Two Sets of Civil Society Reactions to Final Text of Paris Agreement
– Links to today’s official UN press conference videos –
Greenpeace, WWF, Oxfam: ‘We can work with the Agreement’
Friends of the Earth, Third World Network, International Trade Union Confederation: ‘Agreement is a Betrayal’
Breaking: Final Plenary to Vote on New Climate Agreement Delayed to 17:30 CET Saturday
Now that parties have had a chance to review the final text points of disagreement remain. Some changes will likely be made in the final plenary this evening. However these usually need to be agreed on beforehand in the informal sessions that are happening right now.
Tension mounts while it is clear nearly everyone senses the end of COP21 is very near.
Wide Range of Reactions to the new final text:
The Paris agreement is a historic turning point for the whole world. One of the most remarkable outcomes of the agreement is that its objective is to “pursue efforts to limit” global warming to 1.5C above preindustrial, while holding warming “well below 2C.
While the agreement is itself historic, the challenges ahead in achieving it will dominate the 21st-century. The agreement has been made at a time when national greenhouse gas emission reduction contributions for 2025 and 2030 together far exceed the levels needed to hold global warming well below 2C, let alone limit to 1.5C.”
Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics
“If agreed and implemented, this means bringing down greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero within a few decades.
John Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
There’s much in the text that has been diluted and polluted by the people who despoil our planet, but it contains a new imperative to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees. That single number, and the new goal of net zero emissions by the second half of this century, will cause consternation in the boardrooms of coal companies and the palaces of oil-exporting states.”
— Kumi Naidoo, International Director, Greenpeace
Rich countries have moved the goal posts so far that we are left with a sham of a deal in Paris. Through piecemeal pledges and bullying tactics, rich countries have pushed through a very bad deal
Sara Shaw, Friends of the Earth International climate justice and energy coordinator.
t’s a sad day for vulnerable people everywhere. An exclusion clause that robs the poor of their right to compensation.
Azeb Girmai, LDC Watch International
If agreed and implemented, this means bringing down greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero within a few decades. … CO2 emissions have to peak well before 2030…
John Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
“If agreed, this deal will represent a turning point in history, paving the way for the shift to 100% clean energy that the world wants and the planet needs. By marching in the streets, calling leaders and signing petitions, people everywhere created this moment, and now people everywhere will deliver on it to secure the future of humanity.
Emma Ruby-Sachs, Acting Executive Director, Avaaz
For the first time in history, the whole world has made a public commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and deal with the impacts of climate change
Mohamed Adow, Senior Climate Advisor, Christian Aid
“I think I will be able to present final text tomorrow,” he said.
Humans have enjoyed 10,000 years of climate stability, in which the global average temperature varied less than one degree C – even during the Little Ice Age.
This heating will be wildly uneven with the Arctic warming 2-3 times faster. In 1.5C world much of the far north will be 4.0C. Canada is already 1.6 to 1.8 C warmer today.
Large parts of Africa including the African Sahel, including the Horn of Africa, are very vulnerable to any increase in temperatures. Even with 1.5C large portions of the Arctic and Antarctic will continue to melt raising sea levels, albeit at a slower rate threatening the very existence of some small islands states.
Delay in making the shift to non-fossil fuel energy sources will be very costly. Waiting until 2020 to curb global emissions will cost twice as much compared with peaking emissions by 2015 various analysis have shown.
There are enormous benefits if global emissions decline before 2020. Failure to do so will mean we will need to use more nuclear, massive amounts of bioenergy, large-scale carbon capture and storage
- Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Switzerland’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science
National Governments Should Be Helping Green Cities
Cities are responsible for 70 per cent of global CO2 emissions but they can save the planet by greening one community at a time said Vancouver’s David Cadman at the close of the ICLEI World Congress 2015, the triennial sustainability summit of local governments in Seoul, South Korea.
“We can do it. We must do it,” Cadman, the retiring president of Local Governments for Sustainability, told some 1,500 delegates from nearly 1,000 cities and local governments in 96 countries on April 11.
The majority of climate actions and most plans to reduce CO2 emissions are happening at the city level, Cadman told DeSmog Canada in Seoul.
