Climate change deception

/ September 23, 2014

 

precop-680x365Climate change… one of the most relevant issues of our time. It’s back front and center on the press headlines this week because of an extraordinary summit in New York City to tackle the issue, organized by the United Nations. Next December, the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP20) will be held in Lima, Peru.

And right in the middle of both meetings, there is supposed to be a preparatory summit right here in Margarita Island, to be held in early November. It is formally known as the Pre-COP, but the Maduro government decided to re-brand it as the Social PreCOP, transforming it into a completely different kind of summit altogether.

Why is that?

Last year, Peru and Venezuela asked to host the COP20 (it was Latin America’s turn). In the end, a compromise was reached: Peru would host the main summit, while Venezuela would take care of the preparatory meeting or Pre-COP.

But a boring preparatory meeting is the last thing the government would want. Back in 2009, the late comandante eterno used the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen to preach its message in a big way: “It’s all Capitalism’s fault”.

And boy, they’re following that mantra to the letter. Don’t believe me? Just look at the Pre-COP’s slogan up above.

The meeting is no longer about middle- and low-ranking bureaucrats prepping the paperwork for the heads of State who will travel to Lima. Hell no, it’s a SOCIAL summit now! Social movements! Consulting! Down with the Empire!

Sadly, the UN Climate Summit will also do that. But that doesn’t bother them. Two months ago, the main framework for the summit was discussed and by reading the conclusions, it’s pretty obvious this ain’t about climate change at all.

Who cares about cap-and-trade emissions when “The structural causes of climate change are linked to the current capitalist hegemonic system…”.

Alternative energy sources? Establishing a counterculture and fighting colonialism should be the main priorities.

Green economy? That’s a sham! “We just need to create our own dreams, forget the perverse developmentalist dream, and find inspiration in ourselves…” (Trust me, that’s written is in the document).

This is in the end just a PR event to promote both the government and the late Hugo Chavez. Want proof? Here:

Venezuela has materialized its role as protagonist at the international level by participating in the political leadership of the new legal agreement on climate change, and has come to the forefront of this global challenge from a revolutionary perspective tackling with the Socialism of the XXI Century and the Good Living the “Green Capitalism” and the “Low Carbon Development”.”

To respond to this hugely misleading quote, I will need just four words: NO. NO. NO and… let me think… NOOOOO! Venezuela has nothing concrete to show regarding the fight against climate change, not even during Hugo Chávez’s times.

Protagonist? I guess being the regional leader in CO2 emissions counts as such, thanks in part to PDVSA which has its own share of the blame as one of the most polluting companies in the world. And don’t get me started on what our infamous gas subsidy does to the air we breathe. Meanwhile, our few clean energy projects are just going nowhere. Coherence is not chavismo’s strong suit.

And to confirm their true willingness to fight this problem, they got rid of the Enviroment Ministry weeks ago. Nice.

The government doesn’t see climate change as a problem, but as either an excuse or a pretext for their own means. Ultimately, the fact that climate leaders allow the reckless head of a petro-state to bathe himself in a veneer of econ-respectability says volumes about the shabby state of their real commitment to the environment.

Finally, you can take a couple of minutes and check out this interactive carbon map to compare the impact of all countries (including us) on climate change.

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38 thoughts on “Climate change deception”

  1. A veritable matriochka doll of ironies. At the limit, you almost have to confess que tienen su parte de razón: if the entire world economy was managed like Venezuela’s, I bet there would be a *lot* less demand for gasoline, just because there’d be a lot less demand for EVERYTHING.

    Then you remember where all their income comes from.

    Then you remember the gas subsidy.

    And then you realize getting lectured by a chavista on climate change is like being lectured on drug abuse by Keith Richards…

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      • It takes a lot of balls for the POSTER to say it’s not about changing the climate …at least people know what they’re going to.

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      • I think he says don’t do it, but if you do it, use the really really expensive stuff.

        Yes, too many ironies to even begin to unravel here. This regime is the poster child for every excellent reason why we need to substantially reduce our use of fossil fuels. Every time I get into a car I should think of Nicolas Maduro.

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    • John Coleman nails it.
      This is the biggest scam ever. It has nothing to do with Global Warming, or “Climate Change” as they had to rebrand it as it hasn’t warmed in nearly 18 years. It has everything to do with tax and control.

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      • Yes, all those people who have devoted their lives to science are all part of a big scam/conspiracy to help governments get higher tax revenues and more control. Makes sense to me.

