The UN and global taxation under urgency

Or alternatively, see my quote at the end of the post

Here is an extract of minutes of a United Nations meeting held in 2008 on the topic of Climate Change

General Assembly
GA/10725
Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York
Sixty-second General Assembly Informal Meeting on Climate Change and Most Vulnerable Countries (AM)

Unless a “war footing” was adopted in action to battle climate change, the world would miss the Millennium Development Goals and see existing gains unravel, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro said today as the General Assembly held a follow-up to its February thematic debate on the subject under the theme “Climate change and the most vulnerable countries: the imperative to act”.

There are existing gains, and they would unravel without action.

Voicing deep worry about a potential roll-back of development gains due to climate change, she said the subject also raised questions of equity and fairness, because climate change was being driven by emissions that, in nearly all cases, could be traced back to industrialized countries. To a lesser extent, middle-income and emerging economies were also responsible, yet the biggest burden was borne by the poorest nations, where as many as 2.6 billion people risked being condemned to a future of diminished opportunity.

Climate change is being driven by rich, industralised countries.

She said the ripple effects of climate change would extend far beyond the localities of those most immediately affected, quite possibly leading to mass migration and refugee flows. That, in turn, might lead to wider insecurity. As a start, international assistance should focus on enhancing the adaptive capacity of poorer societies and reducing their vulnerability to climate-related disasters, for which international donors should provide funding. Current official development assistance levels did not take into account the added costs of climate change, which would run into the tens of billions of dollars each year.

The developed countries do pour billions into these countries, and they respond in emergencies. The problem with many of the investments though is that they are notoriously corrupt. Dams in Pakistan that were given billions to build never got built, and the floods in the 90's that were to be averted in the 2000's were not - in spite of the money. Millions in Earthquake disaster relief never got there either. People like Gaddafi dies a billionaire, whilst his Palestinian people sent hundreds of rockets every year into their "rich" Jewish neighbour's yards. The skimming of UN funds is rife. Asking for a few billion more is just going to make a lot of corrupt leaders richer.

...

Srgjan Kerim, President of the General Assembly, suggested that climate change be viewed -- and duly tackled -- as a “development” issue. It was important that all countries move towards understanding that they shared common but differentiated responsibilities in tackling climate change, whereby existing agreements to curb the emission of greenhouse gases must be implemented alongside a generously financed “Adaptation Fund”.

Yes, they need billion dollar funds.


SRGJAN KERIM, President of the General Assembly, opened the discussion by saying that 11 of the last 12 years had ranked among the 12 warmest since the keeping of global temperature records had begun in 1850. Two points were significant: that climate change was inherently a sustainable-development challenge; and that more efforts than ever before must be exerted to enable poor countries to prepare for impacts because it had been estimated that there would be between 50 million and 200 million environmental migrants by 2010. [emphasis mine]

OK, so back in 2008 that were using the IPCC science to estimate 200 million "environmental migrants" by 2010.

Did that happen? Nope.
Worth repeating. Nope.
This is why most new predictions are always 10 years out now, not 2 years out.
Even so, this has now been going on so long, every year we hit another prediction period.
Stay tuned for 2014 as we review the claims from 2004.

Back to topic: What kind of money did the UN want in 2008 to save 200 million people by 2010?

ASHA-ROSE MIGIRO, Deputy-Secretary-General of the United Nations, said there was no longer any question that human activity was the primary driver of climate change, which placed a particularly immediate and severe burden on the poor.

She said that the potential development roll-back was “deeply worrying,” and raised unavoidable questions of equity and fairness. Nearly all emissions that drove climate change could be traced back to industrialized and, to a lesser extent, middle-income and emerging economies. Yet, the biggest burden was borne by the poorest and most vulnerable nations, possibly condemning as many as 2.6 billion people to a future of diminished opportunity.

Well, given many of the predictions being made turn out to be extremely wrong, it is likely we are going to find that the science is not so settled. The key thing here though is the persistent bleating that the industrialized countries have caused climate change, so they must pay for it.  One would hope that such bleating is unnecessary, especially because then we all spend time arguing about it.

It would be more productive to simply bring to the table the issues undeveloped countries have, and look for solutions to solve them. That has already been happening though, and progress is slow. Why? Because the same fundamental issues exist - widespread corruption, political instability, low education, limited ability to develop resources, and war.   Adding Climate Change to that list is a red herring.

And wherever the UN are involved, billions of dollars disappear for limited results. Time for some real soul searching, rather than working out ways to cream another 50 billion dollars per year into Swiss Bank accounts.

