Mitt Romney pulled off an interesting bit of U.N.-bashing today, calling upon the United States to withdraw from a United Nations council that the United States isn’t a part of to begin with.
“The United Nations has been an extraordinary failure of late,” Romney said during a South Carolina campaign stop. “We should withdraw from the United Nations Human Rights Council.”
Romney also suggested a new ‘coalition of free nations’ to act as a UN alternative.
130 people reported dead in Pakistan and Scrappleface – the right-wing answer to the Onion – sees an opportunity to use its wit to settle some political scores. Nice.
As the death toll climbed past 130, with nearly 400 injured, in a suicide-bomb assassination attempt on former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned the attack as “symptomatic of fundamentalist Islam’s crusade against equality for women.”
Rep. Pelosi, D-CA, said the fact that a prominent female politician was targeted has shaken her thinking about the war on terror.
“This misogynistic massacre has finally got it through my thick skull what President Bush has been trying to tell us for years,” she said. “These terrorists have no legitimate political grievance, no conscience, and no place in civilized society. We must crush them wherever they are to prevent the spread of their poisonous ideology and brutal tactics.”
Rep. Pelosi said that when news of the attack broke, she held a conference call with Senators Hillary Clinton, D-NY, and Barbara Boxer, D-CA. The three women agreed that “if these evil men are willing to attack a beautiful, charismatic female politician overseas, there’s not much to stop them from trying it on U.S. soil.”
The three lawmakers plan to introduce legislation next week to increase funding for the surge in Iraq, to finish the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, and to remove barriers to eavesdropping by U.S. spies on suspected terrorist communications at home and abroad.
“These woman-haters need to know that we mean business,” Rep. Pelosi said. “And to those who commit these atrocities against women, I say, we will no longer tolerate, we will no longer negotiate, and we will no longer be afraid. It’s your turn to be afraid.“
With Angela Merkel’s advocacy of a per capita based approach to future global climate policy, and now (as David reported earlier this week), the prospect of the European Parliament endorsing the same, Europe’s posture on post-2012 climate commitments is looking more interesting that it has done for months. I’ve just finished a CIC discussion paper on this area, which is published today: here it is.
The paper’s starting position is to wonder why it should be that although the US and EU camps have opposite assumptions about how urgent climate change is, they actually agree on two of the most fundamental issues on post-Kyoto climate policy: neither side is arguing for a quantified ceiling on CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and neither is arguing for developing countries to take on quantified targets.
Why this odd consensus? The explanation I put forward is that although the EU ultimately believes developing country targets to be essential, it also judges that there is no political space for any discussion of them in the post-2012 commitment period. Instead, the EU argues for a sub-global approach with targets for developed countries but not developing ones.
But, the paper suggests, this approach rests on a pretty questionable analysis of the likelihood of developed countries taking on tougher targets in the absence of developing country targets – and an over-optimistic sense of how much emissions abatement can be achieved in developing countries through an expanded Clean Development Mechanism.
The problem is – contrary to what EU states appear implicitly to believe – the political context for a discussion of developing country targets will actually become progressively more difficult the longer it is left unaddressed. If developing countries take on shares of an emissions budget within an equitable framework early enough, then they can make money from participating in a global climate regime. But as the paper argues, this window of opportunity will only stay open for a limited time.
Except that now we have Angela Merkel livening things up – and proposing an approach that could potentially slice through the current Gordian knot. The paper concludes with a few recommendations on how Europe can capitalise on the momentum that she’s generating, and build up a useful head of steam in advance of the December Bali climate summit and beyond.
From new (or seemingly, half-done) research:
Global emissions of carbon dioxide from shipping are twice the level of aviation, one of the maritime industry’s key bodies has said.
A report prepared by Intertanko, which represents the majority of the world’s tanker operators, says emissions have risen sharply in the past six years.
Previous International Maritime Organisation estimates suggested levels were comparable with those of planes…
Intertanko… says that growth in global trade coupled with ships burning more fuel to deliver freight faster has contributed significantly to the increase.
Dragos Routa, the technical director of Intertanko, told the BBC the figures were a work in progress but the levels of emissions had risen sharply.
While there are few accurate measures and even fewer restrictions on the amounts of carbon dioxide that ships can emit at present, governments in many parts of the world are considering a clampdown as part of their efforts to tackle global warming.
‘Few accurate measures’ is a helpful starting point…
According to today’s FT, the EU parliament is to endorse per capita shares of carbon emissions:
The European parliament is expected on Monday to endorse a plan to allocate carbon permits on a per capita basis after the Kyoto protocol expires in 2012.
The plan would allow global trading of emissions rights along the lines of the internal cap and trade scheme established by the EU in 2005. The Kyoto protocol excluded developing countries and Vittorio Prodi, an MEP, says global trading would give them an incentive to join a successor.
“This is an idea that would get developing and developed countries involved. It would be very good for Africa, which would receive a sum bigger than their development aid [by selling permits],” Mr Prodi told the FT