Twenty-three years since the first big gabfest in Rio. 125,000 pages of science and law and politics and psychology and tech and. and....an eighth of a million pages!
And this is what I'm supposed to work with:
...(BEGIN TAPE)
CHUCK TODD:
There's a lot of pledges. There's a lot of promises. But there seems to be no mechanism for getting countries to comply other than wagging your finger at them and shaming them. Am I wrong?
SEC. JOHN KERRY:
Well, that's the most powerful weapon in many ways, but it's not the only weapon. And in fact we think there are other powerful weapons. President Obama understood, and believe me, he's been really committed to getting this done. And it's his leadership in America on our own climate action plan that gave us credibility here. And the President's been able to do that without some of that enforcement mechanism, but by setting policy. Here we set policy. 186 countries came together and each submitted their own plan for reductions according to their capacities.
We have a mandatory, legally binding reporting mechanism, Chuck. And that reporting mechanism requires people to retool their plans every five years in order to do more than they might be doing and meet the goal. So I believe you are going to see-- I mean people understand this issue. This is not a question of just doing it because it seems nice or politically it's good. It's because it's having a profoundly negative impact on nations. They need to respond. And that's perhaps the most compelling reason of all.
CHUCK TODD:
But you say legally binding. Okay. So somebody doesn't comply. Again, what's this law that you're going to hit them with, other than international shame?...
-transcript, Meet the Press, December 13, 2015
More to come but for now it looks like it's back to the daily grind, maybe front-run the shift from growth to value, except the reinsurers, short the reinsurers, the bastards.I hope next year's hurricanes go straight to Zurich. And then Munich.
Speaking of Munich, maybe there'll be a Hitler Downfall parody. That would be nice.
Well, it's only eleven months until COP22 in Marrakesh.
That's something.
