Exclusive Report:
ICLEI: Linking Local Governments to the UN Agenda
by Cathie Adams
Eagle Forum International Issues Chairman
cathieadams@me.com
December 8a, 2011. National governments will probably not adopt a new United Nations legally binding greenhouse gas emissions treaty in Durban, South Africa, but that does not protect Americans from the UN’s tentacles. The globocrats are employing its non-governmental organizations to entice local and regional governments to allow global bureaucrats to measure, report and verify their municipalities’ greenhouse gas emissions.
The Durban Adaptation Charter, an initiative of ICLEI, the International Council for Local Environmental
Initiatives, was signed this week by 114 mayors and other elected local leaders representing 950 local governments from around the world. ICLEI employs the same tactics to impose facets of Agenda 21 in hundreds of American communities that link local governments to global governance to implement the UN’s radical environmental agenda.
Its first annual report, entitled “carbonn Cities Climate Registry,” aims to influence nations to agree to the same measurable, reportable and verifiable climate commitments made by local governments. Co-authors of the report, the World Mayors Council on Climate Change, bragged that it is “turning the ‘talk’ of climate challenge into the ‘walk’ of climate action.”
The NGOs believe they have developed a model to measure, report and verify carbon reductions boasting voluntary participation of cities in 19 countries representing 83 million inhabitants to create 90 GHG inventories with 107 commitments and 555 actions.
The Mayor of Durban presented a resolution to both the Climate Change meeting and to the World Mayors Council on Climate Change calling for ten principles, which should serve as warning signs of intrusive influence on our elected officials:
- A commitment to climate change adaptation as a key consideration for all zoning and planning
- Undertake local level impact and vulnerability assessments of climate risks
- Planning infrastructure and investments that are climate-smart and environmentally sustainable
- Ensure that mitigation actions limit greenhouse gas increases
- Encourage citizen lifestyle changes that contribute to local climate actions
- Ensure sustainable management, conservation and restoration of ecosystems
- Build climate financing with the Green Climate Fund (UN global tax), national governments and multilateral funding institutions
- Develop a measurable, reportable and verifiable register of greenhouse gases
- Ensure cooperation of all levels of government to implement UN legal frameworks
- Promote partnerships at city, regional and global levels
More than 600 American communities are members of ICLEI and have suffered its costly and intrusive agenda to spend millions of taxpayer dollars for walking and bicycling paths and for public transportation.
When local citizens call for these actions, then local control and self-government are in tact; but when ICLEI entices locally elected officials to embrace the UN’s global agenda, then it is the responsibility of self-governed citizens to defend their right to elect public officials and hold them accountable to our form of government that originates with the governed, not with global busybodies. Source here.
Exclusive Report:
Stoking the Climate Change Fires
by Pat Carlson
Eagle Forum Environmental Chairman
December 8b, 2011. Global warming or climate change as it is now referred to due to no warming since 1997, is a non-issue to the majority of Americans as the U.S. experiences the worst economic times since the Great Depression. It has been put on the back burner and left to simmer in the world of most important issues. But in order to stoke the flame and create a renewed fire, three United Nations agencies have issued reports claiming a global crisis. This happened just days prior to the latest climate change Conference of the Parties COP 17 taking place in Durban, South Africa, November 28-December 9, 2011.
One report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims all weather extremes recently experienced across the globe were the result of climate change. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the panel claimed to be the ultimate scientific authority on global warming, said the report predicts heat waves currently experienced once every 20 years will happen every other year by the end of this century and within a decade, up to 250 million more people will face the stress of scarce water. Reducing emissions is all the world must do to avoid these future crises. The IPCC and Mr. Pachauri, an engineer and economist not a scientist, make these exacting predictions based on computer models which have proven to be less than reliable in the past.
Another report was issued by the International Energy Agency (IEA) claiming we must change fossil fuel infrastructure in the next five years or we will be headed for irreversible climate change. “The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, said. “I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy…..the door will be closed forever.”