Vancouver and 50 other cities have committed to 100 per cent renewable energy and 500 more are part of ICLEI’s Cities Climate Registry that documents verifiable CO2 emission reduction actions and commitments that amounted to 2.8 billion tons a year in 2014.
Cadman, a former City of Vancouver councillor, has been president of ICLEI since 2006. It’s an international organization headquartered in Bonn, Germany, with 280 staff and 23 other offices scattered around the globe. ICLEI, which stands for International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, started 25 years ago in Toronto to help cities become more sustainable. It now goes by the more manageable name of “Local Governments for Sustainability,” but still uses the original acronym.
Canada’s federal and provincial governments were very strong supporters in the early days but the past decade has been very different.
Canada Chained to Fossil Fuel Sector
“We seem to be chained to the fossil energy industry in Canada and it’s pulling us down. Cities and organizations can hardly dare to speak out about this now,” he said.
Germany was only too happy to bring ICLEI to Bonn eight years ago and has been generous with its support, along with the European Union. Now the organization is experiencing what is being called an “Asian pivot,” with the mayor of Seoul, Park Won Soon, as the new president.
Park has helped Seoul to become one of the world’s leaders on sustainable development. With 11 million people and growing fast, Seoul will reduce its energy use and increase renewable generation including rolling out 40,000 solar panels to households by 2018 and 15,000 electric vehicles. By 2030, CO2 emissions will be cut 40 per cent.
“Action on climate will be by local governments no matter what national governments decide,” Park Won Soon told DeSmog Canada.
“We need to act quickly, we need to act energetically,” the mayor said.
China’s megacities are also joining ICLEI. At the congress, Hailong Li, deputy secretary general of the China Eco-city Council said the country will have 100 low-carbon eco-cities by 2017. That will drive down the costs of energy efficiency and renewable energy, Li said.
China also intends to become an expert on eco-construction and to market its expertise to the rest of the developing world.
By 2030 another 3.5 billion people will be living in cities so it is absolutely critical that the infrastructure be sustainable said Cadman who will continue to be active as special representative to the new ICLEI President.
Canadian cities could also do more and sooner if they had the support of provincial and federal governments, he said. That may be changing at the provincial level with growing support for various forms of carbon taxes that will help generate funds and financial incentives to reduce emissions.
“The provinces are doing the heavy-lifting on climate while the Harper government sits on the sidelines.”
Fossil fuels are in decline — divestment is taking off and investments are shifting to renewable energy. There’ll be no pipelines to the West Coast and no new investments in the oilsands, Cadman said.
Even in B.C., the hoped-for markets for LNG may not exist with China building gas pipelines to tap reserves in Iran and Russia, he said.
“Canada needs to move away from selling raw resources, but is any political party ready to go there?”
First published April 2015
The main issue in Copenhagen in 2009 was determining each country’s fair share of CO2 emission reductions cuts and by when. If a flag could be attached to every CO2 molecule humanity has put into the atmosphere over the last 150 years, about 70 percent would be the flags of wealthy countries: the U.S., United Kingdom, Germany and so on.
Those rich nations agreed to make some CO2 cuts by 2020 but they were mostly small and voluntary. In exchange poor countries were promised $100 billion a year by 2020.
How much has changed at COP 21?
#1 Most countries have filed their plans for emissions reductions but they aren’t big enough to keep temperatures below 2C, never mind 1.5C. There is agreement more cuts are needed but the big issue is when. Europe and small countries want to see another round of cuts every 5 years starting as soon as 2020. Other countries like India want longer time frames.
#2 Money has always been issue. In Copenhagen rich countries promised $100 billion a year by 2020 to help poor countries cope with climate impacts and to green their economies. The money was supposed to ramp up from about $10 billion a year in 2010. Instead it’s been a fight to get any funds. Now developing countries want guaranteed amounts from 2015 to 2020.
#3 Legally binding agreement. For the first time the US is saying it will agree to this for parts of an eventual Paris Climate Agreement. The US will not sign a legal-binding emission reduction target, Todd Stern, the chief negotiator said today.
First posted on Climate News Mosaic Live Blog available at Inter Press Service news
One of the very first side meetings outside of the negotiations today featured the World Bank, the leaders of Germany, Mexico, Chile, Canada and others calling for a global price on carbon. [Watch it here]The world simply cannot afford to continue polluting the atmosphere with carbon said World Bank President Jim Yong Kim.
