We Did Not Survive Doha For This.

In 1992 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was established to tackle the global threat of climate change.

In 1997 the UNFCCC established the Kyoto Protocol which expired in 2012. So in 2011 the UNFCCC established the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) to draw up a replacement.

The problem has always been the Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia. These were established by the western powers in the 1930's to control the global supply of oil.

As a result Saudi Arabia's entire existence is predicated on nations being forced to buy oil at vastly inflated prices in order to burn it increasing climate change.

To say that Saudi Arabia is opposed to action against climate change is probably one of the greatest understatements ever uttered.

Their hope was that the ADP would simply fall at the first hurdle and die out at the 2012 COP 18 Summit in Doha, Qatar. Ever since the failure of the Doha round of World Trade Organisations (WTO) in 2001 Doha has been considered the place where international agreements go to die.

Despite the animosity of the host and the fact the global economy was still in the grips of one of the worst crises the World has ever seen the UNFCCC not only managed to survive Doha it prospered.

After several days of frantic activity at a summit that was extended by several days COP18 managed to produce the Doha Amendment which extended the Kyoto Protocol until 2020 buying time for its replacement to drawn up.

So in 2013 the Gulf states simply attacked the UNFCCC harder.

In its vanity the US sent the popstar Rihanna out on her Diamonds World Tour. They're hope was that this make them the centre of attention at COP19 and cause the sort of absolute chaos they could exploit to their advantage.

However the Gulf states had prepared a far nastier plan to coincide with the US'.

Their plan involved using Islamist terrorists to start a war that would engulf much of African from Nigeria in the west to Somalia in the east and from Libya in the north via Mali and the Central African Republic (CAR) to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the south.

Fortunately France saw this coming an stepped up not once by twice. First in Mali and then again in the Central Africa Republic. So although Nigeria has been subjected to the Boko Haram insurgency ever since the continent-wide war never got going and I only had to spend the one day in jail.

As a result the ADP really began to find its feet during COP19 and by COP20 in 2014 we actually had a negotiating text.

However while the ADP was making progress a new threat emerged in the form of US President Barack Obama and his vain desire to include a global climate change deal as part of his god-awful legacy.

The US of course did not sign up to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 and still has not implemented any nationwide climate change measures let alone international ones.

As a result the US is so far behind when it comes to climate change negotiations they're still in Kindergarten while the rest of us are in hats and gowns collecting our diplomas.

For example in June of 2013 in his role of global leader in the fight against climate change Obama issued an executive order demanding that every US state draws up a plan of how it is going to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

This is the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) plan that the ADP devised two years previously. Obama had simply stolen it, watered it down and tried to pass it off as his own work.

Similarly in November 2014 Obama again championed his 'leadership' on climate change by announcing that he'd secured a joint climate action plan with China. This was an agreement that China has had on the table since 2010. The delay in putting it in place was getting Obama to agree to it.

With America being so far behind the rest of the World on the issue if Obama was serious about securing a global climate change deal at COP21 which is currently taking place in Paris, France it was obvious that he would have to spend most of his Presidency building bilateral support for action within the US.

Instead Obama has dedicated his entire Presidency to confrontation with the Republican Party in the hope that he will one day vanquish them and all branches of US government will forever be under Democrat control.

By exploiting the climate change issue in this domestic political squabble Obama has only succeeded in making it a partisan issue that is far too toxic for any Republican to touch.

Matters really came to a head in August of 2014 when Obama launched the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign in the hope of triggering a wave of racial unrest that would sweep the Democrats to control of Congress in the mid-term elections.

Although I will need to check my notes to find the exact date I vividly remember spending one long Saturday evening between the death of Mike Brown and the start of the US bombing campaign in Iraq working out all the variables and options of the plan.

I decided that if Obama took the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seriously I would continue to protect him from his own arrogance and stupidity and help the Democrats to victory in the mid-term elections inspite of Black Lives Matter.

However if Obama refused to take the fight against ISIL seriously I would lift my protection and allow the Republicans to benefit from Obama's stupidity at the mid-term elections.

I think we all know which path Obama chose.

I took this decision in the full knowledge that a Republican controlled Congress would make it next to impossible for the US to ratify a meaningful climate change agreement. So throughout my attempts to shape a new agreement I placed a great emphasis on creating an agreement that would work without US involvement.

Although the existing threats to the process have prevented me from setting out my stall as clearly as I would have liked and the evolution that will occur over the course of such a long-term agreement discourage rigid rules this new agreement is designed to move away from getting specific nations to cut their emissions towards cutting global emissions.

At the heart of this is the concept of collaboration between nations provided by the additional/conditional portion of the INDC.

