SA makes emissions offer but wants aid

That is so typical of Africans - always out with their begging bowls - never invented anything but just take over what others have produced! Losers indeed

Always crying…. Always begging…

This really makes me SICK!!!!

Irrelevant comment; i am deeply concern about Malema's comment about HIV people being poor , He needs to learn to get his facts clearly , HIV is a very sensetive issue , according to his statement only the poor are affected .....stop leading the nation Malema with your useless comments.

Hallelujah! Here comes another gravy train. Rent seekers rejoice and be merry.

we should start by shutting down our coal exports. and stop burning the stuff ourselves. power generation should not rely on coal. and we should do this for our own sake, for our own environment. i see some country in central america want compensation for oil they've found, but not pumped. This whole issue is a really interesting one.

Conditional cutting? Why do me need aid? We have so much money that we can buy all our cabinet ministers BMW's, 4x4's and Mercs. How many other countries can do that? We can spend 60 odd million on our president's private house, we can spend 22 million on a play. The list goes on. Fortunately all these countries have embassies in this country and they will be able to pass this message on to their governments. Oh and don't forget the expertise they need. Why? We have BEE in this country. Aren't they the experts??????

Most importantly, we made the offer. Any and every cut we can get is essential. DEAT puts out a State of the Environment report, and from the data in that report, between 1990 and 1994, the coal-dependent energy sector was responsible for between 89.7% and 91.1% of CO2-equivalent emissions. South Africa also has the highest CO2-equivalent emissions in the whole of SADC. Our rates are similar to those in Austria and Iceland at about 7-8 tonnes per capita. And there's more. We have excessively high methane and nitrous oxide emissions. So, what are we to do? Eskom is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and (proportionately) so is pesticide-heavy and inefficient farming. By far, the largest contributor to these emissions is heavy industry. And that's where we should focus our attention. Regulation is needed , with priority given to environmental impact. Sadly, the major political parties in this country have weak environmental manifestos. And that has to change. Nevertheless, as a starting gesture, an offer of 34% reduction is still important. It is a step in the right direction.

Touche Louise. Well said. Africa = begging bowl = financial aid = otherwise I will throw my toys out of the cot = how else can we afford all the fringe benefits to deployed cadres?

South Africa has the wrong approach. Reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is not about trading some offering for aid packages. We should not be imposing conditions but rather seeking solutions for our own survival and sustainability. Playing the blame game and making demands does not make the problem go away.

Rich nations must refuse to give any money for such frivolous demands. Everybody must make some contribution. If it's only left to rich nations to make material and financial contributions then the environmental initiatives will go nowhere.

the argument goes that the developed world burned fossil fuels to get where they are, and now that they have the ability to slow down burning them, they're asking the developing world to also halt. SO there's an imbalance and it puts the developing world in a tricky position. Like us, if we agree to ignore our coal, what the heck do we do? No more electricity, no more sasol, no more exporting the stuff.

@touché douché Good points. I don't think the developed world is asking the developing nations to halt their emissions. It is more a question of managing the resources efficiently and making them more eco friendly. In reality everybody is a consumer. The fact that a commodity is manufactured in the USA and consumed in a small developing country means the it's used for the benefit of someone somewhere. Effectively the entire cycle must bear responsibility.

It is incorrect to suggest that the industrialised nations are responsible for CO2 emissions. All the world nations with their massive population explosions wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the industrial revolution.For example President Zuma isn't being carried to the copenhagen summit by an impi, no he's using the technology afforded him by the industrial revolution. Co2 emissions are proportional to world population which is rising faster in the third world.
This demand smells of corrupt intentions.

Oh – what’s this ???

Does this mean that the elite whites and colonials overseas are useful after all ????

You mean that Julius is HAPPY to TAKE money from whites oversees that South Africa is begging from but yet at home in South Africa a white is NOT allowed to own a business or get most jobs.

It is time the black people of SA make a decision. I am one white that resents paying one cent to contribute to Africa’s assistance because it is just blown on greedy leaders and bad governance,

It sounds like your Eskom is looking for funds to build more power stations and will then tell the poor of SA that 45% increase is needed to pay for mew power stations. And some ANC official will build a new R65 million home.

The same old - time the world wizens up.

This would be a massive mistake on the part of South Africa!! Unfortunately they will probably borrow money from the UN that they can't pay back which will compromise the entire country.

