SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
unfccc
Trump Quits Key Treaties Amid 'Increasingly Deadly and Expensive' Weather Disasters
"The Trump regime is sending a clear message to the world that the US refuses to take responsibility for its own actions," said one campaigner.
Jan 08, 2026
President Donald Trump's withdrawal of the United States from dozens of international treaties and organizations and his administration's cuts to climate research and emergency response come as the frequency, lethality, and cost of major extreme weather disasters grow, according to an analysis published Thursday.
The Climate Central analysis of billion-dollar US weather and climate disasters revealed that 2025 saw the third-highest annual number of such events, trailing only the two previous years. At least 276 deaths and $115 billion in damages are attributable to such disasters.
This analysis also came as California observed the one-year anniversary of wildfires that killed 31 people and caused billions of dollars in damages, making them among the most expensive wildfires on record.
The new research is the first update of Climate Central's US Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters database, which was launched last October. The resource will help fill an information void caused by the Trump administration's move in May ending updates to the government's own database that tracked climate disasters causing more than $1 billion in damage.
After the US admin cancelled the $B Climate + Weather Disaster dataset, @climatecentral.org hired the scientists who ran it and set it back up. Now the 2025 numbers are in: it's 3rd highest year on record and highest year w/o land-falling hurricanes. More: www.climatecentral.org/climate-serv...
[image or embed]
— Katharine Hayhoe (@katharinehayhoe.com) January 8, 2026 at 9:33 AM
Key findings of Climate Central's update include:
- The past three years rank highest for the annual number of billion-dollar disasters: 2023 (28 events), 2024 (27 events), and 2025 (23 events);
- The number of billion-dollar severe storms set a new record in 2025, with 21 such events, reflecting near-record numbers of damaging high wind and tornado reports during the spring and summer of 2025;
- A billion-dollar drought affected the western US in 2025, and was primarily driven by heat, rather than by a lack of precipitation; and
- The catastrophic flash flooding in the Texas Hill Country in July 2025 was one of the deadliest inland floods in US history—even though it did not even result in economic losses of $1 billion.
"This trend of increasingly deadly and expensive disasters is occurring as the Trump administration continues to defund and cut staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the nation’s foremost science agency whose mission includes tracking and studying weather and climate, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) that prepares for, responds to, and helps communities recover from disasters," the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) said Thursday in response to the new research.
Additionally, Trump on Wednesday signed a legally dubious executive order under which the US will become the first country to ever quit the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent treaty serving as the foundation for international accords including the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement.
Trump's order also pulls the US from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), International Renewable Energy Agency & International Solar Alliance, International Union for Conservation of Nature, and numerous other agreements and organizations, even as the human-caused climate emergency worsens.
Experts stress that this is the opposite of what governments should be doing amid a worsening planetary crisis.
“As a nation, we must invest much more in resilience measures as well as sharply cut the heat-trapping emissions driving climate change," UCS Climate and Energy program senior policy director Rachel Cleetus said Thursday. "This administration has instead clawed back funding for climate resilience projects, politicized disaster aid, and is doing its utmost to boost fossil fuels and worsen the climate crisis. Congress must step up to oppose these harmful actions and help keep people safe.”
Basav Sen, a climate leader at the Institute for Policy Studies, on Thursday noted that the US is "the world’s largest cumulative greenhouse gas emitter, and the largest producer and exporter of oil and gas today."
"By walking away from the UNFCCC and the IPCC," Sen added, "the Trump regime is sending a clear message to the world that the US refuses to take responsibility for its own actions."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Words Fail': WMO Report Finds CO2 Accumulating at Record Levels
"The report is very clear: This crisis is driven by the profit-driven production of coal, oil, and gas," one climate advocacy group said.
Oct 29, 2024
Climate-heating carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere more rapidly than at any time since humans evolved.
That's just one of the alarming findings from the World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, released Monday, which found that all three main greenhouse gases reached record atmospheric levels in 2023.
"Words fail," the group Climate Defiance wrote on social media in response to the news.
"Greenhouse gas pollution at these levels will guarantee a human and economic trainwreck for every country, without exception."
Atmospheric concentrations of CO2 hit 420.0 parts per million (ppm) in 2023, an increase of 151% since the Industrial Revolution and a level not seen since 3 to 5 million years ago, when global temperatures was 2-3°C hotter than today and sea levels were 10-20 meters higher. Methane hit 1,934 parts per billion (ppb)—or 265% higher than preindustrial levels—and nitrous oxide rose to 336.9 ppb, 125% of pre-1750 levels.
"Another year. Another record," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "This should set alarm bells ringing among decision-makers. We are clearly off track to meet the Paris agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C and aiming for 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. These are more than just statistics. Every part per million and every fraction of a degree temperature increase has a real impact on our lives and our planet."
Carbon dioxide rose by 2.3 ppm in 2023. While that was higher than the 2022 increase, it was lower than in 2019-2021. However, on a longer-term scale, atmospheric CO2 rose by 11.4% in the past 10 years, a record increase during human existence. The burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of this increase.
"The report is very clear: This crisis is driven by the profit-driven production of coal, oil, and gas," Climate Defiance wrote. "Because of these fuels, planet-heating pollution levels have gone up by 51.5%—since 1990 alone."
However, 2023's CO2 increases were also caused by forest fires—including a record-breaking fire season in Canada—as well as a possible reduction in the ability of Earth's natural carbon sinks to absorb the greenhouse gas. While vegetation-related CO2 emissions are partially influenced by natural cycles—El Niño years like 2023 are drier and tend to see more fires—they could also be a sign of dangerous feedback loops.