        Good one.

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        • Problem is it isn’t science. The catastrophic warming is only found in the results of (inadequate) computer models. In the real world, in spite of a relatively large increase in carbon dioxide, the warming stopped nearly 18 years ago. That is the real “Inconvenient Truth”.

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        • well it’s actually the other way around, is it the biggest scam ever produced by politicians who wants higher taxes and more control who were taking advantage of falsy data produced by so called climate expert scientist.

          Remember who started this whole thing? this whole fad about global warming? oh yeah a Politician, who lost an important presidential election in the most richest nation of the world…

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  3. not to mention all the trees that had to be cut down for the chavista authorities to build their faces whren attending a meeting on climate change.

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  4. I know it’s hard to do, but CC ought to spend a week or two right before the SOCIAL summit featuring stories on the environment, and the myriad failures to protect rivers, bosque, air, and sea. The externalities of capitalism damage the environment, and the externalities of Communism/ Bolivaran Socialism damage it more.

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    • I second that, but would advise to start 6 months before and to use simple, at-a-glance pictograms that even the most self-serving do-gooder can understand.

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  6. BTW, a reader who works at the UN Climate Change office writes to us (anonymously) and says she is indignant at the Venezuelans. She says she wishes she could have written this same post.

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  7. Hopefully, Claudia Salerno (is she still there?) will create epic memorable moments for the entertainment of all CC community! Does anyone remember when she said that a Greenpeace activist verbally (and physically (!)) assaulted her, apparently trying “to destroy her” – to use her words – at the 2012 Climate Change Summit? In the end, it seems that it was all fruit of her fertile imagination. hahahaha! What a bizarre figure. I can’t wait for that.

    http://www.lapatilla.com/site/2012/06/22/viceministra-venezolana-acusa-a-activista-de-greenpeace-de-agresion-en-rio20/

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    • As I understand it, the Maduro government cancelled the entire Ministry of the Environment
      Charito Rojas ‏@charitorojas
      Ah y el no acaba de eliminar el Ministerio del Ambiente?@ElUniversal: Maduro ataca a “potencias contaminadoras” en cumbre de ONU sobre clima

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  8. The climate nuts are a comical bunch of hypocrites. Al Gore, the man with the $3000 a month electric bill, shows up to the climate rally in a V-8 SUV. Venezuela sells gas for a penny a gallon so Venezuelans don’t have any reason to conserve or buy Priuses plus selling millions of barrels of oil so the US, China, and other countries can stink up the atmosphere on a grand scale. And Venezuela wants to raise its output to rake in more $$$ for the politicians to steal, while the government babbles about loving the trees, the water, and the air. All the BS ultimately boils down to another issue to attack capitalism with while Venezuela is actually feeding the machine and would starve without the capitalist $$$ since the private sector has been destroyed in the country.

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    • Al Gore may be, but don’t paint the thousands and thousands of scientists who have studied this their whole life and are alarmed are hypocrites…

      You can disagree with their solutions, or the scope of the problem, or to what extent the changing climate is really attributed to industrial development, but most of them are not nuts or hypocrites.

      As for the Venezuela government, that’s a different story. They are the most shameless hypocrites on earth. They are in a league of their own, far beyond the likes of Al Gore.

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      • Rory, I find your faith in human nature touching. Imagine you are a scientist working in a university and there is a money stream available in the form of govt grants to study global warming. Would you not feel the pressure of prominent members of the govt, EPA, the UN etc to interpret your results a certain way? Especially knowing that your future livelihood depended on it?

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        • You clearly have not worked as an academic. It would be much easier to sell out to industry (who give bigger grants). There is plenty of evidence of the warming from evidence other than models. You are projecting your way of reasoning about your behavior, or as Venezuelans say: Ladron juzga por condicion.

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          • OK Mark, you got me. I have never worked as an academic. However I have worked extensively in industry and my head was in danger of exploding at the thought of those huge grants. The difference I can see is that a grant from industry would be to deliver an end product the company would profit from. The grant for “studying” GW is predicated upon delivering a non- scientific result to be used to apply government policy.

            On your point of evidence of warming; unfortunately it is ALL in the models. The satellite readings show no warming in the last nearly 18 years and this is correlated with the land records ( prior to them being massaged). Katrina, Sandy, hurricanes etc have nothing to do with GW, as events like these have occurred in the past way before our contribution to increased atmospheric CO2. If you have any examples of non-model evidence it would be very interesting.

