what it sees as an ill-informed, insulting speech from Barack Obama about climate change, the Great Barrier Reef and coal. Senior Queensland government MPs are so angry at Mr Obama’s remarks about the Great Barrier Reef and his attack on coal production in a resources state that they are considering a formal complaint. However, it is unlikely this will happen as informal messages were sent to the US delegation, declaring the President’s speech was not in keeping with that of a guest and ally. –Dennis Shanahan, The Australian, 19 November 2014
1) UN Climate Treaty May Fail Over Economic Risks, Tony Abbott Warns – Reuters, 19 November 2014
2) Tories Fear UK Pledge Of Millions To Climate Fund Could Lead To By-Election Defeat – Metro News, 17 November 2014
3) Cameron’s £650 Million Green Climate Fund Pledge Plays Straight Into The Hands Of Ukip – The Times, 17 November 2014
4) GWPF Calls For Halt To UK Low Carbon International Climate Funding – Global Warming Policy Forum, 19 November 2014
5) Tony Abbott Will Soon Look Like A Genius For Refusing To Drag Australia To Yet Another Climate Fiasco – The Guardian, 18 November 2014
6) Australian Fury Over Barack Obama Jab On Climate And Coal – The Australian, 19 November 2014
1) UN Climate Treaty May Fail Over Economic Risks, Tony Abbott Warns
Reuters, 19 November 2014
Jane Aardell
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott on Wednesday warned that next year’s landmark climate change summit in Paris will fail if world leaders decide to put cutting carbon emissions ahead of economic growth.
Just days after host Australia was embarrassed into addressing climate change at the Group of 20 Leaders Summit in Brisbane, Abbott defiantly held his country’s line – the polar opposite of most other G20 nations.
“It’s vital that the Paris conference be a success… and for it to be a success, we can’t pursue environmental improvements at the expense of economic progress,” Abbott said. “We can’t reduce emissions in ways which cost jobs because it will fail if that’s what we end up trying to do.”
Abbott made the remarks at a joint press conference in Canberra with visiting French President Francois Hollande, who said he hoped a new deal on carbon emissions would be legally binding and linked to a new United Nations fund to help poor nations cope with global warming.
“If the poorest, most vulnerable countries can’t be accompanied in their transition to sustainable development, then there will be no binding agreement,” Hollande said earlier this week in New Caledonia, where he met top government officials from Kiribati, CookIslands, Vanuatu, Niue, Tuvalu and French Polynesia.
The Green Climate Fund now stands at $7.5 billion following pledges by the United States,Japan, France, Germany, Mexico and South Korea. That is within sight of a $10 billion goal, brightening prospects for a U.N. climate pact next year.
Asked if Australia would contribute to the fund, Abbott said Australia, one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters per capita, had already committed A$2.55 billion ($2.21 billion) to a domestic initiative to reduce the country’s emissions by 5 percent below 2000 levels by 2020.
“What we are doing is quite comparable with what other countries are doing and we do deliver on our reductions targets unlike some others,” Abbott said.
2) Tories Fear UK Pledge Of Millions To Climate Fund Could Lead To By-Election Defeat
Metro News, 17 November 2014
Nick Reilly
Plans for the government to donate (sic) hundreds of millions of pounds to a new Green Climate Fund could lead voters away from the Tories in an upcoming by-election.
Senior Tories fear that the contribution has jeopardised the party’s chances of obtaining votes from potential UKIP supporters – skeptical of climate change claims and opposed to foreign aid.
David Cameron has done little to address these fears, by refusing to disclose the precise amount that Britain plans to donate to the fund, although he stressed that the money would come from existing funds.
Mr Cameron said: ‘All we have to do now is to decide how much of this already-set-aside money we put into this specific fund and, as ever, Britain will play its part’.
‘It will not be new money, it will be money already set aside for that purpose’.
While the UK has already donated £1.5 billion to tackle climate change since 2009, it is the first time that the Government has pledged cash to the Green Climate Fund, which is expected to be more costly.
3) Cameron’s £650 Million Green Climate Fund Pledge Plays Straight Into The Hands Of Ukip
The Times, 17 November 2014
Francis Elliott and Michael Savage
David Cameron is to hand at least £650 million to help undeveloped countries cope with climate change on the day the Conservatives will fight a crucial by-election battle with Ukip.