Let's pray that the ANC government makes this one decision not to buy into this carbon taxing crap that was engineered to bankrupt us!

Eish baas, yoo maas geev mee maanie! What is wrong with these people. Have they no pride?

How sick are these fraudulent gloom and doom alarmists!!!
What is happening in Copenhagen is proof enough if anyone wanted it that these people don't even believe their own twisted propaganda.
Their OBSCENE activities coupled with the criminal fraud committed by Phil Jones and his crooked scientist chums world-wide, shows that they are determined to continue with their lies -EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE BEEN BUSTED!!!
Let's hope the voters in the USA and the UK make an issue out of this scam and send these fraudsters packing!!

Copenhagen climate summit: 1,200 limos, 140 private planes and caviar wedges
Copenhagen is preparing for the climate change summit that will produce as much carbon dioxide as a town the size of Middlesbrough.


By Andrew Gilligan
Published: 10:55PM GMT 05 Dec 2009


On a normal day, Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen's biggest limousine company, says her firm has twelve vehicles on the road. During the "summit to save the world", which opens here tomorrow, she will have 200.

"We thought they were not going to have many cars, due to it being a climate convention," she says. "But it seems that somebody last week looked at the weather report."

Ms Jorgensen reckons that between her and her rivals the total number of limos in Copenhagen next week has already broken the 1,200 barrier. The French alone rang up on Thursday and ordered another 42. "We haven't got enough limos in the country to fulfil the demand," she says. "We're having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden."

And the total number of electric cars or hybrids among that number? "Five," says Ms Jorgensen. "The government has some alternative fuel cars but the rest will be petrol or diesel. We don't have any hybrids in Denmark, unfortunately, due to the extreme taxes on those cars. It makes no sense at all, but it's very Danish."

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

As well 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists and 98 world leaders, the Danish capital will be blessed by the presence of Leonardo DiCaprio, Daryl Hannah, Helena Christensen, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prince Charles. A Republican US senator, Jim Inhofe, is jetting in at the head of an anti-climate-change "Truth Squad." The top hotels – all fully booked at £650 a night – are readying their Climate Convention menus of (no doubt sustainable) scallops, foie gras and sculpted caviar wedges.

At the takeaway pizza end of the spectrum, Copenhagen's clean pavements are starting to fill with slightly less well-scrubbed protesters from all over Europe. In the city's famous anarchist commune of Christiania this morning, among the hash dealers and heavily-graffitied walls, they started their two-week "Climate Bottom Meeting," complete with a "storytelling yurt" and a "funeral of the day" for various corrupt, "heatist" concepts such as "economic growth".

The Danish government is cunningly spending a million kroner (£120,000) to give the protesters KlimaForum, a "parallel conference" in the magnificent DGI-byen sports centre. The hope, officials admit, is that they will work off their youthful energies on the climbing wall, state-of-the-art swimming pools and bowling alley, Just in case, however, Denmark has taken delivery of its first-ever water-cannon – one of the newspapers is running a competition to suggest names for it – plus sweeping new police powers. The authorities have been proudly showing us their new temporary prison, 360 cages in a disused brewery, housing 4,000 detainees.

And this being Scandinavia, even the prostitutes are doing their bit for the planet. Outraged by a council postcard urging delegates to "be sustainable, don't buy sex," the local sex workers' union – they have unions here – has announced that all its 1,400 members will give free intercourse to anyone with a climate conference delegate's pass. The term "carbon dating" just took on an entirely new meaning.

At least the sex will be C02-neutral. According to the organisers, the eleven-day conference, including the participants' travel, will create a total of 41,000 tonnes of "carbon dioxide equivalent", equal to the amount produced over the same period by a city the size of Middlesbrough.

The temptation, then, is to dismiss the whole thing as a ridiculous circus. Many of the participants do not really need to be here. And far from "saving the world," the world's leaders have already agreed that this conference will not produce any kind of binding deal, merely an interim statement of intent.

Instead of swift and modest reductions in carbon – say, two per cent a year, starting next year – for which they could possibly be held accountable, the politicians will bandy around grandiose targets of 80-per-cent-plus by 2050, by which time few of the leaders at Copenhagen will even be alive, let alone still in office.

Even if they had agreed anything binding, past experience suggests that the participants would not, in fact, feel bound by it. Most countries – Britain excepted – are on course to break the modest pledges they made at the last major climate summit, in Kyoto.

