Full Text of Hatoyama’s Speech to the United Nations Summit on Climate Change
Here is a link to the prepared remarks of Prime Minister Hatoyama, which he delivered at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change:
Statement by Prime Minister Hatoyama
Occassionaly a world leader will stand up and make a speech which truly moves you. This was not such a speech… It is full of platitudes, misreadings of science, and qualified commitments. Hatoyama uses words like ‘imperative’, and ‘crucial’, but then has this blanket statement, which makes all of his other words utterly meaningless:
“Japan’s efforts alone cannot halt climate change, even if it sets an ambitious reduction target…The commitment of Japan to the world is premised on agreement on ambitious targets by all the major economies”.
Note that he says that Japan’s plans are based on ‘ambitious targets’ by the rest of the world, not just any old targets. So already his statement is worth less than the paper it is printed on. Not only this, but Hatoyama makes blanket statements about doing things like ‘halting climate change’, which even the most ambitious and fanatical climate scientist would concede is far beyond the ability of man… Many would say that even slowing warming is problematic at this point, although this would be belied now by the fact that global temperatures have in fact remained steady for the past decade. There has been no appreciable warming (and possiblty even cooling) since 1999, and just recently a NY Times article noted that prominant climate and ocean scientist Mojib Latif, who was a major contributor for the IPCC, has stated that temperatures are not expected to rise again for 1-2 decades or so. He is not the only one that has made statements like this. Considering that all of the known ‘global warming’ models failed entirely to predict a 2-3 decade lull in global warming, its almost enough to make one skeptical….
Hatoyama also mentions the ‘Green New Deal’ of President Obama, claiming that this will create new opportunities for employment in the world economy. This is far from proven. In fact, it is still uncertain just how much of Obama’s agenda will end up being passed in the US, let alone making statements about what this agenda will do for the world economy and job market. Indeed, Spain is a well publicised example of a full-on ‘green jobs’ agenda that ended up being a complete boondoggle. As Bloomberg reported earlier this year, the Spanish attempt to create jobs from ‘green technologies’ ended up costing some $774,000 per job. Yes, that figure is correct….
I’ve stated here before that I am all for the goals of developing alternative energy technologies. I see that as a natural progression for human-kind. And protecting and maintaining the environment is also a noble and necessary duty for mankind. But when I hear Hatoyama and other world leaders speak about new world orders, new ‘green’ global economies, massive regulatory and tax schemes, and the like, I start to get very nervous. When Hatoyama speaks of ’supporting adaptation efforts by developing countries’, I can’t help but imagine the UN going into desperately poor countries and communities to set up expensive wind turbines and then leave, not realizing that what the people really needed was some running water and a little medicine. When the world community gets serious about helping those that are truly downtrodden and in desperate conditions – through poverty, lack of education, disaster or oppression – then they can start talking about cleaning up the world and we might actually listen to them.
For the record, when people like UN Secretary General Ban come out as he did a few months ago and state categorically that the world has just 8 months to make major changes on global warming policy he sounds like a ‘kook’. As does Prince Charles, who just a few months ago also stated that the world has just 96 months to continue, or else we are all doomed, or something like that. Its about time that there was MORE, and not LESS debate on these issues. Put it all out on the table, and lets debate the different scientific research, and come to more robust and incontravertible conclusions.
At the moment, the ‘global warming’ movement contains too many people that are wanting to shut down debate, and claim, as Al Gore does monotonously, that the ‘debate is over’. This is an utterly unscientific way to approach anything. The debate is never over. The only way to win a debate is to win it with an overwhelming weight of evidence for which there is no reasonable alternative explanation – like the existence of gravity. Global Warming science is nowhere near this. There are literally thousands of scientists around the world that dispute all or part of the ‘prevailing science’. I am not saying which side is right. I am not a climate specialist myself. But I come down firmly on the side of MORE information, and not RESTRAINED debate. If this is as serious as we are told, why are the politicians and scientists not dropping everything and making this their only priority. After all, if they were to find that a meteor were headed to earth in 8 months, or even 96, wouldn’t they do just that…. Ok, maybe that’s too simplistic an analogy…. but only just….
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Japan’s latest prime minister Hatoyama would I dear say far exceeded my expectation with his speech at the UN summit this week. Compared to the previous prime ministers that held this key position, they don’t seem to hold a candle when compared Hatoyama. Japan needed a change of government after so many years of being governed but the liberal democratic party of Japan for more than five decades, Hatoyama and the democratic party of Japan must feel like a breath of fresh air. Change was needed here in Japan and I was here to see these changes hopefully I’ll see Hatoyama policies bare fruit.