            BTW I would prefer by far being a little warmer than too cold.

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  9. Some one should ask Maduro what kind of gasoline is produced in Venezuela , and whether it meets current enviromental standards. The fact of the matter it is a gasoline thats been replaced nearly in the whole world by gasoline which is enviromentally more friendly , i.e. that no longer uses MTBE . Venezuela invested a hefty sum in building an installation which would produce a gasoline component to substitute MTBE and produce gasoline meeting world health standards. After the installation was completed the regime surprisingly ordered its start of operations stopped indefinitely,

    Because it already had Pdvsa producing part of the MTBE needed being produced locally it decided that it would continue using the old gasoline whatever the enviromental costs . The cost to Pdvsa or upgrading the local gasoline was too high for them so they decided to abandon the project after it had been built.

    This alone shows that the regime is totally uninterested in improving the environment although they want to make people believe that they do because of the propaganda value of such farcical claim !! .

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    • Maduro will not give a straight answer, but rather respond via anecdote on the Eternal Commander and birds.
      As for digging up info on this topic of MTBE additive to gas, I would also determine what countries buy this processed gas.

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      • This is the internet information I found at first try : Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) is a gasoline additive used as an oxygenate and to raise the octane number. Its use has declined in the United States in response to environmental and health concerns. It has polluted groundwater due to MTBE-containing gasoline being spilled or leaked at gas stations. MTBE spreads more easily underground than other gasoline components due to its higher solubility in water.[1] Cost estimates for removing MTBE from groundwater and contaminated soil range from $1[2] to $30[3] billion, including removing the compound from aquifers and municipal water supplies, and replacing leaky underground oil tanks. Who will pay for remediation is controversial. In one case, the cost to oil companies to clean up the MTBE in wells belonging to Santa Monica is estimated to exceed $200 million.[4]

        Recent state laws have been passed to ban MTBE in certain areas. California and New York, which together accounted for 40% of U.S. MTBE consumption, banned the chemical starting January 1, 2004, and as of September 2005, twenty-five states had signed legislation banning MTBE. A table of state by state information, as of 2002, is available at the United States Department of Energy website.[5]

        In 2000, the EPA drafted plans to phase out the use of MTBE nationwide over four years. As of fall 2006, hundreds of lawsuits are still pending regarding MTBE contamination of public and private drinking water supplies.

        The Energy Policy Act of 2005, passed in the House on April 21, 2005, did not include a provision for shielding MTBE manufacturers from water contamination lawsuits. This provision was first proposed in 2003 and had been thought by some to be a priority of Tom DeLay and Rep. Joe Barton, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.[6] This bill did include a provision that gives MTBE makers, including some major oil companies, $2 billion in transition assistance as MTBE is phased out over the next nine years.[7] Due to opposition in the Senate,[8] the conference report dropped all MTBE provisions. The final bill was passed by both houses and signed into law by President Bush.[9] The lack of MTBE liability protection is resulting in a switchover to the use of ethanol as a gasoline additive.

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    • My favorite part is where he claims the PSB defends the extreme right wing. Yes, that PSB, the Partido Socialista Brasileiro.

      I am still not sold on Marina Silva, but if the media arm of PSUV goes pout of their way to lie it might mean that she is, after all, Brazil’s last hope against PT.

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      • I’m not sold on Marina either, but when you are on deathbed, you try to hold to anything that might save you, even experimental drugs and rituals from ancient tribes (hehe). And yes, Partido Socialista Brasileiro being “extreme right wing” is just nuts. In their “glorious years”, one could argue that they were kind of “extreme LEFT wing”, though.

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  11. A assistant professor from Linz University in Austria recently said, that he got the impression that there is a brain drain directed t.o.w.a.r.d.s Venezuela, probably because he and his sociology friends get some nice research project funding.

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  12. I’m already out of date on the Global Warming/Climate Change scale. The new name is Climate Disruption!
    Doesn’t really have a ring to it.

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  13. The irony is mind-blowing yes, however… this government IS pretty much the owner of a big oil company, is it surprising they try to steer the attention from actually reducing the world fossil fuel dependency? In any case this just shows Venezuela sometimes can be an oil company first, a state second. An oil company with a UN seat…

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  14. If you’ll allow my geography geek to comment: that map is fucking hilarious. New Zealand is magically just one island, Australia looks a bit weird, Istambul is now in the middle of a weird shaped land bridge and JAPAN JUST DISAPPEARED!!

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