The third report, “Bridging the Emissions Gap” issued by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) claims efforts already made by nations to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is not enough to keep any future global warming from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius below pre-industrial levels. The cap on warming was a decision made at COP 15 in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009. Achim Steiner, UNEP Executive Director said the “world has an ever narrow window of time.” Each report builds or feeds off the other and is intended to motivate delegates at COP 17 to take action. Actions don’t just mean domestic reduction in emissions but the need to find money to transfer from rich industrialized countries to poor developing countries. This money would be put into the future Green Climate Fund (GCF) created at COP 16 in Cancun, Mexico. The amount will start at $100 billion each year starting in 2020. US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton introduced this brilliant idea at COP 15. Of course, the rich countries are in such debt they are about to fall off the cliff into bankruptcy. If a domestic tax can’t be found the next possibility is a global tax. Taxing aviation and shipping globally has been on the U.N.’s wish list for years. This is now a serious proposal widely accepted by countries and will most likely be part of any agreement coming out of COP 17. According to the advocates, this would also help solve the pending GHG emission gap crisis in the next five years even though aviation and shipping make up a very small 2 to 3 percent of all global emissions.
These UN bureaucrats have big plans for you. As COP 17 President, Ms. Maite Nkcana-Mashabane assuringly said, we are here to “put the interests of the global citizen first.” I doubt the global citizen would consider a complete lifestyle change in their best interest, but UNFCCC Secretary Figueres says that COP 17 is laying the “foundations for a revolution.” The agreement she predicts will come out of COP 17 will “revolutionize the way we travel…..the way we produce…….the way we consume.” She described the wanted agreement as the “most compelling energy, industrial, behavioral revolution that humanity has ever seen. There is barely a sector that is not being touched” by the discussions. Let’s hope she’s just dreaming.
CRIMINALIZE THE DENIERS
At every UN conference there are those who are rabid, radical advocates and COP 17 is no different. A press conference was held by five college professors from U. S. universities who are part of a group called the Pennsylvania Environmental Consortium. Their topic was the Ethics of Climate Disinformation. Prof. Donald Brown of Penn State University claimed there is a concerted and coordinated “campaign of climate change disinformation” going on in the U.S. which he considers a “moral travesty” and an “assault on humanity.” He claims he’s not attacking skepticism nor is “he denying the right to free speech, but “lying and misinformation” is not acceptable and is “morally reprehensible” in free speech. These elitist professors admit there is uncertainty in the science of global warming but this is being exaggerated by this campaign, thereby keeping the U.S from taking action which in turn causes harm to the poorest and most vulnerable of humanity. “It is a violation of human rights.” According to these academics, those involved in the campaign range from tobacco and oil companies to “think tanks, front groups, astroturf groups (groups pretending to be bottom-up citizen responders), and free-market fundamentalists philanthropic funded organizations.”
They presented a bogus legal argument trying to make those who publicly oppose man-made global warming criminals guilty of crimes against humanity found in international law. If we could only hold these hypocritical professors who lie and exaggerate facts on a daily basis to young innocent minds while hiding behind their first amendment rights, legally liable for their crimes against the youth of America.
CHINA AND INDIA
There have been two tracks to negotiations since COP 15 in 2009, one to create a whole new legally binding agreement and another to continue the Kyoto Protocol (KP) which was created in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. It went into effect in February, 2005 and is due to expire in 2012. The KP required mandatory GHG emission reductions of rich countries and no commitments of poor countries. It set up the only international carbon market system allowing rich countries to invest money in Clean Development Mechanisms CDMs (any project that supposedly reduces GHG emissions) in poor countries and for each project a Certified Emission Reduction (CER) was issued to the rich country. The rich country could then sell the CER on the open market or use it to meet their own emission reduction quota. It’s big business and to date the carbon market is worth over $142 billion dollars and over 140 million tons of CER’s have been issued. Out of 76 poor countries, China and India are the two biggest recipients of CDM’s at 40 percent and 26 percent respectively.
It is no surprise that these two countries are pushing hard for an extended commitment period under the KP. China has publicly stated the commitment extension is a pre-condition for its signing onto a legally binding agreement after 2020. China was just showboating, because no one believes it will ever agree to be legally bound to any agreement that will hamper it’s robust economical development.
Chances for the KP to be extended are slight since Canada, Japan and Russia have said they will no longer be part of the KP.
NO PROGRESS MADE
The effort was made to infuse new momentum into this conference but thus far no progress has been made on that front. We need to pray for confusion, chaos, and dissension among nation delegates so no decision will be made and the conference will end successfully. Successful in the minds of those who love freedom and the sovereignty of the United States of America. Source here.
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