And as the delegates meet, they do so under a shadow. For the first time, not just the methods but the entire purpose of the climate change agenda is being questioned. Leaked emails showing key scientists conspiring to fix data that undermined their case have boosted the sceptic lobby. Australia has voted down climate change laws. Last week's unusually strident attack by the Energy Secretary, Ed Miliband, on climate change "saboteurs" reflected real fear in government that momentum is slipping away from the cause.

They are all a bunch of hypocrates!!!!! The reason they are all there is to find another way to clobber the hard working tax payer. Africa is there to beg, as usual. The rest are there to shore up their diminishing tax base after the recession and the scientists? They are there to get more funding sothat they can stay in their cushy jobs. Nothing at all to do with climate change. That is a myth. Al Gore's documentary failed in the courts as it was all blow. If they believed and were serious about this so called climate change they would make all "green" products affordable to everybody. The "green" lobby are a multi billion industry and are getting richer by the day!!!!!! Just look at how their stocks are galloping on the various stock exchanges!!!!

Amazing how white racists find in any story something negative to say about black people...

The fact is that EVERY developing country in Central America, South America, Asia and Africa is saying that the rich world who created the problem need to pay for the more expensive sustainable technologies that the rich countries want the developing world to use, instead of the cheap polluting technologies that the west used when they developed.

A completely rational sensible request and not proof of any deficiency in Africans or anyone else.

White racists: stop trying to divide us again. You had your chance during apartheid and that was horrible and we all (black and white) rejected it. Now stop trying to divide us again - you're always seeing something racial in everything! This is about the environment, pollution and about rich and poor nations, and has nothing to do with race.

oh thank you Dave Martin, i couldn't have said it better than you man!!!

Dave Martin said "
A completely rational sensible request and not proof of any deficiency in Africans or anyone else. "

Well said Dave.
Africa is the shining beacon for the west leading the way with open democracies, advancing technology, breakthroughs in medicine, outstanding design, advanced education and huge agricultural output......it's just the leaders that are so dumb and corrupt :)

Climate Change - not one person has mentioned the fact that this is the year 2009. 100 years ago, electricity and very most certainly nuclear power was unheard of. Fossil fuel replaced dung and so on. Now we have discovered alternatives - lets use them. Africa should get off its collective arse and start contributing something of more importance to themselves and perhaps to the world. Start by cleaning up politics, clean the toilets in previously disadvantaged schoools. hell build some schools and buy some educated teachers for the learners. Mr. Zuma et al should be asharmed of themselves. How many houses, clinics etc., could R65 millian have bought. Disgusting lot.
However, if climate change is not brought under control, and for those sceptics out their, use your eyes and all your other dull senses, we will all perish!!! No worries then about who pays who for emmissions. By the way food is running out as well so I would suggest Africa curb their birth rate like the rest of us have done - no more 10 kids to sell and do the work. Get real!

sue topham..Africa is the least populated continent in the world and the amount of energy used by the entire content is less than energy used by New York city..i suggest that you be the one that gets real!!

Dave. What's racist about pointing how the coruptness of the African continent??????????????? Are you saying that only blacks live on this continent????????????? Then you, sir, are the biggest racist!!!!!!!!! Learn your history of Africa and you will find there are many other colours than black in Africa.

I think the government got this one right. When I last checked we were one of the most polluting countries in the world, but too poor to do anything about that. If the rich countries are able to support us to lower our carbon emissions (and with that our atrocious level of air pollution - think of the horrible smog that envelopes the Rand every winters morning) we should grab the opportunity.

Hopefully we can also help the poor people in the squatter camps to do away with their coal burning stoves and give them clean and safe alternatives.

TRADE NOT AID!

By bargaining for better trading agreements the private sector can benefit and in turn the economy. As everybody knows by now, handouts in Africa never go where they should.

Good Lord people, this demand is to make sure that the next seasons most expensive cars and of course the housing that goes with them are provided for. What hopitals, schools etc. will be provided - none so far, never mind the high taxes the mines et al pay. Then of course, the new coal burning power stations must be built. and so on ...
Andy - Least populated or not - Africa still cannot care for itself despite billions poured in in aid. Using energy is the least of its concerns. Now that they are developing to an extent it would advantageous to use solar don't you think.

Contrary to what was written above Africa is the second most populated continent.