[DW] Scientists issued urgent warnings about climate change in 2018. Germany's summertime temperatures hit record highs. Nevertheless, the government has lost its enthusiasm for tackling climate issues, Jens Thurau writes.
The government has finally acknowledged that its stated goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 40 percent by 2020 is not even remotely achievable.
German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze, a Social Democrat, performed a bizarre balancing act at the World Climate Summit in Poland earlier this month. Like the leaders of developing countries, small island nations and other states committed to tackling climate change, she called for more to be done to address the problem ‐ however, she rejected demands for a swift end to reliance on coal. Jennifer Morgan, the executive director of Greenpeace International, told Schulze on stage in Katowice that Germany's climate policy had become a joke. Schulze did not respond. However, man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them... back in Germany, Economic Affairs and Energy Minister Peter Altmaier, of the Christian Democrats (CDU), announced on television that Schulze's message of solidarity with impoverished island countries had not been agreed in advance, and so did not represent the position of Germany's grand coalition government as a whole.
Germany accounts for less than 2%. If German industry and living standards went to the year 30,000 BC, they still would cover one year's world GHG increase.
#5
Contrary to the delusions of the "true believer" constituents, the leadership class knows the Gerbil Worming™ narrative is complete bullgarb. The elites will stick with it for the support it garners them until such time as the downside to budgets and practical realities becomes too big to ignore. Then the "true believer" constituents will be gently introduced to a new global threat to fear. Nationalism and populism are being auditioned for that role right now.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
12/26/2018 8:07 Comments ||
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#6
The real threat to everyone's economy is the same as always, rent seeking.
[Victory Girls] With Gen. Mattis resigning and most politicians running from the announcement to pull out of Syria (and rumors of Afghanistan as well), things are looking pretty lonely up in D.C. for President Trump. Except for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is publically supporting the Syria withdrawal. The acts of both Mattis and Pompeo should be applauded.
Mad Dog Mattis is an every-man, and a well-liked, well-respected Marine. He’s humble but he has a back bone. Instinctively we all know he would never ask his troops to do something he was not willing to do himself. This is what makes him an inspiring leader. He’s been at it a long time, and he has certain ideas about national security.
Some have called his resignation letter blunt, and a complete repudiation of "Trumpism" but those critics have missed the boat. While the letter is plain spoken, there is little to detract from his classy exit. Too bad more officials are not as straightforward. He clearly laid out that he has different ideas about how to proceed on foreign policy than Trump, and therefore he must depart.
Mattis is right, Trump does deserve someone who will align with his goals, and then dutifully serve to carry out his intentions. Mattis judged he could not do that, so in the honorable way we have come to expect from him, he stepped down. He did not stay in the job seething or undermining the president, or leaking sensitive documents to make Trump look bad. And I am praying he doesn’t decide to go on a sleazy Trump-bashing book tour like so many others.
Of course, the media is trying to squeeze as much rancor out of the situation as possible, but the relationship between Mattis and Trump IS a grownup one. They hashed it out, came to an impasse, and Mattis did the right thing ‐ for his own conscience. Trump respects him and honored him with a snark-free laudatory tweet. Trump doesn’t need "yes men." He needs people to treat him fairly, and when that happens he returns the favor.
[CDRSalamander] First of all, this Christmas Eve, regardless of your confession I wish all peace and happiness.
As we are all busy, I'll just cut to the chase.
Last Thursday I offered a few points on Syria, and I guess I should make a few points about Secretary Mattis's departure as well.
Slightly modified from some comments I made SEPCOR, here is the Executive Summary:
We're all going to be just fine. I've been a Mattis guy since 2001, but SECDEF is a position for a politician, not a Field Marshall. Even though I have 100% trust in him for any position he may find himself in, Mattis was never quite well suited for the position of SECDEF as it was designed. He had to get a waiver for a reason. I am still a Mattis guy and I wish him well.
As for who should replace him, anyone who can get a nod from the Senate and will continue to promote what Trump has been doing and I have been honking about since Bush43:
(1) decouple from being the world's policeman,
(2) get our NATO allies to pull their fair share of the load. 2% isn't exactly asking for a lot.