"The Bulletin warns that we face a potential vicious cycle," said WMO Deputy Secretary-General Ko Barrett. "Natural climate variability plays a big role in carbon cycle. But in the near future, climate change itself could cause ecosystems to become larger sources of greenhouse gases."
"Wildfires could release more carbon emissions into the atmosphere, whilst the warmer ocean might absorb less CO2. Consequently, more CO2 could stay in the atmosphere to accelerate global warming," Barrett explained. "These climate feedbacks are critical concerns to human society."
The report also said that even if emissions were to cease rapidly, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means that the current rise in temperatures would linger for decades.
The rise in methane is also a concern. While it increased less in 2023 than in 2022, it hit a record-high increase over the last five years, and some of this could be due to climate feedback loops such as the melting of the Arctic permafrost or greater emissions from wetlands and other natural ecosystems as temperatures rise.
As Climate Defiance noted, WMO's graph showing the rise of methane appears to move from a linear to an exponential progression as it approaches 2023.
"It could literally be the graph that defines human history," Climate Defiance wrote.
"The most infuriating part is it didn't have to be this way," the group continued. "Had we started taking action in the 1970s—when the threat became clear—we could have easily stopped the crisis by now. Instead we gorged ourselves on SUVs and McMansions as politicians dithered and delayed."
The Greenhouse Gas Bulletin is one of several annual reports released ahead of United Nations climate conferences; this year, world leaders are scheduled to gather in Baku, Azerbaijan starting on November 11 for COP29. The Bulletin comes alongside other reports finding that national policies are not on track to reduce emissions in line with the Paris agreement temperature goals.
Last week, the U.N. Emissions Gap Report concluded that current policies put the world on course for as much as 3.1°C of warming. Also on Monday, the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) released its 2024 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) Synthesis Report, in which it assesses the commitments that different nations have made to reduce emissions under the Paris agreement.
It found that current NDCs would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2.6% of 2019 levels by 2030, a far cry from the 43% needed to have a chance at limiting global heating to 1.5°C by 2100 and preventing ever-worsening climate impacts.
"Greenhouse gas pollution at these levels will guarantee a human and economic trainwreck for every country, without exception," U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said in a statement of the current 2030 trajectory.
"Today's NDC Synthesis Report must be a turning point, ending the era of inadequacy and sparking a new age of acceleration, with much bolder new national climate plans from every country due next year," Stiell said. "The report's findings are stark but not surprising—current national climate plans fall miles short of what's needed to stop global heating from crippling every economy, and wrecking billions of lives and livelihoods across every country."
"By contrast," Stiell continued, "much bolder new national climate plans can not only avert climate chaos—done well, they can be transformational for people and prosperity in every nation."
Climate Defiance also called for renewed ambition.
"It is not too late," the group said. "There is still a small window of opportunity. Together, we will unite to stop our own demise. We will rise. We will defy all odds. There is no alternative."
Keep ReadingShow Less
COP29 Host Deal Revealed Amid Azerbaijan's 'Vicious Crackdown' on Critics
"In the months leading up to COP29, Azerbaijani authorities have arrested dozens of prominent activists and media figures on baseless, serious criminal charges," notes a new report.
Oct 10, 2024
Human Rights Watch on Thursday revealed the host country agreement between the United Nations and Azerbaijan for next month's climate summit, on the heels of an HRW report exposing "the government's concerted efforts to decimate civil society and silence its critics."
COP29 is scheduled for November 11-22 in Baku. Although the agreement was signed in August by U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Simon Stiell and Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan's minister of ecology and natural resources, it was not made public until the U.S.-based human rights group obtained a copy.
Myrto Tilianaki, senior advocate for HRW's environment and human rights division, said it "is disappointing but not surprising" that the 20-page document "is replete with significant shortcomings and ambiguities on the protections for participants' rights."
As Tilianaki detailed in a Thursday dispatch on the HRW website:
For instance, the agreement states that while conference participants "shall enjoy immunity for legal process in respect of words spoken or written and any act performed by them," a separate clause requires them to respect Azerbaijani laws and not interfere in its "internal affairs."
There is no clarity in the agreement about what actions could constitute "interference" with Azerbaijan's "internal affairs," and whether Azerbaijan's laws apply in the U.N.-run conference zone. Given Azerbaijan's strict limitations on freedoms of expression and assembly, which violate international human rights law, participants' actions within the zone could be subject to reprisals outside the zone.
Tilianaki cited HRW and Freedom Now's Tuesday report, 'We Try to Stay Invisible': Azerbaijan's Escalating Crackdown on Critics and Civil Society, which states that the Caucasus country "has had a poor human rights record for many years, with the government regularly targeting those who play important watchdog roles in society, including human rights defenders, journalists, and independent civic activists."
"The government's vicious crackdown on critics and dissenting voices intensified over the last two years," the report emphasizes. "Among the methods the government uses to target these individuals are arrests and prosecutions on politically motivated, bogus criminal charges, as well as the arbitrary enforcement of highly restrictive laws regulating nongovernmental organizations. This system effectively excludes independent activists and media from lawful ways of carrying out their work, thereby pushing them to the margins of the law and heightening their vulnerability to retaliatory criminal prosecution."
"Azerbaijan is rich in oil and natural gas, depends heavily on fossil fuels for its state budget, and in 2024 is also hosting COP29, the United Nations Climate Conference," the 74-page document adds. "In the months leading up to COP29, Azerbaijani authorities have arrested dozens of prominent activists and media figures on baseless, serious criminal charges. The arrests are overwhelmingly linked to highly restrictive laws on nongovernmental organizations."
