Subject: Exclusive: Gore: U.S. Climate Bill Will Help Bring About 'Global Governance' |
From: "Marc Morano-ClimateDepot.com" |
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:21:34 -0400 |
To: "'Marc Morano-ClimateDepot.com'" |
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/1893/Gore-US-Climate-Bill-Will-Help-Bring-About-Global-Governance
Gore: U.S. Climate Bill Will Help Bring
About 'Global Governance'
Climate Depot Exclusive
Friday, July 10, 2009 - By Marc Morano – Climate Depot
Former
Vice President Al Gore declared that the Congressional climate bill will help
bring about “global governance.”
“I
bring you good news from the U.S., “Gore said on July 7, 2009 in Oxford at the
Smith School World Forum on Enterprise and the Environment, sponsored by UK
Times.
“Just
two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the Waxman-Markey climate
bill,” Gore said, noting it was “very much a step in the right direction.”
Gore
touted the climate bill, claiming it “will dramatically increase the prospects
for success” in combating what he sees as the “crisis” of man-made global
warming.
“But
it is the awareness itself that will drive the change and one of the ways it
will drive the change is through global governance and global agreements.” (Editor's
Note: Gore makes the “global governance” comment at the 1min. 10 sec. mark in this UK Times video.)
Gore's
call for “global governance” echoes former French President Jacques Chirac's
call in 2000.
On
November 20, 2000, then French President Chirac said during a speech at The
Hague that the UN's Kyoto Protocol represented "the first component of an authentic
global governance."
“For
the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global
governance,” Chirac explained. “From the very earliest age, we should make
environmental awareness a major theme of education and a major theme of
political debate, until respect for the environment comes to be as fundamental
as safeguarding our rights and freedoms. By acting together, by building this
unprecedented instrument, the first component of an authentic global governance, we are working for dialogue and peace,” Chirac
added.
Former EU Environment Minister Margot Wallstrom said, "Kyoto
is about the economy, about leveling the playing field for big businesses
worldwide." Canadian Prime Minster Stephen Harper once dismissed UN's
Kyoto Protocol as a “socialist scheme.”
'Global
Carbon Tax' Urged at UN Meeting
In
addition, calls for a global carbon tax have been urged at recent UN global warming
conferences. In December 2007, the UN climate conference in Bali, urged the adoption of a
global carbon tax that would represent “a global burden
sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”
“Finally
someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global
tax advocate, said at the 2007 UN conference after a panel titled “A Global CO2
Tax.”
Schwank
noted that wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on
the “polluters pay principle.” The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to
“contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also
added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”
The
2007 UN conference was presented with a report from the Swiss Federal Office
for the Environment titled “Global Solidarity in Financing Adaptation.” The
report stated there was an “urgent need” for a global tax in order for “damages
[from climate change] to be kept from growing to truly catastrophic levels,
especially in vulnerable countries of the developing world.”
The
tens of billions of dollars per year generated by a global tax would “flow into
a global Multilateral Adaptation Fund” to help nations cope with global
warming, according to the report.
Schwank
said a global carbon dioxide tax is an idea long overdue that is urgently
needed to establish “a funding scheme which generates the resources required to
address the dimension of challenge with regard to climate change costs.”
'Redistribution of wealth'
The environmental group Friends of the Earth advocated the
transfer of money from rich to poor nations during the 2007 UN climate
conference.
"A climate change response must have at its heart a
redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal,
a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth.
Related
Links:
Marc Morano
Executive Editor/Chief Correspondent
Climate Depot
1875 Eye Street, NW
Fifth Floor
Washington, D.C. 20006
202-536-5052
Morano@ClimateDepot.com
www.ClimateDepot.com