Tag Archives: UN Climate Conference

COP 28: UN targets America

By Craig Rucker

“Make no mistake,” COP 28, the big UN climate conference in Dubai, is “targeted at America.”

That’s what CFACT’s Marc Morano told the Fox News audience, reporting live from Dubai.

Watch Marc’s hard-hitting Fox report now at CFACT’s Climate Depot.

Thanks to the best supporters any organization ever had, CFACT’s team of policy experts is hard at work advocating freedom in the halls of UN climate power.  We are right inside the belly of the beast.

As Marc reports, Vice President Kamala Harris just pledged $3 billion American dollars  to the UN’s “Green Climate Fund.” When precisely did Congress appropriate that?

John Kerry took the UN stage and promised to shut down ALL “unabated” American coal power plants.  Meanwhile China is building 182 new ones!

The UN is not only targeting American energy and tax dollars, they are coming for our food supply as well.  They aim to eliminate fifty percent of American meat consumption and ninety percent of American beef!

Senior Fellow Peter Murphy, an essential member of CFACT’s team in Dubai, reports that COP 28 got off to an embarrassing start when conference chairman Sultan Al Jaber spoke hidden truths out loud, saying:

There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5°C” above preindustrial levels … Show me a roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.

Thanks for the honesty, Sultan!  Let’s hope the UN does  not succeed in silencing you before you reveal again.

Murphy further reports on another moment of revealing candor when Isabela Tagomori, who works on integrated assessment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) at Utrecht University, told a UN panel that, it is essential to inject “fairness  principles” and “distributional justice” into climate policy.

“Murph” pulled no punches.  He took the microphone and told the speaker that her redistribution talk smacked of “Marxism.”

You should have seen how fast she backpedaled!

She countered rather that her organization’s effort was merely to collect “many different (justice) dimensions.”

When threatened with the facts, climate campaigners retreat to vague, opaque language.

Senior policy analyst Bonner Cohen explains at CFACT.org that COP 28 is… you guessed it… all about the money.

Who is lining up to pocket the billions of dollars Kamala Harris and the rest are throwing at climate?

Investors, dictators, and incredibly well-funded left-wing climate pressure groups.

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I’m here in Dubai where everyone is uncharacteristically blatant in stating what they intend. The UN climate apparatus views the Biden Administration as  their big chance to assert power over America and shake us down for funds.  CFACT will not stand idly by and watch the UN accomplish its power grab.  Will you?  Fight beside CFACT. Please make the most generous gift you can right now, and together let’s defeat climate propaganda with facts.

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UN COP 28 climate conference off to bipolar start

By Peter Murphy

Dubai, United Arab Emirates

The biggest UN climate conference of the year did not start off as planned. Prominent figures, conference chairman Sultan Al Jaber, and two well-known U.S. climate leaders spoke way, way past each other.

The Sultan spoke an unvarnished truth (video) that went way beyond the usual group-think so pervasive at these mass climate gatherings when he said:

There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5°C” above preindustrial levels … Show me a roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.

That wasn’t in the UN climate script!

Such a high-level proclamation couldn’t be left unchallenged. First up was U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, who pledged to lead all Americans, if not the world, headlong back to the proverbial caves. Kerry announced America would be joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, a pact of nearly 60 countries that have promised to accelerate the phasing out of coal-fired power stations. “We will be working to accelerate unabated coal phase-out across the world, building stronger economies and more resilient communities,” he boasted.

Then Al Gore, former U.S. Vice President and climate pooh-bah emeritus, chimed in. He slammed Sultan Al Jaber, saying his, and the UAE’s, position as overseer of international negotiations on global warming this year was an abuse of public trust. “They are abusing the public’s trust by naming the CEO of one of the largest and least responsible oil companies in the world as head of the COP,” Gore said.

One has to feel for the Sultan, who probably thought chairing the COP meant dealing with business people and reasonable policy experts, not unhinged climate fanatics.  He should have known better. CFACT could have told him.

With that backdrop, the conference resumed Monday, and CFACT’s team went straight to work. One UN panel CFACT attended was to “create feasible and just transitions” to achieve carbon “net-zero” by 2050 (or whenever).