COP29 continues a trend in which a country hosts a summit that is supposed to bring world leaders together to tackle the climate emergency despite being incredibly involved with fossil fuels and repressive of critics—as Alex Galitsky of the Armenian National Committee of America wrote in a Thursday opinion piece for The Hill, "letting Azerbaijan host the U.N. climate conference is a sick joke."
Civil society groups, Tilianaki noted, "have repeatedly called for host country agreements to be made public for participants to have confidence that their rights will be protected when attending climate conferences," pointing out that Amnesty International obtained a copy of the last year's agreement only months after the United Arab Emirates hosted COP28.
As Amnesty explained in July, "In 2023 conclusions of the Bonn Climate Conference, parties to the UNFCCC highlighted that host countries should reaffirm their commitment to upholding the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations and international human rights law before, during and after UNFCCC sessions and mandated events, and to ensure that participants can exercise those human rights without fear of intimidation and repercussions."
Although the COP28 agreement "contains some positive elements," Amnesty said, the 2023 conclusions "were not implemented" in the document. The group detailed various "elements of concern" and published the full text. It has also documented the history of human rights abuses in Azerbaijan.
Tilianaki declared Thursday that "it is regrettable that these agreements are shrouded in secrecy, and it shouldn't fall to civil society organizations to share them publicly."
"In the interests of transparency and accessibility, the UNFCCC should publish past, current, and future agreements on its website," she said. "More urgently, it should publicly call upon the Azerbaijani government to respect its human rights obligations and facilitate a rights-respecting climate conference."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Climate Groups Call for Rich to Pay More as International Meetings Begin
"We have to put the social justice element upfront," an architect of the 2015 Paris agreement said as the world's climate delegates gathered in Germany.
Jun 04, 2024
Advocates on Tuesday issued strong calls to action on climate finance for developing countries and an international agency released a report on the need to ramp up renewable energy production as the Bonn Climate Change Conference continued in Germany and G7 nations prepared to meet in Italy next week.
At the conference in Bonn, Friends of the Earth International pushed for more rich-country financing to pay for the rising costs of climate impacts in the Global South, while Laurence Tubiana, head of the European Climate Foundation and an architect of the 2015 Paris agreement, called for the global rich to pay their share through taxes and consumption levies.
Meanwhile, two organizations warned that countries aren't on track to meet targets they set just last year. Oil Change International (OCI) published a briefing showing that G7 nations are expanding oil and gas commitments that undermine goals set at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) meeting in Dubai, and the International Energy Agency (IEA) issued a report showing that the world's nations are not on track to meet their Dubai pledge to triple renewable energy production by 2030.
"The world is on fire because of decades of inaction by rich countries on reducing emissions, and their failure to pay the climate finance they owe to developing countries to transition to renewable energy systems for all, and to pay for rising costs for loss and damage and adaptation," Sara Shaw, Friends of the Earth International program coordinator, said in a statement. "What is on the table to date is scales of magnitude away from what it needed. This year must be a year of breakthrough on climate finance."
Climate representatives are meeting in Bonn this week and next to prepare for COP29 in November in Azerbaijan, where a key agenda item is expected to be financing for a green transition in the Global South. COP negotiations are conducted under the aegis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). At COP21 in 2015, nations signed the Paris agreement, a treaty that sought to limit global warming to less than 2°C above preindustrial levels.
Tubiana, an architect of that deal, said Tuesday that tackling climate change requires centering global justice in order to avoid conflict and gain public acceptance of climate measures.
"We have to put the social justice element upfront," Tubiana, a French economist and diplomat, told The Guardian.
Tubiana said that raising the funds required for low-income nations will require holding both rich nations and people to account, via taxes and consumption levies, given that inequities exist not just between nations but also within them.
"This inequality is true not only between developed countries and developing ones, but within each country—the 1% of rich Chinese, or the 1% of very rich Indians, or the U.S. citizen—they have a lifestyle which is very, very similar, in terms of overconsumption," she said.
The world's richest and most powerful nations are not taking responsibility for climate action as they should, the new OCI briefing argues.
"Some G7 countries are massively expanding fossil fuel production at home, while others are investing in more fossil fuel infrastructure abroad," the briefing states. "Both are catastrophic failures of leadership."
OCI cites the United States, Italy, and Japan as particularly bad climate actors. The U.S. is the largest oil and gas producer in the world and has plans for massive expansions of the industry, despite President Joe Biden's climate promises, the briefing notes. Italy has announced plans to double natural gas production. And both the U.S. and Japan have financed billions of dollars worth of oil and gas production in other countries just since the end of 2022, the document states, citing earlier OCI findings.
.@G7 countries 🇨🇦 🇺🇸 🇬🇧 could be responsible for nearly half of the CO2 pollution from new oil & gas projects planned between 2023 and 2050 - equivalent to the lifetime emissions of nearly 600 coal plants.
📑 https://t.co/ujhMLMVNtr pic.twitter.com/8IB1sxLuHj
— Oil Change International (@PriceofOil) June 4, 2024
The IEA also spelled out unfulfilled commitments, while detailing progress that has been made on the energy transition. The agency looked at the domestic policies and targets of 150 countries to see how far along they were toward reaching the international target of tripling renewable power generation by 2030. It found that once added together, the nations' domestic plans would get them about 70% of the way toward the 11,000 gigawatts of additional capacity required to meet the goal.
"There is a gap, but the gap is bridgeable," Heymi Bahar, a senior energy analyst at the IEA and co-author of the report, told The Guardian.
Governments have not in most cases written these domestic plans into their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris agreement. The IEA report says that countries need to "bring their NDCs in line with their current domestic ambitions" and scale those ambitions up further still, to get from 70% to 100%. Moreover, they must follow through with their promises and achieve the targets they've set.