Again, we're fine.
- We are mostly in the Middle East due to strategic inertia and to tidy up problems generally of our own creation. We don't need their oil anymore.
- While our debt issues are huge, we are in better shape than any other major nation on the planet. When the music stops, the world will groan, but we will hurt less than almost anyone else.
- We feed ourselves.
- Our entire hemisphere is of zero threat to us.
- The only real global challenger we have will be China and we have absolutely ZERO reason to have a land dispute with them on mainland Asia. Any conflict will - if we are smart about it - be mostly an air and sea conflict for us, with any land force hopefully limited to islands.
What we don't need is an expanded universe of nations and regions we are garrisoning in order to secure their peace at the cost of increasing the threat of possible war for us over things that are none of our business.
Specifically WRT Syria, I've said it a hundred and I'll say it a million times; if it were so important to secure - the area of the West most negatively impacted by the Syrian civil war would have a string of divisions lining the eastern banks of the Euphrates - the Europeans. You see a sprinkling of French there (the former colonial power), but that is about it.
It is only our circus and our monkeys So, it appears the good O-5/6 knows a little about Polish aphorisms.
if we stay long enough. Time to go. If we need to come back and break more things and kill more people for a few months, then fine - we'll do it.
I can argue the other side of the argument as well ... but I frankly don't care to any more. I save that energy for IRQ and AFG.
#4
The only real global challenger we have will be China and we have absolutely ZERO reason to have a land dispute with them on mainland Asia. Any conflict will - if we are smart about it - be mostly an air and sea conflict for us, with any land force hopefully limited to islands.
Bingo. All problems unrelated to China - Syria, Iraq/Afg, Ukraine etc - need to be viewed as REGIONAL disputes that require regional solutions involving local or regional powers. Our involvement in these solutions needs to be first and foremost diplomatic, with occasional insertions of air power and other forms of "offshore balancing."
Time to listen to realists arguing for offshore balancing such as Barry Posen of MIT and John Mearsheimer of U Chicago.
#6
There is an existential threat at our porous southern border of terrorists, human smuggling and drugs.
That threat originated from within, from the large fraction of the electorate willing to abandon national sovereignty for stupid reasons, led by the globalists. In addition the Postal Service subsidizes the mailing of fentanyl and carfentanil from China. Who's to blame for that?
#7
The only reason we are in Syria is because the empty suit had to save face after weenying out of his red line.
That and kill Baghdadi
The Middle East is the Middle East and a tar baby of apocalyptic proportions. We should just stay the hell out and just trim up our balance of payments by selling them anything and everything they need to kill each other.
The best way to stop all of the ME nonsense is to knock the spot price of oil to about $45 a barrel and all of the will go broke and back to living in tents and camel racing. You would see a lot of ME economies just collapse.
[Jpost] Syrian air defense confronted a complex threat over Damascus Tuesday night. It comes after several months of relative quiet for Bashir al-Assad's Syrian regime, which is grappling with a crises in eastern Syria as the US withdraws.
The Arclight airstrikes took place as the Syrian state media was seeking to highlight Christmas in Syria. Syria was witnessing a "victory over terrorism," SANA said. However the airstrikes were the most serious since September when an Israeli airstrike targeted Latakia and resulted in Syrian air defense shooting down a Russian IL-20 aircraft. That incident caused Moscow to give Syria the S-300 system and warn Israeli "hotheads" against further incidents.
For months it has been relatively quiet. An incident on November 29 and December 9th worked up Damascus as air defenses were activated. But both incidents seemed minor. One was a false alarm apparently. However December 25 was a major escalation. It comes as Syria is seeking to deal with a major crises in eastern Syria as the US withdraws.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: trailing wife ||
12/26/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11 views]
Top|| File under: Govt of Syria
#1
it took Assad four years to clear ISIS from the area with 10 miles of the Damascus governorate (last ISIS position was overrun in mid Nov 2018)
To me, the four years it took is way more embarrassing.
Posted by: lord garth ||
12/26/2018 12:33 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
