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“Looking for a Climate Champion”
DURBAN, South Africa - Civil society said negotiations are going backwards with no nation willing to step up and lead the way forward here at the United Nations climate change conference Wednesday.
Environmental activists protest outside the UN talks in Durban as part of a global day of action to demand a fair climate change deal. (Photograph: Rogan Ward/Reuters) “No-one is a champion here. Who will step forward and call the other countries’ bluffs?” asked Tove Ryding of Greenpeace International.
Without that champion stepping forward in the next two and half days, “the world is heading to four degrees Celsius of warming while countries are playing a game of poker,” said Ryding.
“We are going backwards here. The EU put out a new mandate today that suggest a 10 year delay for increasing emissions reductions,” said Bobby Peek of Friends of the Earth South Africa.
“Corporate power is in charge here. Governments must act for the benefit of their people,” said Peek.
“There is still time to break the deadlock but need clear commitments from the members,” said Srinivas Krishnaswamy of the Climate Action Network – South Asia.
Big decisions at previous meetings were often made in the final hours, he noted.
China has made an “unprecedented” proposal to agree to binding commitments but the US and European Union are pretending this is nothing new, said Samantha Smith of WWF International.
China, as well other large developing nations, are waiting for the US and other developed countries to fulfill their promises made in the Bali (2008) and Copenhagen (2009) climate talks, Smith said.
But even those aren’t good enough to ensure less than two degrees of warming. Greater emissions cuts are needed from the developed that current pledges. “The climate can’t wait for that in 2020 as the US suggests.”
9 Comments so far
Show AllWhere is Bolivia, and Evo Morales, and Pablo Solon?
Manysummits
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"In mythology, heroes are characterized by a calling that they embrace without doubt...
As a race, we humans are beset by competing anxieties - "Should I?" or "Shouldn't I?" "Why?" "Why not?" - and confusion and insecurity lead to inaction.
The hero, however, must lead on to the end, even if it includes the risk of death. With that calling, that obedience to an inner authority,
the hero symbolizes the human personality with its powers in focus."
- Lene Gammelgaard in "Climbing High"
Manysummits
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Tuvalu Minister Urges World Leaders to Save Pacific Nations from Rising Seas
"Madam President, small island nations, particularly low-lying atolls like Tuvalu who are surrounded by sea, have always had great hope that the ocean brings prosperity and life. Soon this will no longer be the case. The ocean is now bringing destruction and is threatening our very existence. Sea-level rise could engulf our nation, our entire nation, and therefore erase our rights as a nation and as a sovereign state.
But sea-level rise is not only our concern. Just before I left to come to this conference, my government had declared a state of emergency, because we are suffering the worst drought in recorded history. We got to the stage where we had to import fresh water and to bring in emergency desalination plants. This was a clear warning that we are already suffering from the adverse impacts of climate change.
Madam President, it is vitally important that the international community take immediate and decisive action to address climate change now, not tomorrow, not in 2015, and definitely not in 2020. Urgency must be the theme of this conference. We have no time to wait, and we are only a few inches from the point of no return."-- Apisai Ielemia, minister of foreign affairs, trade, tourism, environment and labor for the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu.
Stephen Leahy usually does good work, but this article is weak. For one thing, it would be good to hear details of exactly what China proposed so that readers can make an informed judgement: is China playing games, or making a serious proposal? If someone has found a good analysis of that, I'd be interested in reading it.
Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC, made news in his Democracy Now interview this morning, when he charged that the conference in Durban is ignoring the science:
AMY GOODMAN: What do you want to see at the end of this week?
DR. RAJENDRA PACHAURI: I’d like to see the science driving some of the discussions and the decisions that are taken. I’m sorry I don’t see much evidence of that right now.
AMY GOODMAN: What is, in fact, in evidence then this week?
DR. RAJENDRA PACHAURI: A complete absence of the discussion on the scientific evidence that we have available on climate change. I would like to see each day of the discussions, starting with a very clear presentation on where we are going, what it’s going mean to different parts of the world, and what are the options available to us by which, at very low cost and, in some cases, negative cost, we can bring about a reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases. I would like to see an hour, hour and a half every day being devoted to this particular subject, because I think then the movement towards a decision would be far more vigorous, it would be based on reality, and not focusing on narrow and short-term political issues.
Nobel-Winning IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri Urges Obama to "Listen to Science" on Global Warming
That was a good interview. Good questions by Amy Goodman that elicited good answers from Rajendra Pachauri. Aleph Null, thanks for the reference. The science is clear. The only sane policy policy option too is clear.