It’s all technologically “feasible” to get there, panelists insisted, if only enough countries would do what they are supposed to.  The big impediment to net zero, they explained, is “institutional.”  Nations just won’t play ball. Among them was the People’s Republic of China, one panelist acknowledged.  That was a refreshing change from the usual blind eye climate campaigners point toward China.

One panelist was Isabela Tagomori, who works on integrated assessment of carbon dioxide Removal (CDR) at Utrecht University. Tagomori presented on “just transition scenarios,” which is all about infusing climate “justice” into determining the redistribution of “global carbon budget investments” among nations and communities.

Tagomori outlined multiple scenarios, which she called global “fairness principles” for “distributional justice.” She wants to ensure “well-being among justice communities,” in contrast to economic growth to increase prosperity for people at all income levels. The scenario she leaned toward most was the “egalitarian” approach, that is, wealthy and non-wealthy societies are to be made equal in resources.

During the question-and-answer period, I challenged her on this preferred egalitarian principle and pointed out that conflating redistributing resources among people and nations based on the weather smacked of Marxism.

She countered by saying her organization’s effort was merely to collect “many different (justice) dimensions.”  When exposed, climate campaigners retreat to vague, opaque language.

Despite her nimble backpedaling from her egalitarian (i.e. Marxist) principle, it is clear that this panel well illustrated the overall UN climate agenda.  Extracting billions, indeed trillions, of dollars from the U.S. and other “wealthy” Western nations (which are drowning in their own debt) to redistribute under the guise of “climate justice” is a  central element of the COP28, and past summits. They are counting on politicians to glibly print and spend dollars, and pile more debt on to future generations.

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Get ready for another pointless UN climate conference

By Steve Goreham

The United Nations Climate Conference begins on Thursday in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. More than 70,000 delegates are expected to attend from almost 200 nations. The COP28 event will emit large amounts of carbon dioxide but is unlikely to have any measurable effect on global temperatures.

COP28 is the 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties, an annual event that has been going on since 1995. The Conference of the Parties is the decision-making body of the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is an international agreement that was established in 1994 by the U.N. with the intention of “preventing dangerous human interference with the climate system.”

Pope Francis, King Charles III, Bill Gates, John Kerry, and many other dignitaries will lead the 70,000 attendees. Heads of state, industry and business leaders, leaders of environmental groups, and media representatives will also attend. The Nature Conservancy plans to send representatives from 20 nations.

The attendees will arrive in the UAE primarily by private jet or commercial aircraft, powered by jet fuel. For each kilogram of jet fuel burned , 3.16 kilograms of carbon dioxide will be emitted. They will then travel from the airport to Dubai’s Expo City by limousine or taxi, fueled by gasoline or diesel fuel. Some may take electric vehicles, but these EVs will be charged by UAE electricity, 82% of which is produced by natural gas.

And yet, COP28 delegates will inevitably push for the end of the use of hydrocarbon fuels, which are coal, oil, and natural gas. Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency, who is likely to attend, stated in 2021: “If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas, and coal, from now — from this year.” Many delegates support Birol’s statement.

But most of the conference attendees will have cellphones, which are made from plastic from oil or natural gas. They will be wearing suits, ties, shoes, and other clothing, much of which will be composed of synthetic fibers from hydrocarbons. They will dine on food produced by farms that use synthetic nitrogen fertilizer created from ammonia, produced using natural gas or coal fuels. Hydrocarbons drive our modern society.

Developing nations, too, need oil, gas, and coal to raise the standard of living for their people. Renewables provided only a tiny part of the energy consumed in developing countries in 2022, such as in Africa (2.4%), India (5.9%), the Middle East (0.7%), and Southeast Asia (6.3%). More than 1,000 coal-fired power plants are now being planned or under construction across the world.

Ironically, developing countries appear to be all in for world decarbonization, with heavy participation at annual U.N. climate conferences. And why shouldn’t they be? Poorer nations seek billions in wealth transfers from richer nations in the name of climate change. Prior to the COP26 conference in Scotland in 2021, for example, India demanded $1 trillion per year from wealthy countries to help it reach “net zero” by 2070. About 25% of all financial aid to the developing world now goes to fund climate-related projects, up from only 4% in 2005.

