Doha Climate Summit Ends With No New CO2 Cuts or Funding

Doha Climate Summit Ends With No New CO2 Cuts or Funding (via Skeptical Science)

Posted on 15 December 2012 by John Hartz The following article is reprinted by permission of its author, Stephen Leahy,  who writes for the Inter Press Service (IPS) News Agency. To access the article as posted on the IPS website, click here. As sea erosion worsens, coastal residents in Nhon Hai…

Doha Climate Talks Bury International Climate Action in the Desert

Doha Climate Talks Bury International Climate Action in the Desert (via World Wildlife Fund)

DOHA, QATAR – Today - On Thursday, six of the largest and most respected environmental and development organizations in the world issued an emergency call to governments, that any deal in Doha must meet the acid test – does it reduce emissions, provide public climate finance and ensure a future…

Governments Spend $1.4 Billion Per Day to Destabilize Climate

Governments Spend $1.4 Billion Per Day to Destabilize Climate (via sustainablog)

By Lester R. Brown We distort reality when we omit the health and environmental costs associated with burning fossil fuels from their prices. When governments actually subsidize their use, they take the distortion even further. Worldwide, direct fossil fuel subsidies added up to roughly $500 billion…

The greatest barrier to public recognition of human-made climate change...

The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change (via Skeptical Science)

Posted on 14 August 2012 by Daniel Bailey, John Hartz NOTE: This is a repost of a NASA Science Brief by James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy — August 2012.  The SkS analysis of this paper is available here. The greatest barrier to public recognition of human-made climate change is probably the…

US Generals explain why climate change is a global problem

The reality of climate change can no longer be ignored (via GlobalPost)

Commentary: US Generals explain why it is a global problem requiring global solutions. Lieutenant General Daniel Christman, USA (Ret.), Brigadier General Steve Anderson, USA (Ret.) and Brigadier General Stephen Cheney, USMC (Ret.) Last week, Hurricane Sandy put climate change back in the political…

The climate science debate is over

Why Climate Deniers Have No Scientific Credibility - In One Pie Chart (via Desmogblog)

This is a guest post by James Lawrence Powell.* Polls show that many members of the public believe that scientists substantially disagree about human-caused global warming. The gold standard of science is the peer-reviewed literature. If there is disagreement among scientists, based not on opinion…

Doha UN climate talks to conclude with few conclusions

Unsurprisingly, reports coming out of the Qatari capital, Doha, are less than optimistic. It seems that the UN Climate Conference will end this weekend, no doubt after frnatic last minute over-night negotiations, with little to no progress towards preserving our collective future. Despite scientists increasingly fraught warnings of impending climate disaster politicians, diplomats and lobbyists continue to procrastinate and prevaricate over efforts to limit the effects of climate change. Environment analyst, Roger Harrabin, reporting from Doha for the BBC even suggests that this latest round of negotiations intended to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases may actually have the direct opposite effect;

But this conference - the 18th Conference of the Parties, or COP18 - will not prevent any CO2 being released into the atmosphere - that will be left to future meetings. Indeed if it does not tighten the rules on "hot air" this conference could result in an increase in emissions.

Cynical as I am about the prospects for this latest international effort I will be the first to admit that even I did not forsee a situation where talks to reduce and limit greenhouse gas emissions could ever result in an increase in those same emissions...  This has to be a new low for the UN process.

Some-one once said - "it is only when mankind is standing on the precipice, on the very brink of disaster, that he will recognise the danger and adapt." I say that moment has arrived. We are currently pearched precariously on the precipice of a number global crises - climate, population, food, energy, biodiversity etc - but still our leaders refuse to recognise the danger and adapt. I am at a loss as to why. What possible gain can come from endless rounds of negotiations dragging out year after year, never quite achieving their goal but forever offering the faint glimmer of hope that next time progress will be made. Next time...

Is it any wonder that some people begin to think the unthinkable; that certain parties - be they governments, corporations or other interest groups - are deliberately sabotaging global efforts to tackle these issues so vital to our continued 'peaceful' existence on this plant. Personally, I prefer to believe that simple fear and greed are to blame rather than some insidious 'Illuminati' conspiracy to depopulate and subjugate the masses. Blind denial of the scientific realities of our current situation can surely only be a response to the fear of facing the reality of a world ravaged by runaway climate change or a desire to profit from any situation however immoral those profits may be.

