Der Spiegel - Going Through The Motions In Doha
Protecting the climate is incredibly important to Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, as evidenced by all the resolutions it has adopted in the past to save the planet. Germany has climate funds and reduction targets, building and transportation programs, and even an entire strategy to wean itself off nuclear power and shift to green energy, which has been dubbed the Energiewende, or "energy revolution." But at some point there is such a thing as overkill.
Can a member of parliament be expected to be chauffeured around Berlin in a small car? Or should he even stoop to the level of taking a cab? Now that, the Bundestag recently decided, would be asking too much. But because the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the elegant limousines normally used to chauffeur German lawmakers exceeds standards set three years ago, the Bundestag came up with a convenient solution. They simply raised the previously established limit of 120 grams of CO2 per kilometer to 140. And what about the fact that the European Commission in Brussels has been fighting for months to set the limit at 95 grams? Forget it! And the climate? Oh, that again.
Only a few years ago, lawmakers would have hardly dared raise the limits for allowable greenhouse gas emissions coming from their official cars. They would have been too worried about upsetting climate activists and triggering outraged editorials in the papers.
But things have changed, so much so that the Bundestag's decision hardly attracted any notice in the press, and neither did the government's decision to eliminate a rule requiring official trips to be climate-neutral. As mundane as these decisions seem, they symbolize a significant failure, namely that no issue of global urgency has tanked quite as quickly as the warming of the earth's climate.
EDIT
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/failed-co2-targets-going-through-the-motions-at-un-climate-conference-a-869294.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
> But things have changed, so much so that the Bundestag's decision hardly attracted any notice
> in the press, and neither did the government's decision to eliminate a rule requiring official trips
> to be climate-neutral. As mundane as these decisions seem, they symbolize a significant failure,
> namely that no issue of global urgency has tanked quite as quickly as the warming of the earth's
> climate.
>> This only amplifies the bizarrely ritualistic nature of the Climate Change Conference starting
>> this week in Doha, Qatar. Thousands of negotiators, environmentalists and industry lobbyists
>> are meeting in the Arab emirate to set the course for an international treaty to limit greenhouse
>> gas emissions.
>> But the world has already turned its back on the issue.
>> Instead of declining, emissions continue to rise year after year.
>> According to the 2011 World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency (IEA),
>> global fossil fuel subsidies jumped 30 percent to $523 billion (€403 billion) last year. Although
>> countries are spending more and more on renewable energy, subsidies for coal, oil and gas are
>> still six times as high. About 1,200 new coal-fired power plants are planned worldwide, and
>> even Germany generated more electricity from coal in the first nine months of this year than it has
>> in a long time.
Go Tool Monkeys!
it's becoming an increasingly open secret that nobody believes anything actionable will come of these junkets
