From National Review Online:
How the UN Hides Secret Talks in Public
This year's climate conference in Qatar -- though in the public eye -- is the most secretive ever.
The U.N. has never really enjoyed allowing any debate about the climate. At the first annual climate talks I attended, at Bali in 2007, the then-chief clerk of the conference secretariat -- at no notice -- threw us out of a validly-booked room because too many members of the press were attending our daily press conferences.
She also complained to the head of my delegation because I had dared to write an article for the Jakarta Post recommending that my fellow delegates deal with the non-problem of global warming by having the courage to do nothing about it.
In those days, though, we had the right to attend just about every negotiating session; to meet and talk to national negotiating delegates; to leave letters on their desks; and to watch the negotiations as they unfolded, blow by blow.
Not any more. The Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), the only environmental group that the U.N. allows to voice any alternative to the imagined (and imaginary) 'consensus' at its annual talks about talks about the climate, has been too effective.
Last year, half of the prolix negotiating text at Durban was hastily dropped within half a day of my blog posting revealing what not one of the world's news media had bothered to cover, namely: the actual contents of the final negotiating text, including proposals for a World Climate Court, rights of legal personality for 'Mother Earth,' and a halving of CO2 concentration, which would kill many plants and animals by depriving plants of adequate amounts of carbon dioxide to grow and prosper.
Today, as yesterday, I tried to get a copy of the Doha draft. However, the U.N. has gone paperless -- it says to make a petty gesture towards cutting the staggering but irrelevant 'carbon footprint' of these conferences. Now it is almost impossible for anyone to track down any of the vital documents. They seem not to be available from the 'PaperSmart' booth ("not much Paper and not that Smart," as one disgruntled delegate put it).
Nor can one get into most of the negotiating sessions, which are labeled 'Parties and Observer States Only' on the official timetable -- if you can find one. I tried to get into a plenary session, but it had been canceled without warning, leaving dozens of us sitting in an empty conference hall for over an hour.
Lord Monckton is just getting started -- read the whole thing.
And it just hit Drudgereport
Viral in 3... 2... 1...