At a meeting convened by former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Geneva recently, he said five “climate witnesses” had spoken of crop failures and hunger; beach erosion; salinization and the loss of arable land; and forced migration from ancestral homes. They and their loved ones were paying the price for the world’s failure to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

There have been extreme weather events all over the world, every year since the world formed. Surely, we could also add that fracking is the only cause of all future earthquakes, anywhere and everywhere? They could also line up 5 witnesses to explain how Kofi Annan's son managed to get so rich working for the UN. A minor example, but tip of the ice berg.  The one that's getting bigger, not the one that is melting.

...

Mr. BASHER said disaster-risk reduction should be a core policy item in the climate-change agenda for protecting the vulnerable. Disasters were increasingly related to development and climate change, and adaptation policies must encompass the concept of disaster risk and its reduction... He said disasters occurred when communities could not cope with the effects of hazards. As many as 2.5 billion people were affected each year to the tune of a million deaths and $600 billion in losses. In some cases, the loss to some small countries might equal or exceed their gross domestic product. Among the underlying causes for disasters were land degradation, unplanned settlements, lack of awareness about how everyday behaviour affected risk, poverty and a poor capacity to handle extreme climate events.


Well, this shows the seriousness of the problems - problems all lumped on "climate change" although if you build more houses in tornado alley, or settle in deltas where rivers flood, or if you are going to cut down 10000 hectares of forest above a large town, or pour mining effluent into clean rivers, then you need to decide if the weather is to blame, or if there are other, simpler issues going on that actually need addressing.

Growing evidence from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change showed that such extreme events were related to climate change, and that delta regions, small islands and the African continent were particularly affected. As their risk for disasters grew, the intrinsic vulnerability of those regions would also grow, resulting in the loss of water resources and land degradation.

This is why the IPCC reports need to fudge the data.

Mr. NOBLE acknowledged that it was unclear how much money was needed to adapt to climate change, and how it would be raised and distributed most effectively. Anywhere between several tens of billions of dollars to hundreds of billions would be needed to tackle the issue on a larger scale. The Global Environment Facility (GEF) had been adequate in the early stages of the adaptation process, but the magnitude of the problem had outstripped its funds.

So, money being contributed already and the money is now gone.

A workshop at the recent climate change meeting in Bonn, Germany, had outlined certain principles governing a new Adaptation Fund: it should be new and additional to official development assistance; and it must be predictable and adequate.

So, a new fund of extra money, every year (predictable).

Questions had also been raised regarding how it would be raised, he said, citing such methods as a global levy on gross domestic product, through which it might be possible to raise around $50 billion a year, and a global tax on emissions alongside levies on air fares and bunker fuel, among others.

So, the UN setting itself up to act as a World Government imposing new taxes. But that's not all:

The Adaptation Fund, as envisioned by the Intergovernmental Panel and the Kyoto Protocol,

The key thing here is the IPCC spend a fair amount of time planning how to get money as they do producing the IPCC reports that justify it. The one body should be split in two - the same president of the IPCC is the one discussing funding whilst doing the science.

..would be funded by a 2 per cent tax on the Carbon Development Mechanism and contributions towards it.

This is why the ETS was being pushed through at breakneck speed a few years ago.

He went on to say that, at a recent Group of Eight (G-8) meeting, members had decided to create a “climate resilience” target of half a billion dollars over several years for 5 to 10 countries. The goal of that project was to help support the evolution of the Adaptation Fund by providing the Intergovernmental Panel with lessons to draw upon for future action. It was controversial because much of the funding would come in the form of grants and concessionary lending, which the Bank had previously granted only for “development” purposes.

He said that, while the financing of adaptation was dependent on public resources and international support, up to $50 billion a year in additional resources were needed.


It is clear the UN are using the Climate Change issue to drive their agenda, using the evidence of Climate Change to justify a new set of taxes, that could ultimately add up to hundreds of billions of dollars. The problem I have is not that there is manifest inequality in the world (and this needs solving), it's that the conditions for removing it cannot be solved by taxes in this way. The underlying conditions that see the money skimmed, and people displaced by war and terrorism need to be solved.

I came across a quote that summed up the key issue here, but I can't quite remember who (the environmentalist who works for multinationals - Singer is his surname I think),  and where (some report critiquing IPCC fdged data?). Anyway, to paraphrase:

AGW is about transferring money from the poor people in developed countries to the rich people in undeveloped countries.



UN Report cited above

Reference from Watts Up With That: Climate Fail Files

Summary of UN IPCC allegations of corrupt science