"This report makes clear that the tripling target is ambitious but achievable—though only if governments quickly turn promises into plans of action," Fatih Birol, the IEA's executive director, said in a statement.
The world added about 560 gigawatts of renewable capacity in 2023, a record increase, more than half of which came from China, according to the IEA. About half of planned capacity increases are in solar, with a quarter from wind power, the IEA report states.
Keep ReadingShow Less
To Solve the Climate Crisis, Look to Women
Women, and in particular women from the Global South, have delivered some of the biggest successes in the global race to climate solutions.
Feb 12, 2024
The host country for this year’s United Nations climate negotiations recently made a mistake: It announced it would exclude women from the negotiations’ organizing committee. Reaction was fierce and immediate. Across the world, climate experts condemned the “shocking and unacceptable” decision to exclude women from leadership. In response, the host country, Azerbaijan, updated the committee to include 12 women along with 29 men.
In downplaying women’s abilities to fight the climate crisis, leaders miss a huge opportunity. Women are not only most affected by climate change; through the ingenuity born of necessity, we are devising ways to solve it. Women, and particularly women from rural areas of the Global South, are essential to the success of progress on climate change.
This year’s climate talks are known as “COP29,” as they are the 29th annual Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Greenhouse gas pollution remains far too high, with tragically predictable consequences for those whom the climate crisis is making more hungry, sick, conflict-prone, and forced into migration.
Rural women from the Global South deserve a seat as leaders at the climate negotiating table. Beyond that, the negotiating table deserves them.
The Paris climate agreement and the commitment to cover loss and damage from climate change are bright spots in this decades-long journey. But as noted by climate diplomat Catherine McKenna, a widely circulated photo that was promoted to the media at the end of last year’s negotiations left many with the mistaken impression that work on climate change has all been done by men.
This is not the case. Men alone have never led progress on climate change. Women, and in particular women from the Global South, have delivered some of the biggest successes in the global race to climate solutions.
The architect of the Paris climate agreement, Christiana Figueres, is from Costa Rica. The champion of the Loss and Damage Fund, Madeleine Diouf Sarr, is from Senegal. Even going back to the very foundations of the UNFCCC, which led to the COP process, women like Kenya’s Wangari Maathai were leading.
And far beyond the spotlight of the front pages, women in poor, rural areas continue to lead, albeit in unrecognized and unrewarded ways. Women do three-quarters of the world’s unpaid labor, according to a report by Oxfam. This includes everything from planting smallholder farms to gathering water to caring for sick family members. This is all work that is likely to be affected by climate change.
Even now, women are figuring out how to adapt. Women—and especially women in the Global South—are solving the grinding daily challenges of the climate crisis with ingenuity. They are shifting the dates when crops are planted, trying new ways to get water, and making time in busy days to devote extra care to those who are ill from climate-related illnesses.
Rural women from the Global South deserve a seat as leaders at the climate negotiating table. Beyond that, the negotiating table deserves them.
It is unthinkable that any real end to the climate crisis will leave behind the very people who have the greatest experience in grappling with it. Developing the talent pool that already exists within each country will build genuinely representative leadership teams that bring the full spectrum of expertise to bear.
This work is now done by leading NGOs like SHE Changes Climate and by surprising allies like the nuns who deliver healthcare, education, and development in rural regions. Intentional efforts by each party to the U.N.’s climate framework should complement and eventually outpace the work of these civil society champions.
Without question, there are plenty of women who get things wrong. Having women in recognized leadership is not in itself sufficient. But it is necessary.
The planetary crisis is the defining issue of our time, the one challenge that shapes all others. Leaving half of humanity out of the picture is not an option.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Baby Steps' Will Not Avert Climate Catastrophe, UN Warns
The United Nations assessment coincided with the release of "the world's most comprehensive roadmap of how to close the global gap in climate action across sectors."
Nov 14, 2023
"The world is failing to get a grip on the climate crisis."
That's how United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres began his Tuesday remarks about a new U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) report on nationally determined contributions (NDCs), or countries' plans to meet the goals of the Paris agreement, including its 1.5°C temperature target.
The UNFCCC analysis "provides yet more evidence that the world remains massively off track to limiting global warming to 1.5°C and avoiding the worst of climate catastrophe," said Guterres. "As the report shows, global ambition stagnated over the past year and national climate plans are strikingly misaligned with the science."
" COP28 must be the place to urgently close the climate ambition gap."
Under current NDCs from the 195 Paris agreement parties, global greenhouse gas emissions are set to rise by nearly 9% by 2030, compared with 2010 levels, according to the analysis. While that's a slight improvement on the 10.6% increase from last year's assessment, it's still nowhere near the cuts that experts say are needed.
The analysis of NDCs comes as scientists project that 2023 will be the hottest year in 125,000 years and just over two weeks before the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, a summit controversially led by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
"As the reality of climate chaos pounds communities around the world—with ever fiercer floods, fires, and droughts—the chasm between need and action is more menacing than ever," Guterres declared. "COP28 must be the place to urgently close the climate ambition gap."
U.N. Climate Change Executive-Secretary Simon Stiell echoed Guterres' call to action, stressing in a statement that the new assessment makes clear governments are merely "taking baby steps to avert the climate crisis."
"It shows why governments must make bold strides forward at COP28 in Dubai, to get on track," Stiell said. "This means COP28 must be a clear turning point. Governments must not only agree what stronger climate actions will be taken but also start showing exactly how to deliver them."
The UNFCCC document was released on the same day as State of Climate Action 2023, which its crafters called "the world's most comprehensive roadmap of how to close the global gap in climate action across sectors."