The prime minister had hoped to avoid attention being drawn to the UK’s contribution to the Green Climate Fund until after the Rochester & Strood by-election, according to government insiders.
Barack Obama’s decision to announce that the US was contributing almost £2 billion at the G20 summit in Brisbane yesterday turned the spotlight on the UK before the deadline on Thursday for pledges to the international fund.
The timing is deeply awkward for Mr Cameron, highlighting controversial commitments to both foreign aid and green measures, with Ukip set for another coup in winning its second parliamentary seat. […]
Ministers have told green groups privately that Britain’s contribution will be similar to the sum reported yesterday, the same as the sums already pledged by Germany and France. It will come from the Overseas Development Aid budget.
Agreement on the final figure was held up by a Whitehall battle between Justine Greening, the Tory Development Secretary and Ed Davey, the Lib Dem energy secretary, according to NGO sources. Britain will attach a number of conditions to the handout to limit the controversy after the announcement at a Berlin conference on Thursday, they say.
Nevertheless, Nigel Farage is bound to seize on the large donation as his party seeks to ensure that Mark Reckless, who quit the Commons as a Tory on the opening day of the Conservative party conference, is returned as a Ukip MP on Thursday. Senior Conservatives are seeking to lower expectations, suggesting the margin — not the fact — of defeat will determine how destabilising the by-election will prove.
4) GWPF Calls For Halt To UK Low Carbon International Climate Funding
Global Warming Policy Forum, 19 November 2014
Britain should help poor countries cope, not burden them with costly renewables
The Global Warming Policy Forum is today calling for the UK’s new international climate finance contribution to go towards helping developing countries with adaptation measures to increase their resilience, rather than the funds being allocated to decarbonisation.
It has been reported that David Cameron will later this week pledge £650m to the Green Climate Fund, which aims to help the developing world deal with climate change.
The Government has already allocated £3.87 billion of taxpayers’ money to international climate finance. Since 2011, more than half of this funding has been allocated to low carbon energy development with only around a quarter being used for adaptation purposes.
It is also estimated that of the $35 billion of global international climate aid over the period 2010-2012, less than 15% was allocated to measures helping poor nations to cope with climate change.
Responding to reports of the UK’s contribution to the Green Climate Fund, Dr Benny Peiser, the director of the GWPF, said:
“International climate finance for decarbonisation is a detrimental use of aid money. The international community should be encouraging the development of the cheapest forms of electricity generation that offer populations in the developing world the best chances of escaping poverty. It is irresponsible to be actively promoting expensive alternatives that have already led to increasing fuel poverty in the UK and the EU.”
“We are also concerned about western green investors profiteering from the Green Climate Fund; something that Governments around the world should ensure does not happen.
“The UK’s contribution to international climate finance should be targeted at helping the developing world become more resilient instead of making energy more expensive for developing economies.”
Notes to Editors
The Green Climate Fund aims to catalyse climate finance from public and private sources, and at the international and national levels, to help the developing world adapt and mitigate climate change.
The UK has already allocated £3.87 billion for international climate finance for the period 2011/12 – 2015/16. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact estimates that 56% has been directed to low carbon development, 27% to adaptation and 7% to forestry from 2011 to Feb 2014 [link].
For the period 2010 – 2012, the World Resources Institute estimates that only $5 billion of international fast start climate finance was allocated to adaptation, compared to a total of $35 billion [link].
5) Tony Abbott Will Soon Look Like A Genius For Refusing To Drag Australia To Yet Another Climate Fiasco
The Guardian, 18 November 2014
Tom Switzer
Even as he continues to win plaudits from visiting Chinese and Indian leaders, the high priests and priestesses of the fourth estate are in full-throated rebellion against Tony Abbott. Defensive, embarrassing, timid, insular, clumsy, flawed, weird, cringeworthy – this is just a sampler of media comment on Abbott’s performance at the G20 in Brisbane.
