How many climate alarmists does it take to write the rules of world domination? In the case of the upcoming Bonn meeting the answer is well over 20,000. I am not making this up.
This meeting is the annual Conference of the Parties (the COP!) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The rulebook is for the so-called Paris Agreement, which is now also being called the Paris Pact. Maybe it should be called the Paris Pack, as in wolf pack. The UNFCCC has been around since 1992 so this Bonn meeting is COP 23.
COP 22 was in Morocco, where they started writing the Paris Pact rule book. Here are the astounding official attendance figures:
Last year The UN Climate Change Conference brought together over 22,500 participants, including nearly 15,800 government officials, 5,400 representatives of UN bodies and agencies, intergovernmental organizations and civil society organizations, and 1,200 members of the media.
The huge number of over 15,000 government officials makes it clear that these COPs are global government actions, not just activism or advocacy and certainly not science. The fact that their purpose — climate control — is scientifically absurd is not relevant. They are in Bonn to write rules.
The UNFCCC has almost 197 members, including most of the world’s national governments. The US is a member, although people are urging President Trump to pull us out. On November 4, 2016 the Paris Pact went into effect when 167 of these members had finally ratified it. Mind you the term “ratified” as used by the UN is something of a weasel word, with a very flexible meaning. President Obama signed the Paris Pact but he never submitted it to the Senate for official ratification, knowing it had no chance of passage. So it has never been officially ratified by the US.
President Trump has said he will withdraw the US from the Pact, but under the Pact rules that cannot happen for another year, so we are stuck well in for now. This gives the US a say in the rules, which is important given that future Presidents might rejoin. It is therefore incumbent on the US delegation to act in our interest, not just sit back and wait to leave.
Getting back to the swarming thousands of officials, the COP is organized to handle them. They actually come in two waves. First the worker bees haggle about specific bits of text, word by word and sentence by sentence. This is done in myriad working groups that meet simultaneously, which is why many governments each send many people. In this working group process there are many disagreements and these result in what is called “bracketed text,” where alternative possible language is written within brackets.
Then toward the end of the COP there is what is called the Ministerial meetings. Here the political heavyweights from many countries fly in to try to negotiate the final texts. In parliamentary governments these folks are typically ministers, even including Prime Ministers, hence the name. There is usually a certain amount of drama to all this, which is where the press horde comes in.
Make no mistake; these officials are each haggling in order to promote their own country’s interests, especially getting more money. The vast majority of the COP members are developing countries looking to cash in on various funding schemes that take huge amounts from the developed countries, including the US. This is a big part of why Trump is opting out of the Paris Pact. That the science is silly is another reason.
The COP 23 Bonn show officially begins on November 6, 2017 and lasts until the 17th. Let the silly season begin.