Published under Systems Change Lab, the latter report highlights that only one of the dozens of indicators assessed, the share of electric vehicles in passenger car sales, is on track to meet its 2030 target.
As the publication details:
Recent rates of change for 41 of the 42 indicators across power, buildings, industry transport, forests and land, food and agriculture, technological carbon removal, and climate finance are not on track to reach their 1.5°C-aligned targets for 2030. Worryingly, 24 of those indicators are well off track, such that at least a twofold acceleration in recent rates of change will be required to achieve their 2030 targets. Another six indicators are heading in the wrong direction entirely. Within this subset of lagging indicators, the most recent year of data represents a concerning worsening relative to recent trends for three indicators, with significant setbacks in efforts to eliminate public financing for fossil fuels, dramatically reduce deforestation, and expand carbon pricing systems.
To get back on track, the international community must "dramatically increase growth in solar and wind power" while also phasing out "coal in electricity generation seven times faster—which is equivalent to retiring roughly 240 average-sized coal-fired power plants each year through 2030," the report warns.
The publication also emphasizes the need for shifting to healthier, more sustainable diets eight times faster, increasing the coverage of rapid transit six times faster, reducing the annual rate of deforestation four times faster, and scaling up global climate finance by nearly $500 billion annually until 2030.
"Despite decades of dire warnings and wake-up calls, our leaders have largely failed to mobilize climate action anywhere near the pace and scale needed," declared the report's lead author, Sophie Boehm of the World Resources Institute (WRI). "Such delays leave us with very few routes to secure a livable future for all. There's no time left to tinker at the edges. Instead, we need immediate, transformational changes across every single sector this decade."
Every world leader is under pressure to ramp up efforts to cut emissions, including U.S. President Joe Biden, who on Tuesday received a letter from hundreds of scientists urging him to "increase the ambition of domestic climate action—including through accelerating a just and equitable clean energy transition, rejecting the expansion of new long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure, investing in climate resilience, and ramping up climate finance—while working toward the strongest possible agreement at COP28."
The United States now ranks behind China as the top emitting country but still leads the world in cumulative planet-heating emissions. According to a U.S. government assessment released Tuesday, the nation is "warming faster than the global average," and "the effects of human-caused climate change are already far-reaching and worsening across every region."
Keep ReadingShow Less
It’s Time to Boycott COP-OUT 28
To keep pretending, year after year, decade after decade, that the U.N. process is working when everyone can see that it is failing, is its own kind of denial.
Oct 01, 2023
Every year, the world’s governments gather at what the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, calls a Conference of the Parties, or COP, to talk about lowering carbon emissions while they just watch emissions continue to rise. It is time to start calling these annual UNFCCC gatherings what they are: COP-OUTs.
The U.N. climate negotiations are failing so miserably I have been thinking for years these COP-OUTs should be boycotted by civil society with the UNFCCC excoriated for its failure to adhere to its stated mission to “stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.” Earth to U.N.: We are already experiencing dangerous human climate interference at current levels of carbon pollution. Negotiations that allow even more lethal pollution are in direct contravention of the UNFCCC’s publicly declared goal.
So I was encouraged when climate visionary Naomi Klein called for a civil society boycott of COP28 last fall. I expected to hear a groundswell of support for her oppositional approach to the COP-OUT charade. Instead, all I heard was crickets. Some outside-the-box ideas take time to catch on, I guess. If only we had the luxury of time.
When the world is on fire, you don’t invite the arsonists to the negotiating table to argue for their right to toss on more fuel.
A boycott of climate negotiations may seem counterintuitive to those wanting to affect climate policy, but civil society is largely relegated to the sidelines at COP conferences anyway. Why lend the political facade the veneer of legitimacy with our presence? Why not instead use our power to withdraw their social license to speak in our name? I don’t know about you, but my government is not representing me at these annual negotiations. Chasing after 30 years of failure is not a recipe for success. We have lost too many precious decades playing the game the U.N.’s way. To keep pretending, year after year, decade after decade, that the U.N. process is working when everyone can see that it is failing, is its own kind of denial. The UNFCCC has to recommit to its mission.
COP28 is already shaping up to be the biggest COP-OUT of them all. Taking the dressed up climate pageant to a new level of absurdity, the COP28 conference being held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, from November 30 to December 12 is being chaired by—get this—an oil baron. The president of COP28 is Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Lest you think the Biden administration truly gets that we’re in a climate emergency, John Kerry, Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, publicly praised Al Jaber’s appointment as “a terrific choice,” as if the idea of an oil baron presiding over international climate talks wasn’t preposterous on its face.
In a July TED Talk, former Vice President Al Gore described how the fossil fuel industry has “brazenly seized control of the COP process, especially this year’s COP in Dubai,” reminding us that fossil fuel companies had more delegates at COP27 “than the combined delegations from the 10 most climate-impacted countries.” Then Gore shared this:
And now this year’s host, which is a petrostate, has appointed the president of COP28, in spite of the fact that he has a blatant conflict of interest, he’s the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company... Their emissions are larger than those of ExxonMobil, and they have no credible plan whatsoever to reduce them. So this is the person in charge of the COP. He’s a nice guy. He’s a smart guy. But a conflict of interest is a conflict of interest.
There should be a worldwide outcry demanding that Al Jaber step down over this clear conflict of interest.
I don’t deny that vital strategic initiatives get hammered out at these U.N. conferences. The governments of the Global North, for instance, have a moral obligation to support serious climate financing for the Global South, which despite having done the least to contribute to climate breakdown is bearing the brunt of some of its most lethal impacts. So I respect the decision of those civil society leaders who feel compelled to attend and participate. But let’s not pretend that the incremental UNFCCC approach has a snowball’s chance in hell of actually saving civilization and the living world from collapse.