Maybe my pessimism is misplaced. Perhaps there is still hope for a sudden and dramatic turnaround in policy. Accordng to most sources we are not yet out time - not quite. Depending on who you listen to we have any-where from 48 months to maybe five years to act in a decisive and comprehensive manner. But the longer we leave it the more drastic and painful those actions will need to be.

Maybe COP19 will be the moment...

"Get it done": Still Urging Climate Justice

         



A year ago US student, Anjali Appadurai, reprimanded diplomats from 194 countries for their lack of action and ambition at last year's climate talks in Durban, South Africa. It has been said that she shocked the UN and galvanised the meeting when she told them:

"I speak for half the world. We are the silent majority. You've given us a seat in this hall, but our interests are not on the table. What does it take to get a stake in this game? Lobbyists? Corporate influence? Money? You've been negotiating all my life. In that time, you've failed to meet pledges, you've missed targets, and you've broken promises, but you've heard this all before."

Of course she is right, they have heard it all before. 20 years ago at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, popularly known as the Earth Summit, a young girl named Severn Suzuki climbed onto the stage and delivered an impassioned speech (reproduced in full below). She implored the assembled delegates to "act as one single world towards one single goal" and told them "if you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it." 


         



Her speech had such an effect on delegates that she became a frequent invitee to UN conferences; you could say the maturity and passion of her address 'shocked and galvanised' the meeting. And yet, 19 years later, Anjali Appadurai stood before the delegates of Durban Climate Conference and lambasted them for their failure to honour the pleas of Severn Suzuki.

Every day it seems a new report or article announces that rising CO2 emissions mean dangerous climate change is now almost certain and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) chief Christiana Figueres tells a press conference 'What gives me frustration is that we are very far behind what science tells us we should be doing.'

Forgive me if I hold out little hope for success in Doha...

The Speech (in which 12 year old Severn Suzuki puts the delegates of 1992 Earth Summit in their place...)

Hello. I'm Severn Suzuki, speaking for ECO, the Environmental Children's Organization. We are a group of 12 and 13 year olds trying to make a difference: Vanessa Suttie, Morgan Geisler, Michelle Quigg, and me. We've raised all the money to come here ourselves, to come 5,000 miles to tell you adults you must change your ways.

Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future.     Losing my future is not like losing an election or a few points on the stock market. I am here to speak for all generations to come. I am here to speak on behalf of the starving children around the world whose cries go unheard. I am here to speak for the countless animals dying across this planet because they have nowhere left to go. I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the holes in our ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air because I don't know what chemicals are in it. I used to go fishing in Vancouver - my home - with my dad, until just a few years ago we found the fish full of cancers. And now we hear of animals and plants going extinct every day, vanishing forever.

In my life, I have dreamt of seeing the great herds of wild animals, jungles and rainforests, full of birds and butterflies, but now I wonder if they will even exist for my children to see. Did you have to worry of these things when you were my age? All this is happening before our eyes and yet we act as if we have all the time we want and all the solutions. I'm only a child, and I don't have all the solutions. I want you to realize, neither do you. You don't know how to fix the holes in our ozone layer. You don't know how to bring the salmon back up a dead stream. You don't know how to bring back an animal now extinct. And you can't bring back the forest that once grew where there is now a desert.

If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it.

Here you may be delegates of your government, businesspeople, organizers, reporters or politicians. But really you are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, and all of you are someone's child. I am only a child, yet I know we are all part of a family 5 billion strong. In fact, 30 million species strong. And borders and governments will never change that. I am only a child, yet I know that we're all in this together and should act as one single world towards one single goal. In my anger, I am not blind, and in my fear, I am not afraid of telling the world how I feel. In my country, we make so much waste. We buy and throw away, buy and throw away, buy and throw away, and yet Northern countries will not share with the needy. Even when we have more than enough, we are afraid to share. We are afraid to let go of some of our wealth.