“We need to drastically cut CO2 emissions… or we will push another 100 million people into poverty” Kim said.
Global price on carbon inevitable
Putting a price on carbon is now seen as an inevitable in the creation of a low carbon economy that will eventually take the world to zero CO2 emissions he said.
“The price of solar has fallen 50 per cent since Copenhagen,” said Keya Chatterjee of the US Climate Action Network.
There has also been huge growth in the numbers of climate activists and in public support for real action on climate over the past six years Chatterjee said in a press conference.
The only question now is how much has political will grown, she said.
A great deal of political will is needed to overcome the many remaining obstacles to a comprehensive, ambitious, and universal climate agreement. These obstacles include finance, equity, legal status of the agreement and so on will become clear over the next two weeks.
For now hope is also back after a six year absence.
First posted on Climate News Mosaic Live Blog
A historic climate change conference is taking place in Paris, France from November 30 to December 11th. World leaders from more than 195 nations will meet to work on a new international climate deal, with the aim of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.
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The Climate News Mosaic (CNM) is the award-winning collaboration of independent environmental journalists from Canada, the Philippines, Germany, Italy, Costa Rica, Brazil and many more. In 2014 CNM won the international HostWriter Prize for its collaborative coverage of the UN Climate Change Conference in Warsaw (COP 19). The live blog was hosted on nine news sites including the Inter Press News Service, Climate Home, Earth Journalism Network.
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Hopefully, on Earth Day today, high-level ministers from all countries are thinking about what they can bring to the table at a key set of meetings on climate change in early May.
This will be the first opportunity for governments to discuss their proposed climate action plans in light of the final Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last week.
That report warned that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning fossil fuels are still rising far too fast, even with more than 650 billion dollars invested in renewable energy in the last three years. However, over the same time period even more money was invested in getting more fossil fuels out of the ground.
The latter investment is keeping humanity and the planet locked onto a devastating path of a global temperature increase of four to five degrees C, the IPCC’s Working Group III report warned.
Scientists and economists say that unlocking ourselves from disaster will require a massive reduction in emissions – between 40 percent and 70 percent – by midcentury. This is can be readily accomplished without inventing any new technology and at a reasonably low cost, reducing global economic growth by a comparatively tiny 0.06 percent.
“It doesn’t cost the world to save the planet,” economist Professor Ottmar Edenhofer, who led the IPCC team, said at a press conference.
It does mean an end to investments in expanding fossil fuel infrastructure as the annual growth in CO2 emissions from burning oil, coal and gas must peak and decline in the next few years. The atmosphere already has 42 percent more CO2 than it did prior to 1800.
This extra CO2 is trapping more heat from the sun, which is heating up the oceans and land, creating the conditions that spawn super storms and extreme weather. And it will do so for the next 1,000 years since CO2 is a very durable molecule.
Current emissions are adding two percent more heat-trapping CO2 each year. That will push humanity’s ‘CO2 contribution’ to 50 percent four years from now.
“There is a clear message from science: To avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual,” Edenhofer said.
The IPCC’s first report released last September as part of its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) clearly stated once again that the climate is changing rapidly as a result of human activity and urgent action is needed.
This was followed last month with a strong confirmation that climate impacts are already occurring on every continent and throughout the world’s oceans. This second report warned that one of the major impacts will be declines in food production unless emissions begin to decline.
The fossil fuel sector, the richest in human history, appears to be ignoring the IPCC warnings.
Earlier this month, oil giant ExxonMobil issued a report to its shareholders saying it does not believe the world will curb CO2 emissions and plans to extract and sell all of its 25.2 billion barrels worth of oil and gas in its current reserves. And it will continue investments hunting down more barrels.
“All of ExxonMobil’s current hydrocarbon reserves will be needed, along with substantial future industry investments, to address global energy needs,” said William Colton, ExxonMobil’s vice president in a statement.
The IPCC agrees oil, gas and coal will still be used in future but there is a CO2 maximum to have a reasonable chance of staying below two degrees C. That fossil energy cap won’t be enough to meet global energy needs so Working Group III recommends shifting to large-scale bioenergy and biofuels, waste incineration, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage (CCS).
These energy sources are controversial and risky. Large-scale bioenergy and biofuels needs huge areas of land and vast quantities of water and will compete with food production.
