Greens give up on Warsaw climate talks

Reuters) – Several major environmental groups, including Greenpeace and WWF, have walked out of U.N. climate talks in Warsaw in protest at what they see as a lack of progress towards an international deal to curb rising global greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is one of the most ‘captured’ summits ever – by corporates and coal industry with the support of the Polish government,” said Dipti Bhatnagar at Friends of the Earth International.

“We are walking (out) to send a strong message due to the total inaction at the talks, due to lack of ambition and finance, at a time when we need the most action.”

It was the first time green groups had staged such a coordinated walk-out at U.N. climate talks.
Reuters

 

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28 Responses to Greens give up on Warsaw climate talks

  1. Jim Steele says:

    Reminds me of Michael Mann’s efforts of Climate Research to get the editors of to walk out in protest of MIT’s skeptical astrophysicists who compiled ~100 research papers suggesting the Medieval Warm Period was warmer than today.

  2. AndyG55 says:

    Oh Dear.. what…a…. pity !! :-)))))))))

  3. TinyCO2 says:

    NGOs form a sentence containing these words “door”, “hit”, “butt” and “way out”.

  4. johanna says:

    It’s a small victory, but it tastes very sweet indeed!

  5. That’s the Developing Countries, the Green Groups, Australia , supported by Canada, Japan who Germany will soon be following, whether declared or not, and Poland, the hosts sacking their Environment Minister who is hosting it.

    Who exactly does that leave for the final wrapping up day?

    • klem says:

      Have no idea, but on the final day they’ll all sign an agreement to meet again next year for more ‘talks’. That way they can meet, share a laugh or two, sip martinis by the pool and get paid. Nice work if you can get it.

  6. A.D. Everard says:

    I noticed they left it until the last minute so they could still do all the damage they could (wouldn’t want to miss giving a speech, now, would they).

    I wonder what they were hoping for with their walk out – maybe that the delegates would rush after them begging them to return and promising to be good. What a joke.

    I hear the Aussies delegates were criticized for wearing t-shirts and eating junk food. Good on ’em.

    😀

  7. I’m glad they walked out. These things are a total waste of time. And I’ve been saying that since 2007, before any of you lot were born.

    http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2007/01/26/boondoggling/

    • There are a lot of compassionate people who have turned up to these meetings believing that they could achieve something. We may differ on whether their aim was worthwhile, but I do not think we disagree that their trust in the process was abused.

      If politicians were not going to do anything as it now appears to be clear they were not. Then they should have been honest and said so, not wasted people’s lives like this.

      Or if I were being really cynical, I would say that politicians were happy for green groups to focus on this – because it took the focus away from all the other green issues.

      • Weren’t the politicians just too scared to say outright what their intentions were, and can you blame them.
        It took a few with the self-confidence and bolstered by an increasingly disengaged populace that no longer gets its news from the traditional MSM feeding channels, to finally stand up and say from the outset. Australia has been a beacon throughout these talks, leaving the planet in no doubt where it stands.

        • Yes you are right. I can remember the days when we all used to be anonymous because no one dared raise their head above the parapet as a sceptic. People like Anthony Watts were incredibly brave.

          In 2009 before Climategate, there was no politician in the UK who would have got elected if they had stood up and said they were a sceptic.I created the petition for Climategate to be investigated and there was no turning back.

          I chose to use my real name, but that was a big step because in so doing I more or less ruled out getting a proper job until the public realise that sceptics were right to be sceptical. But someone had to stand up and be counted.

          However, I’ve become more sympathetic to politicians due to events this year, so I may be biased. I got viscously attacked by a journalist who totally misportrayed my views and suggested I have views I clearly do not and I had the experience of being hounded down the street by a crowd shouting at me and other person and then we were assaulted and had to protected by the police.

          So, I was rather thankful for all the years taking insults as a sceptic, because those incidents were just water off a ducks back.

          However, whilst not the normal way politicians get treated in Scotland, it was an insight into the kind of abuse most politicians have to put up with.

  8. Green groups should walk all the way to the jail – time is against them.
    [Please do not label a whole group as bad, they are not. Instead please talk about such issues as principles such as “those who have done …xx” should be tried.]

  9. klem says:

    But these climate advocates walk out at every summit, its totally routine now.

    I’ll bet they have to submit a ‘walk out’ schedule several months in advance, so the summit organizers will know who is walking out each day. Its a joke.

    • Their petty displays of orchestrated petulance have nothing on Monckton’s expulsion from COP18 in Doha and subsequent deportation from the country of Quatar for quietly & calmly reciting a few classified truths before the assembled Parties.

  10. FelFlames says:

    Australia got a new government recently.
    Our new PM ran his election campaign with the promise to abolish the carbon tax enabled by the previous government.
    He has been true to his word. He also has started to dismantle the a few other things.
    Including the climate change commission , and associated bodies.
    To cap it off, when a UN apparatchik said some recent bushfires were made caused by climate change, his quoted response “‘Well I think the official in question is talking through her hat”

    As a side note, he is a volunteer firefighter, who was out fighting these fires.
    I give him credit, he is not your average politician, he actually risks his on neck to do good in the community.

  11. Indeed, which was the more terrifying ?
    Being savaged in the columns of the Guardian, or being pursued down the street by rent-a-mob on steroids ?
    (Pls. forgive me if I got the details a little muddled, with so much going on).

    • What is most terrifying. It is doing something you think is right knowing that you quite dislike some people on “your side”, having to fight against people who are very compassionate and caring … taking all their insults (which I understand very well because I think like them)

      … and knowing there is that possibility that I am wrong.

      The rent-a-mob were mostly just students.
      The journalist was just looking for a cheap story and not being on global warming I could have said things better and they used that to mount a very nasty, vicious & unwarranted personal attack.

      But what terrifies me most is the thought that one day I might turn a page and read something that convinces me I was wrong.

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