Forty bureaucrats will travel to Durban in South Africa later this year for the next round of climate-change talks, at a cost of more than $500,000.Some of the costs of the trip have been revealed as the Federal Government gets set to introduce its carbon tax legislation tomorrow.The public servants from the Climate Change Department and other government agencies will travel business class to Durban – creating a footprint of about 270 tonnes of carbon. (To put this in context, the equivalent emissions would be produced from the electricity use of 34 average homes in one year.)They are expected to stay at the Coastlands Hotel and Convention Centre, in the coastal resort of Umhlanga – described by local tourism authorities as the “Riviera” of Durban.The delegation will attend the United Nations “conference of parties” in late November and December, an annual gathering of nations with the long-anticipated goal of securing agreement on a binding international contract to tackle climate change.Two prior meetings, Copenhagen in 2009 and Cancun last year, both failed to secure an international commitment, triggering frustration in the process.Australia sent 114 delegates to the Copenhagen conference at a cost of almost $1.5 million.That conference promised much progress on a deal, but failed to deliver.It is anticipated an agreement will also prove elusive in Durban.
It is, of course, impossible for extremely well-paid public servants to negotiate agreements or to discuss how much more they intend to fleece taxpayers, whilst promoting their politically-motivated pseudo-scientific conjecture, by using mail, e-mail, telephones, video-conferencing or any other method which involves remaining in their own country.
