At Commonwealth Meeting—Trudeau Is Obama’s and the Queen’s Pony for Global Warming; India Says, No Deal

At the Queen Elizabeth-led Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGM) at Malta, convened yesterday, Canada’s new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has been set up as the spokesman to exert pressures to accept climate-change diktats scheduled to be adopted at the Nov. 30 to Dec. 11 UN Climate Change conference in Paris. CHOGM represents the heads of 53 nations formerly under British rule, although very few heads of government of these 53 nations have come to Malta.

Voicing its concerns over CHOGM’s push for a climate- change-related consensus at Malta, Indian officials argued that any ambitious statement emanating from the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) here should be tempered with realism, as the discussions in the run up to the COP21 at Paris have been complex and difficult and should not be overloaded at this stage, PTI reported.

Canadian TV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief, Robert Fife, said today, that Trudeau was expressly asked to attend the biennial meeting of the Commonwealth leaders by U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who wanted him to stress the importance of a climate-change agreement at the end of talks in Paris. CTV also reported Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion calling the three-day CHOGM summit a “training camp” for the United Nations climate-change conference.

CHOGM  has decided to set up a climate-change hub which would facilitate access to funds for small states like Malta. British Prime Minister David Cameron earmarked around £26 million for projects to help 25 small island states. Trudeau said his country will give C$2.65 billion over the next five years to help developing countries combat climate change, Times of Malta.com reported. The contribution is part of an agreement Canada made in 2009 to work with developed countries, to jointly provide $100 billion by 2020 from various sources.