We need to stop thinking things will get better with the next COP-OUT, when things just keep getting worse. The hostile takeover of the international climate negotiations by fossil fuel industry arsonists is an unconscionable betrayal of our children’s trust and of all generations to come. Big Oil has not only been lying to the public for decades, it is knowingly perpetrating ecocide and crimes against humanity.
When the world is on fire, you don’t invite the arsonists to the negotiating table to argue for their right to toss on more fuel. You arrest the arsonists and mobilize firefighters to contain the worldfire. I don’t have a ready answer to what is the best alternative to the U.N. process, but when what you’re doing isn’t working, it’s time to try something else.
Keep ReadingShow Less
UN Puts Out 'Truly Damning Report Card' for Climate Action Before Global Summits
"This report is a wake-up call to the injustice of the climate crisis and a pivotal opportunity to correct course," said one expert.
Sep 08, 2023
"The United Nations' polite prose glosses over what is a truly damning report card for global climate efforts. Carbon emissions? Still climbing. Rich countries' finance commitments? Delinquent. Adaptation support? Lagging woefully behind."
That's how Ani Dasgupta, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute, began his response to a "global stocktake" report released Friday by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ahead of two global summits.
"This report is a wake-up call to the injustice of the climate crisis and a pivotal opportunity to correct course," Dasgupta continued. "We already knew the world is failing to meet its climate goals, but leaders now have a concrete blueprint underpinned by a mountain of evidence for how to get the job done."
"There are a few bright spots worth celebrating," he noted. "But overall, the report finds there are more gaps than progress—gaps that can only be erased by transformational change across systems like energy, food, land, and transport. The future of our planet depends on whether national leaders use this stark assessment as a catalyst for bold systems transformation."
"This report makes clear that President Biden is squandering precious time every second he fails to take bold action on fossil fuels."
The UNFCCC report comes nearly eight years after countries finalized the Paris climate agreement, which aims to keep global temperature rise this century below 2°C, relative to preindustrial levels, with a more ambitious target of 1.5°C.
"The global stocktake was designed under the Paris agreement to assess our global response to the climate crisis and chart a better way forward," the UNFCCC explained Friday. "The global stocktake is held every five years and is intended to inform the next round of nationally determined contributions to be put forward by 2025."
Data collection began in 2021, ultimately resulting in more than 170,000 pages of written submissions and over 252 hours of meetings and discussions. The new synthesis report summarizes 17 key technical findings from the discussions.
"I urge governments to carefully study the findings of the report and ultimately understand what it means for them and the ambitious action they must take next," said U.N. Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell. "It's the same for businesses, communities, and other key stakeholders. While the catalytic role of the Paris agreement and the multilateral process will remain vital in the coming years, the global stocktake is a critical moment for greater ambition and accelerating action."
As University College London professor of climatology Mark Maslin explained, the report "makes it clear that the Paris agreement was a game-changer" but also countries' greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction pledges are not in line with the 1.5°C target.
"The U.N. estimates that... we need to reduce global GHG emissions by 43% by 2030 and further by 60% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels and reach net-zero [carbon dioxide] emissions by 2050 globally," Maslin summarized. "This is a huge ask given that greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest level ever in 2022."
"All the technology exists to undergo the net-zero transformation but the huge increases in renewables, [electric vehicles], and batteries [have] to be even more rapid to make the huge cuts suggested by the U.N.—estimates are we need everything to happen five times faster," he added.
The UNFCCC publication was released in preparation for the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28)—scheduled for November and December in Dubai, United Arab Emirates—where the first global stocktake will conclude.
"This global stocktake report provides clear direction on how we can meet the expectations of the Paris agreement by taking decisive action in this critical decade," said COP28 President-Designate Sultan Al Jaber—whose selection for the summit post is controversial because he also heads the UAE's Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. "We must urgently disrupt business as usual and unite like never before to move from ambition to action and from rhetoric to real results."
The report also comes just ahead of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres' Climate Ambition Summit scheduled to begin on September 20 in New York City. In response, activists have planned the March to End Fossil Fuels on September 17.
Organizers of the NYC march are calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to stop federal approvals for new fossil fuel projects and repeal permits for "climate bombs" like the Willow project and the Mountain Valley Pipeline; phase out oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters; declare a climate emergency; and provide a just transition.
Advocacy groups supporting the march issued fresh demands for action on Friday in response to the UNFCCC publication.
"This report makes clear that President Biden is squandering precious time every second he fails to take bold action on fossil fuels," said the Center for Biological Diversity's Jean Su, who previously authored a document detailing how an emergency declaration would empower the administration to tackle the climate crisis. "Every day we're seeing and feeling the harms of fossil-fueled climate change from extreme heat to deadly wildfires and devastating floods."
"As leader of the world's largest oil and gas producer, Biden has more power than anyone to stop expanding the fossil fuels driving this deadly crisis," Su added. "Ahead of the U.N.'s Climate Ambition Summit, thousands of people will be in the streets of New York on September 17 for the March to End Fossil Fuels. This is the perfect opportunity for Biden to declare a climate emergency, use all his executive powers to phase out fossil fuels, and finally secure a legacy as a climate leader."
"We need the biggest players to use their power to avert climate chaos, and to flex their muscle to protect human life rather than protecting corporate polluters."
Greenpeace International policy coordinator Kaisa Kosonen on Friday called out governments across the globe, declaring that "our house is burning down and the people with the power to save us are still sipping coffee pretending it's not happening."