Studies show ethanol results in more emissions than burning gasoline. Even making ethanol from the leftovers of harvested corn plants released seven percent more CO2 than gasoline while depleting the soil, a new study revealed in Nature Climate Change this week.
The IPCC acknowledges bioenergy and biofuels can increase emissions, destroy livelihoods and damage the environment, says Rachel Smolker of Biofuelwatch, an environmental NGO.
“It is a shame they put so much stock in something that would make things worse rather than better,” Smolker told IPS.
Given all this, what climate action plans are governments going to propose when they meet in Abu Dhabi on May 4 and 5th? This is an informal ‘put your cards on the table’ regarding a new set of commitments on emission reduction targets and action plans to be made public at the U.N. Climate Summit in September.
Current reduction targets will not avoid four degrees C, most experts agree.
In hopes of getting countries to increase their reduction targets, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon asked governments to bring new proposals to New York City in September. With the current U.N. Climate Change Convention meetings deadlocked on key issues, the New York Summit is intended to kick-start political momentum for an ambitious, global, legal climate treaty in 2015.
The May get-together titled the “Abu Dhabi Ascent” is the only meeting before the Summit where governments, and invited members of the private sector and civil society will come together to explore how to get ambitious action to reduce emissions.
The Abu Dhabi meeting will be a window into the future of humanity: ascent or descent?
first published as Charting a Course for Survival, or Oblivion?
Robert Kenner’s forthcoming documentary lifts the lid on the ‘professional deceivers’ manipulating US debate on climate change
OPENS MARCH 6 in US
By Stephen Leahy for the Guardian
Who remembers that climate change was a top priority early in George W Bush’s first term as US president?
Merchants of Doubt, a new documentary film released in US cinemas this week, reminds us that in June 2001 Bush and the Republican party were 100% committed to curbing carbon emissions causing global warming.
Six months later everything changed. The film shows Republican party leader John Boehner calling the idea of global warming “laughable”, said Merchants of Doubt director Robert Kenner.
Framing Climate Science as Attack on Personal Freedoms
With the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center occupying attention, Americans For Prosperity, a powerful, fossil-fuel lobby group founded by the billionaire Koch Brothers, launched a decade-long, multi-pronged campaign to sow doubt about the reality of climate change.
By equating the findings of climate scientists as an attack on personal freedoms, they cleverly shifted the focus away from science to political opinion. “Creating a focus point away from what is actually going on is how magicians pull off their tricks,” said Kenner who directed the Oscar-nominated documentary Food Inc.
The deception has worked well. Few Americans know 97% of scientists agree climate change is caused by human activity and is happening now.
Inspired by the 2010 book of the same name, Kenner’s film is about deception and profiles many of the charming and always smiling professional deceivers who work for the tobacco, chemical, pharmaceutical, and fossil fuel industries. The tobacco industry knowingly and successfully deceived the public for 50 years about the connection between smoking and cancer, the 1988 tobacco lawsuit settlement revealed.
In a pattern of manipulation clearly evident today in the manufactured ‘debate’ over climate change, the tobacco industry used media-friendly pseudo-experts, doctored ‘science’ studies and attacked the credibility of scientists or experts who said otherwise, Kenner said.
If you can sell tobacco you can sell anything
Peter Sparber, one the tobacco industry’s most successful deceivers, told Kenner that he could get the public to believe a garbage man knew more about science than prominent climate scientist James Hansen.
“If you can sell tobacco you can sell anything,” Sparber tells Kenner.
Selling confusion and doubt around a complex issue like climate change was far easier than selling tobacco. Nearly all of those well-paid climate misinformers have no science background and often clear ties to industry lobby groups and yet are treated as expert commentators on climate science by media. It’s not just Fox News. Serious news outlets like CNN and the New York Times are complicit by featuring misinformers in news articles and on discussion panels, he said.
The film also focuses on the many self-described “grassroots” organisations that are actually promoting specific corporate and political interests. These organisations are often aided by, and passionately supported by, ordinary citizens who believe they are fighting for personal freedoms and libertarian or conservative values.
Kenner is hoping audiences “will realise they’ve been lied to” and develop better “bullshit detectors”.
First published at the Guardian
Stephen Leahy, International Environmental Journalist 