Nations like South Korea along with traditional climate rebels such as the UK have indicated that while they're not prepared to spend billions of dollars reducing their own emissions by a fraction they are prepared to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the technology that will help developing nations leap-frog the fossil fuel stage of their economic development.

Many developing nations - particularly the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) - are already well along the path to becoming 100% carbon neutral in the next decade if the right level of support is available. So if implemented this approach will almost immediately remove many thousands of tonnes of emissions.

On its own it will not be enough to solve the problem but it will be a substantial step in the right direction.

Although the US may initially sit out the first phases of the agreement the fact that we are able to prove that the system works and action on climate change is no longer a barrier to economic development will serve to increase the pressure on the US to join.

While this is going on the effects of climate change will continue to worsen and become even more undeniable.

Just this summer more the 1000 people died in Pakistan - not from terrorism but from extreme temperatures. This past week at least 18 people have died and tens of thousands have been displaced by flooding in the Indian state of Chennai.

As I write the UK is putting into motion emergency evacuation plans to deal with flooding in the county of Cumbria. The fact that this is the same UK region that was devastated by floods in 2007, 2009 and again in 2012 is likely a large part of the reason why the UK has become a lot more co-operative on the climate change issue in recent years.

There is a limit to how long even the most heavily bribed Republican Congressman can convince their electorate that the evidence they can see in front of them simply does not exist.

So if a functioning mechanism to combat climate change can be put in place it will only be a matter of time before the US joins. If we can get 2016 Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton to stop using the issue as a dog whistle to whip up her electoral base in the great culture war we may even get a lot further a lot quicker.

Australia has already done its bit by removing Prime Minister Tony Abbott who was the leading voice amid calls that US ratification was a pre-condition to anybody signing up.

Unfortunately despite 7 years of evidence to the contrary Obama still thinks of himself as the all powerful puppet master craftily pulling all our strings.

So rather then using the UNFCCC's October 2015 meeting to work through the remaining problems with the negotiating text Obama - through the US co-chair Daniel Reifsnyder - used it to replace everyones hard work with a whole new text.

Obama's twin priorities in this new text were simple; It could not have fixed emission reduction targets and it could not be legally enforceable. 

Removing those two provisions would allow Obama to ratify the agreement through executive order by-passing the Republican controlled Congress and allow a special section honouring Obama's greatest achievement to be created in his Presidential library.

Whether or not the agreement actually works doesn't matter one little bit to Obama because he is already clearing his desk.

Not only does the US non-paper not include provisions to set emission reductions or provisions to legally enforce any national determined emissions reduction it also - and unlike the Kyoto Protocol - does not have sunset clause at which it expires and needs to be replaced.

So if adopted the US non-paper is likely to be the last action ever taken to combat climate change even though it will be wholly and completely ineffective.

As such it represents the kill-shot to the UNFCCC the Gulf states have been searching for these past 23 years.

Those Gulf states have already moved to ensure that violence will see their will done at COP21. 

So on October 31st (31/10/15) Kogalymavia flight 7K9268 was bombed out of the skies over Egypt murdering 224 civilians aboard.

On November 13th (13/11/15) 130 civilians were massacred on the streets of COP21 host city Paris.

On November 20th (20/11/15) 21 civilians were murdered at a COP21-style hotel in Bamako, the capital of Mali.

On November 24th (24/11/15) 12 Presidential guards were murdered in a suicide bombing on a COP21-style shuttle bus in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia.

Just today at least 27 people have been murdered in triple suicide bombings on an island in Lake Chad, Chad. This is spill over from the war that Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad are currently try to fight against Boko Haram.

While it obviously can never be far from the minds of any COP21 delegate from west Africa I consider the fight against Boko Haram to be a full-scale war. So as with Iraq, Syria or Libya I can't report on and analyse every single attack. There are simply too many.

Although the death toll was comparatively small the most shocking Islamist terror attack was the one that took place in San Bernadino, California, US on Wednesday (2/12/15).

While I am not yet happy to confirm it myself the US media has been talking openly about the female attacker - Tashfeen Malik - being a Saudi sleeper agent who was smuggled into the US last year specifically to carry out this attack.

US President Obama's response to all this has been to close the curtains and hide behind the sofa rather like a child watching a particularly scary episode of "Doctor Who."

The fact that the supposed Commander-in-Chief of both the World's largest economy and the World's largest military is unwilling or unable to protect the homeland he is sworn to protect from Islamist terror attacks must utterly terrify all those smaller, less powerful nations who live under immediate and constant threat of Islamist terror attack.

As a result it seems that those nations are going to sign whatever the guy with the gun to their head tells them to sign.

It is up to the bigger and stronger nations to use that size and strength to finally shoulder the burden. 

23:45 on 5/12/15 (UK date).