But it is perhaps better to see Abbott as someone who refuses to agree at all times with outspoken, self-appointed pressure groups that breed around controversial questions. He makes an inviting rhetorical target precisely because he embodies that down-to-earth quality in our national spirit that has been all but obliterated by the modern obsession with courting fashionable opinion. His bluntness – such as his defence of Big Coal or his threat to “shirtfront” Putin – takes him where mealy-mouthed politicians fear to tread. […]
We are told that on climate change, the G20 leaders spectacularly wrong-footed Abbott. Yet he has merely defended the national interest and kept faith with the Australian people who gave him an electoral mandate to abolish Julia Gillard’s widely unpopular carbon tax. We are also told that Paris is the moment when the world will come together to save us from an excess of greenhouse gas emissions.
It’s a fair bet Abbott’s position will be vindicated at the United Nations climate talks next year.
Shortly before Brisbane, Beijing concluded a bilateral accord with Washington in which they agreed (on a non-binding basis) to begin reducing their annual emissions by 2030. The understanding is clearly that, since Obama signed up to this deal (and indeed presented it as a triumph), he will not push the Chinese any further at next year’s meeting in Paris.
Meanwhile, Obama needs to ask the US Congress to appropriate $3bn for the global climate fund. Republicans will oppose it, and many Democrats repudiated Obama’s energy agenda in the recent midterm elections. No member of the visiting Washington press corps, judging from the press conference on Sunday, evidently thinks the issue is an American priority. Congress won’t legislate a carbon tax or a national emissions trading scheme.
As for China, their leaders’ priority is to grow their economy at 7-8% annually and to reduce poverty; and the cheapest way of doing so is via carbon energy (president Xi did not even mention climate change in his address to parliament yesterday.) True, Beijing is investing in renewable energy projects and piloting cap and trade schemes in some provinces. But China is also building a coal-fired power plant every 8-10 days and its net emissions continue to escalate steadily (on 1990 levels, Australia is set to cut its greenhouse gas emission by 4% by 2020.)
Any “deal” at Paris will merely give China and India a free rein until the 2030s without any binding obligation to be monitored and scrutinised by the west on their actual behaviour. That is why Abbott is wise to make any Australian climate policies conditional on a legally binding, verifiable, enforceable and genuinely global agreement to replace the Kyoto protocol. Even the Germans have essentially done that.
What is shaping up now, as Benny Peiser of the London-based Global Warming Policy Forum predicts, is a huge blame game over the likely failure to agree to a post-Kyoto treaty. China and India will blame the west for its failure to deliver $100 bn per annum – yes, $100bn – that was promised at Copenhagen. Obama and the left will blame the Republicans. The EU will blame the Americans. Climate enthusiasts and developing nations will blame all and sundry.
And Abbott will look like a genius for keeping Australia on the margins of yet another climate summit fiasco.
6) Australian Fury Over Barack Obama Jab On Climate And Coal
The Australian, 19 November 2014
Dennis Shanahan
THE Queensland government, as host of last weekend’s G20 summit, is incensed over what it sees as an ill-informed, insulting speech from Barack Obama about climate change, the Great Barrier Reef and coal.
Federal Coalition members are also angry at the US President’s public intervention in the Australian climate change debate at the G20 last Saturday, when most of his remarks in the summit’s closed session on energy, where the issue was discussed, were devoted to US gas supplies and production that have been boosted by coal-seam gas and shale oil.
Tony Abbott told the G20 session that the “four-fifths” of the developed world that had used fossil fuels for economic growth could not now deny “the other fifth” access to coal to generate electricity for the hundred million people who were without it.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi picked up on the theme yesterday in his speech to federal parliament, calling for new-generation energy “that does not cause our glaciers to melt”.
Senior Queensland government MPs are so angry at Mr Obama’s remarks about the Great Barrier Reef and his attack on coal production in a resources state that they are considering a formal complaint. However, it is unlikely this will happen as informal messages were sent to the US delegation, declaring the President’s speech was not in keeping with that of a guest and ally.
What most angered Newman government MPs was that the state had “bent over backwards” to find a venue and audience in keeping with Mr Obama’s late request to speak to a large number of young people. The University of Queensland, where Mr Obama spoke on Saturday, was outside the secure area in the Brisbane CBD and added greatly to the inconvenience for city residents.
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