The U.N.’s attendees don’t seem to mind since its climate conferences are already steeped in hypocrisy. Kerry, the U.S. climate envoy, is well known for his CO2-emitting private jet flights, but he considers his work too important to travel by alternatives that emit less CO2. Gates, the billionaire, built and owns a 66,000 square foot mansion in Medina, Washington, which uses more than 20 times the electricity of a typical U.S. home. Climate change advocates demand emissions reductions from society that they are unwilling to observe themselves.

Not that it matters much, anyway. There is little evidence that the annual COP climate conferences held over the last 27 years have had any effect on the climate. Data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere continues to rise steadily. In 2020, global industrial emissions of CO2 declined by more than 8% during the COVID-19 crisis, but this decline was undetectable in the rise in atmospheric CO2.

Nor has there been any significant change in energy consumption. World energy consumption has tripled since 1965. From 2004 to 2021, the world spent about $5 trillion to promote renewable energy and installed more than 300,000 wind turbines. But in 2021, coal, oil, and natural gas provided 81% of global energy consumption, the same percentage as in 1999. The COP climate conferences can best be characterized as futile.

One thing rising faster than world energy use is COP attendance. About 5,000 attended each of the first five COPs, but this rose to more than 27,000 for COP15 in Copenhagen and more than 30,000 for COP21 in Paris. This year’s conference may have more than 70,000 attendees, but “the sky’s the limit” for future attendance at this carbon dioxide-emitting event.

The U.N. says climate change is “the defining issue of our time.” If we all live long enough, we may have to endure the 50th Conference of the Parties. And it will be just as futile and pointless then as it is now.

Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the new bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.

Originally published in Washington Examiner.

US Backing New Plan To Cripple Coal Industry At UN Climate Conference

From The Daily Caller

By NICK POPE CONTRIBUTOR

The Biden administration is set to back a plan that would crush the coal industry at the upcoming United Nations (UN) climate summit, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The U.S. will reportedly support a French plan to get the countries of the world to ban private financing of coal-fired power plants during the upcoming UN conference, known as COP28, according to Reuters. The plan is likely to drive a rift between countries like the U.S. and France and those like China and India, which are reliant on coal to feed their economies cheap and reliable electricity.

The proposed plan would allow the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to set coal standards for private financing companies that would allow regulators, ratings agencies and non-governmental organizations to track coal financing, according to Reuters. (RELATED: Luxury Concierge Service Offering Private Jet Charters To Next UN Climate Conference)

The U.S., the European Union (EU) and Canada had been working together to assemble a strategy for phasing out coal, which they view as the leading threat to achieving international climate targets, according to Reuters. Approximately 73% 0f the electricity consumed in India is generated using coal, according to Reuters, and China permitted an average of two new coal plants each week in 2022, according to analysis conducted by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

“France has no coal, so their position banning it is easy. The U.S., on the other hand, has the largest coal reserves— by far— in the world,” Dan Kish, a senior research fellow for the institute for Energy Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Coal is the leading source of electricity in the world. All this does is make the rest of the world that is trying to get affordable electricity for their people align themselves with China and against the U.S. Uncle Sam is once again made to look like a Dunce under Joe Biden.”

India is reportedly likely to push back against the proposal, or any other proposal to set a deadline for a fossil fuel phase-out, according to Reuters. Indian delegates may reportedly push representatives of developed countries like the U.S. and France to become carbon negative, rather than merely carbon neutral, by 2050 to keep targets within grasp.

Beyond the reported plan to strangle private financing for coal plants, delegates are expected to discuss the shape and stipulations of a so-called “loss and damages” fund, a de facto international climate reparations program, at COP28. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry recently suggested that the U.S. will pay “millions” into the fund, a number that many activists and representatives of poorer countries find to be inadequate. China is unlikely to have any significant obligations to the fund because it is classified as a developing country, despite its status as the world’s top emitter and second-largest economy.

COP28 is scheduled to begin on Nov. 30 and run through Dec. 12.

Neither the White House nor the State Department responded immediately to requests for comment.