In Canada, we live the privileged life with plenty of food, water and shelter. We have watches, bicycles, computers and television sets. The list could go on for two days. Two days ago here in Brazil, we were shocked when we spent time with some children living on the streets. This is what one child told us, "I wish I was rich. And if I were, I would give all the street children food, clothes, medicines, shelter, and love and affection. If a child on the streets who has nothing is willing to share, why are we who have everything still so greedy? I can't stop thinking that these are children my own age; that it makes a tremendous difference where you are born; that I could be one of the children living in the favelas of Rio. I could be a child starving in Somalia, or a victim of war in the Middle East or a beggar in India. I am only a child, yet I know that if all the money spent on war was spent on finding environmental answers, ending poverty and finding treaties, what a wonderful place this Earth would be.

At school, even in kindergarten, you teach us how to behave in the world. You teach us to not fight with others. To work things out. To respect others. To clean up our mess. Not to hurt other creatures. To share, not be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the things you tell us not to do? Do not forget why you are attending these conferences - who you are doing this for. We are your own children. You are deciding what kind of world we are growing up in.

Parents should be able to comfort their children by saying "Everything's going to be all right. It's not the end of the world. And we're doing the best we can." But I don't think you can say that to us anymore. Are we even on your list of priorities? My dad always says "You are what you do, not what you say." Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown ups say you love us, but I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words. 

Thank you.

(Severn Suzuki)

Kicking the climate can...

  “It’s strange,... It’s like looking through binoculars observing people on a far off beach, running around in circles, fixated on the small area of sand beneath their feet, as a tsunami races towards them."

The Archivist - Age of Stupid

My binoculars are currently trained on Doha, the capital of the oil-rich emirate of Qatar, where representatives of 190 nations are meeting at the United Nations climate conference – ostensibly, to limit global greenhouse-gas emissions to a level that scientists say will contain the global temperature rise to 2ºC (3.8ºF), and perhaps stave off global climate catastrophe.

As the 2 week conference enters the final 5 days the delegates have made no significant progress, in fact the talks risk total collapse unless developed countries formally pledge as much as $60bn in fresh funding by 2015. According to some negotiators failure to reach an agreement by end of proceedings in Doha could cause the fragile accord reached at the last minute at last year's UN talks in Durban, South Africa, to completely unravel. That would leave the nations of the world unable to agree, even in principle, to finalise a new global climate pact by 2015 that wouldn't even enter force until 2020.

So we are still just kicking that can down the road...

While those entrusted by us to protect us from ourselves jockey for position and quibble over points of national interest the dire predictions about our not too distant future are coming thick and fast - no less than 4 reports since the start of the Doha conference.

• The World Meteorological Organization says the climate is "changing before our eyes"
• "Turn Down the Heat - Why a 4°C warmer world must be avoided", a report commissioned by the World Bank warns that “we’re on track for a 4°C warmer world marked by extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.”
• PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) released their November 2012 Low Carbon Economy Index in which they warn that even if we doubled our current rate of decarbonisation the world would be on track for 6°C of warming by the end of the century.
• The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) published a new report - Policy Implications of Warming Permafrost - which highlights the approaching dangerous climate tipping point from thawing Arctic permafrost releasing large quantities of methane and CO2.

And today, Monday 3rd December, The Global Carbon Project - an Australian-based international research effort that tracks greenhouse gas output - will release it's annual findings. The new data will reveal that greenhouse gas emmissions are expected to rise by 2.6% by the end of the year, on top of a 3% increase in 2011. Since 1990, the reference year for the Kyoto Protocol, emissions have increased 54 per cent.

So there we have it. 20 years of international efforts to curb greenhouse gas emmissions to prevent dangerous climate change has left us tracking slightly above the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 'business as usual' scenario. Well that was time and money well spent.

Maybe I am being overly pessimistic... they do still have 5 days. Maybe they can thrash out a deal that the US, China and the others can all agree to. Maybe they can make it immediately legally binding and halt the rise in global emmissions of greenhouse gases over-night. Maybe they can start to reduce CO2 emmissions by 5% per year starting in 2015 and continuing for the next 35 years or so. Maybe the current atmospheric CO2 levels of approx. 391 parts per million (ppm) can be brought down to 350ppm by 2050.

Maybe...