>>Pachauri: "As far as I’m concerned, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report had clearly brought out that if we want to limit to temperature increase to two degrees or thereabouts, two to 2.4 degrees Celsius, and if we want to do it at least cost, then emissions will have to peak no later than 2015. And we are now talking about 2020. That means the world will incur a much larger expense in reducing emissions. And in the meantime, we’ll also suffer far more serious impacts of climate change. So, therefore, I personally think if the world decides to do this, if the negotiators over here determine that course of action, they should be aware of the fact that that’s going to be a costly course of action. And that’s something which science has brought out very clearly."<<
My only complaint is about the understatement that seems to be a hallmark of such people: "...far more serious impacts of climate change". That's it? Why not just call it a catastrophe or a disaster waiting to happen?
I've come to the point where I think these exercises in masochism known as the UN climate change conferences are nothing more than various nations hosting them for tourism dollars.
Each conference, especially since Copenhagen, is an abusive display of corporate control wherein the capitalists continue to gut the corpse of Kyoto with the US supplying the knives.
These displays need to be shunned and, if there are indeed nations which are serious about this matter, then meetings need to be organized outside of the UN's toxic touch.
No one is stepping up because NATO signed the "Open Skies" treaty and has been conducting Geoengineering (see "Solar Radiation Management" and "Sun Screening") Experiments over U.S, Canada, Europe since around 1999.
This experimentation has gone terribly wrong; Please research how REAL Condensation/Water Vapor trails aka, "contrails" react in the atmosphere and judge for yourself.
See NOAA geoengineering home page. See Royal Academy of Sciences Geoengineering website. See "Owning the Weather in 2025".
Look up in the sky, We have the right to clean air, Aluminum and Barium Free. Geoengineers admit these experiments can cause drought and floods in other areas.
Please Research for yourself:
Our lack of participation in the Durban Conference underscores the successes of the energy cartels in their deceptive wars against the environment. They have resurrected some fabricated or misleading e-mails from the scientific community which they had used to torpedo the Copenhagen conference, while distorting the facts concerning the demise of Solyndra to obstruct alternative energy development. P>
The links between carbon pollution and the rising frequency of severe meteorological disturbances, marine life destruction from ocean acidification, coastal inundation , and increasing tropical diseases --are now as certain as science can be. As the worlds greatest contributor to carbon pollution, our leadership in its mitigation is essential. P>
President Carter understood this, and pursued meaningful programs for mitigating the environmental and related economic problems that now face us. For this he was vilified by special interests who successfully replaced him with an administration willing to eradicate his reforms--and an unlearned populace. >P.
If Mr Obama seizes this opportunity to pursue and forge the Carter reforms before the tipping point, history will treat him well--even if it costs him re-election. Otherwise he will be remembered as the president who allowed the special interests to continue their destruction of our planet, while increasing the rift between those most responsible for pollution and those most affected by it.
I will very bluntly say this.. NO ONE is going to do anything at all to reverse the damage already created from burning fossil fuels,, especially coal during the past 200+ years..
In addition; nothing will be done to reverse the destruction of forests, especially rain forests and altering the ocean waters' Ph, to the dangerous point where it is doubtful the beginning chain of life on a Water World,, the coral reefs,, will survive past the years 2030 to 2035.
Long before the year 2030, (*runaway*) global warming will have triggered and with the global wariming feedback loops in full swing,, there then will be nothing at all that we can do to reverse an eventual mass extintion of life on Earth... Global warmng will be irreversable.
If any of the world's top scientists speak up at the conference, they will most likely say the same type of things they have been saying for the past 10 to 12 years.... ("We must cut Co2 emmisions by 40% to avert a serious rise in global temperture by the end of the century.") __ "By the end of the century" !
By the end of the century,, is quite possible that the only humans left alive on this once beautiful Water World, will be those who have stashed a lot of food and water in some deep deserted salt mine, or living in the bio-sphere in Arizona, or some secret bio-spheres we sheep don't know about. None of those will last very long anyway.
If the tipping points of no return,, no do-overs,, no turning back, do not occur by the year 2020 or sooner,,, I will be happily surprised. And the four climate conferences have all been nothing but a load of political and ecomomic "talk" by the nation's representatives who do the most polluting of the atmosphere and the oceans.
Nothing is going to change,, nothing... If I'm wrong,, I certainly do hope so.