So, I thought that nothing really came of last year’s Copenhagen Conference on climate change, until I read a special report in this week’s Economist about “saving the forests.” According to the author, the last best hope for conservation is the UN-REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) Programme. At Copenhagen, a bunch of rich countries including Norway and Britain pledged to pay poor countries like Indonesia billions of dollars not to cut down trees. The program is just now starting to gain steam.
I have a feeling this is only the first in long list of UN “programmes” that will globally redistribute wealth in the name of saving the environment. Once the rich world has been leeched to near death, formerly wealthy countries will happily cede their sovereignty to the UN’s global regime.
Or maybe it’s just a heroic attempt by our compassionate, fearless leaders to keep the dumb masses from destroying our precious planet…
Last year in Copenhagen “developing” and “Third World” countries made a lot of noise about “having to shoulder the burden” of CO2 reduction targets. The most common complaint was that while “rich” countries could afford to build windmills and all that jazz they had no money to do so. Ethiopia went a step further and shamelessly demanded (to be more precise they said they were “ready to accept”) tens of billions both to hop on the renewable energy bandwagon and as “damage repayment”. Everybody saw it for what it was: a shameless attempt to get more money for nothing. Except of course UN bureaucrats and the green crowd, albeit for different reasons.
Frankly I wouldn’t worry too much about this. Global Warming is dying a slow death. Al Gore’s fall from grace is the tell tale sign: he failed and now he’s becoming just another washed up and has-been. “Rich” countries have other issues to worry about and money is becoming scarce.