"No government can claim they didn't know how to fix the climate problem," she said. "They've been thrown a lifesaver again and again by scientists, and now we have this report. What the world is waiting for is action; leadership. We need the biggest players to use their power to avert climate chaos, and to flex their muscle to protect human life rather than protecting corporate polluters."
Looking toward COP28, Kosonen argued that "at this year's U.N. climate summit, governments must agree to end the use of oil, gas, and coal in a fast and fair way and make the polluters pay. Leaders can no longer smile and claim they support the Paris agreement and its 1.5°C warming limit, if they fail to give fossil fuels an end date and continue their expansion."
"The solutions are ready—renewables are now the cheapest power source—but we've got to push the fossil fuel industry out of the way," she stressed. "Fossil fuel corporations are holding us hostage, but their time's up."
The UNFCCC report and resulting calls for action follow a series of scientific findings throughout the week that also generated demands for a swift end to fossil fuels, including that Antarctica is warming more quickly than models project, this summer is the hottest on record, and last year greenhouse gas concentrations, global sea level, and ocean heat content all hit record highs.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Trade Rules Trump Climate': WTO Deals Blow to India's Solar Program
Providing local green jobs no match for US challenge using powerful trade rules
Feb 25, 2016
In an outcome described as an outrage and a blow for local green jobs, the World Trade Organization ruled Wednesday in favor of the United States in its challenge to India's rapidly growing solar energy program.
It marks "a step in the wrong direction, away from the climate progress that the global community committed to achieving in December's Paris climate agreement," according to Ilana Solomon, director of the Sierra Club's Responsible Trade Program.
The U.S. initiated its challenge to part of India's National Solar Mission in Feb. 2013. The problem, as the U.S. saw it, was part of India's National Solar Mission, requiring solar power developers to use solar cells and modules made in India rather than in the U.S. or another country. The WTO dispute settlement panel agreed with the U.S. that this locally-favoring requirement is "inconsistent" with and "not justified" by WTO rules.
India's solar mission also meant losses in profits for the United States. As the office of the U.S. trade representative stated following the ruling, "Since India enacted these domestic content requirements in 2011, U.S. solar exports to India have fallen by over 90 percent."
In addition, as Solomon and Ben Beachy, senior policy advisor with Sierra Club's Responsible Trade Program, write,
Though India argued that the program helps the country to meet its climate commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the WTO rejected that argument. Indeed, the ruling boldly states that domestic policies seen as violating WTO rules cannot be justified on the basis that they fulfill UNFCCC or other international climate commitments. In effect, the WTO has officially asserted that antiquated trade rules trump climate imperatives.
The ruling sparked a similar reaction from Bill Waren, senior trade analyst at Friends of the Earth. "The government of India reasonably provided some preferences for local solar energy producers to convert from a carbon economy to a green economy. The WTO decision, finding India's solar energy program a violation of international trade law, is an outrage. Trade law trumps the Paris climate accord," he stated.
For its part, the Obama administration welcomed the WTO decision as a "victory" and said it sent a warning shot.
"This is an important outcome, not just as it applies to this case, but for the message it sends to other countries considering discriminatory 'localization' policies," U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said in a statement.
Froman and environmental groups agree that the ruling is of particular importance in light of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, which President Obama is pushing Congress to approve.
"This win underscores not just how aggressive and successful the Obama Administration has been in terms of enforcing our current trade agreements, but also the resolve with which we will enforce the high standards negotiated in TPP, whether it's with regard to labor, intellectual property rights or the environment," Froman stated.
However, the Sierra Club says that the WTO decision should warn lawmakers to reject the TPP.
"Indeed," Beachy and Solomon write, "the text of the controversial deal replicates the rules that the WTO used against India's solar program today. While many in Congress oppose the TPP, we could see even more trade cases against clean energy initiatives if the deal were to pass. Congress should view this ruling as further confirmation that a vote against the TPP is a vote for green jobs and climate action."
The Calcutta Telegraph reports that India will likely appeal the ruling, which it has 60 days to do.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Halfway Through Paris... And a Very Long Way from World-Saving Deal
'I refuse to go home without an agreement that I can look my grandchildren in the eye and be proud of my contribution.'
Dec 05, 2015
The COP21 climate talks in Paris reached their halfway point on Saturday, but a deal that experts and global justice campaigners would consider acceptable remains a long way off as the fossil fuel industry and wealthy nations maintain their powerful grip on the direction of the international summit.
Given the troubled history of the UN-sponsored talks, most members of civil society headed to Paris acknowledging the two-week gathering was unlikely to yield the kind of agreement that either the science of global warming, or the movement for climate justice, would find acceptable.
"At the core of this failure are the obstinate negotiating positions of the US and other Global North governments who are bent on deregulating the global rules applying to them and advancing the financial needs of big business over the survival needs of people." --Tamar Lawrence-Samuel, Corporate Accountability International
However, in the wake of released draft texts by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the body governing the talks, environmental campaigners and rights groups are expressing contempt for the negative influence that powerful corporations and the fossil fuel industry--backed by the world's wealthiest and most polluting nations--are having on the progress towards reaching an ambitious and transformative deal.
"The enemies of a decent deal know they have one week to kill words in the text that commit the world to 'full decarbonization,'" said Martin Kaiser, head of the international climate negotiations for Greenpeace. "They know that would set us on a path towards 100% renewables by the middle of the century. Those regressive forces will fight instead for words that call for a 'low emission transformation,' knowing that such a watered down phrase will do almost nothing to keep fossil fuels in the ground."
