UN Climate Summit Fails To Adopt Alarmist IPCC Report

Attempts to incorporate a key scientific study into global climate talks in Poland have failed.

Scientists and many delegates in Poland were shocked as the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Kuwait objected to this meeting “welcoming” the IPCC report.

With no consensus, under UN rules the passage of text had to be dropped. –Matt McGrath, BBC News, 8 December 2018

A diplomatic standoff over a single word could set the stage for a bigger showdown during the second half of this year’s U.N. climate summit. Negotiators took time out Sunday to rest after the first week of talks ended on a sour note the previous night when the United States sided with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait in blocking the endorsement of a landmark study on global warming. —Associated Press, 9 December 2018

The United States was willing to note the IPCC report and express appreciation to the scientists who developed it, but not to welcome it, as that would denote endorsement of the report. As we have made clear in the IPCC and other bodies, the United States has not endorsed the findings of the report. —U.S. State Department, 9 December 2018

Putting an economic price on greenhouse gases is proving a hard sell with the public, even as the time to head off climate change shrinks. But environmentalists are increasingly ready to look elsewhere. This month’s fuel-tax riots in Paris and the defeat of a carbon-fee ballot measure in Washington state show the difficulty of getting people to support a levy on the energy sources that heat their homes and power their cars. —Politico, 9 December 2018