At a speech inside the conference hall on Saturday, Tony de Brum, the Foreign Minister for the Marshall Islands, gave what was described as a "rousing speech," touching on the vulnerability of low-lying nations and the world's poor as he vowed to press for ambitious emissions targets as well as adequate levels of financial assistance to pay for the damage already triggered by greenhouse gases.
"We cannot leave Paris with a minimalist agreement, we must build a coalition of high ambition," declared de Brum. "I refuse to go home without an agreement that I can look my grandchildren in the eye and be proud of my contribution."
Also on Saturday morning, the UNFCCC released the latest draft text (pdf) of the chapter focused on national financial commitments designed to deal with the impacts of global warming in the decades to come. As Fiona Harvey reports for the Guardian:
The world's least developed countries face the greatest threat from climate change as they lack the technology to cut greenhouse gas emissions and their infrastructure is too fragile to cope with extreme weather. Under the proposed wording, developing countries with rapidly growing economies, such as China, would be included alongside established developed nations in being regarded as potential donors to poorer nations.
Rich countries argue that the wording merely reflects current reality, as at least eight governments classed as developing have already made "climate finance" contributions that will aid those poorer than them. China pledged $3bn (PS2bn) to the Green Climate Fund in September, and has made further pledges to help Africa.
But some developing countries see the attempt to bracket them with the rich as a threat. They think it could be used in the future to force them to become donors alongside countries such as the US and the EU.
Tamar Lawrence-Samuel, associate research director for the U.S.-based Corporate Accountability International, responded to the latest draft by describing it as an affront to the "historical responsibility of the Global North" and said it offers only more proof that rich nations remain the key blockers of the urgently needed transition away from dirty energy.
"Not only are we seeing an ambition deficit, but we are seeing a fundamental lack of justice." --Asad Rehman, Friends of the Earth International
Speaking on behalf of Friends of the Earth International, spokesperson Asad Rehman, said: "Rich, developed countries, led by the United States are negotiating in bad faith here in Paris - they are refusing even to discuss proposals brought by developing countries. The poorest, most vulnerable nations are being bullied behind closed doors and their issues are being railroaded out of this process. It is simply unacceptable that the USA won't live up to its legal and moral responsibilities. At the same time civil society observers, the eyes and ears of global citizens, are being shut out of negotiating rooms. Not only are we seeing an ambition deficit, but we are seeing a fundamental lack of justice."
"While the draft outcome released this morning for negotiation next week will likely be met with applause by Global North governments and their corporate board room backers," explained Lawrence-Samuel, "it fails to deliver meaningfully toward the systemic transition climate change requires. At the core of this failure are the obstinate negotiating positions of the US and other Global North governments who are bent on deregulating the global rules applying to them and advancing the financial needs of big business over the survival needs of people."
She continued by saying that even as the U.S. delegation and President Obama, who spent two days in Paris talking about climate earlier in the week, are framing their commitments at COP21 as grand and far-reaching, the contents of this latest draft betray such claims.
"The chasm between rhetoric and action continues to grow," she said. "Whether it's finance or technology, loss and damage or differentiation, the positions reflected in this text are heavily biased towards the US, Japan, EU and other Global North countries, and the emissions-intensive industries they represent."
Highlighting the widely-held sentiment that corporations and the individually powerful continue to have an outsized and negative influence when it comes to the UN-sponsored climate talks, activist filmmakers debuted a short film in Paris on Friday night, entitled "La Fete est Finie (The Party is Over)." The black-and-white short depicts a private gathering of powerful members of industry and government officials in shadow of the Eiffel Tower as they indulge and celebrate. Watch:
In a statement released alongside the film, Mark Donne, one of the co-directors, said: "As with any party, the skill is in knowing when to leave. For decades fossil fuel extracting trans-nationals and western governments have continued to dance and partake long after the bright lights of climate science evidence were switched on and the deafening music of denial had its plug pulled."
"The lack of progress in the halls is in complete contrast with the vibrancy and creativity of people on the streets and in alternative gatherings throughout Paris." --Lucy Cadena, Friends of the Earth International
Meanwhile, and despite evidence showing the deal reached in Paris will ultimately prove inadequate, Kaiser said Greenpeace remains "optimistic about the process" though "less so about the content," though indicated room remains for negotiators to prove campaigners wrong. "At this point in Copenhagen we were dealing with a 300-page text and a pervasive sense of despair," he said. "In Paris we're down to a slim 21 pages and the atmosphere remains constructive. But that doesn't guarantee a decent deal. Right now the oil-producing nations and the fossil fuel industry will be plotting how to crash these talks when ministers arrive next week."
And according to Lucy Cadena, a campaigner for Friends of the Earth International, it remains important to remember that what happens outside of the halls of power--whether in Paris or around the world--is ultimately more important than what happens inside conference centers and meeting rooms.
"It is still unclear whether the warm words and half promises we've heard this week will yet lead to firm commitments," Cadena said. "Will we really see a commitment to a more ambitious temperature threshold? There have been piecemeal pledges for finance for vulnerable countries to adapt, but nothing consistent or in line with rich nations' fairshare of effort. Nor is there clarity on support to enable the poorest to recover from unavoidable impacts of climate change. Those who grew rich through a dirty climate-changing system and addiction to carbon pollution are leaving poorer countries to foot the bill as if they carry equal responsibility."
She concluded, "The lack of progress in the halls is in complete contrast with the vibrancy and creativity of people on the streets and in alternative gatherings throughout Paris."
Keep ReadingShow Less
See More
Most Popular
To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good.
News & Opinion
Trending
Common Dreams, Inc. Founded 1997. Registered 501(c3) Non-Profit
Privacy Policy