Daily Archives: December 12, 2015

Ecocide, solutions, Politics, Activism, climate science

‘Historic’ Paris climate deal adopted

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Agreement criticized for imposing no sanctions on countries that fail to reduce emissions


reposted from CBC News, Dec 12, 2015

UPDATED

  • Countries adopt Paris climate deal
  • Pact would be legally binding, French foreign minister says
  • ‘Endeavour to limit’ global temperature rise to 1.5 C
  • $100B funding for developing countries by 2020

Nearly 200 nations adopted the first global pact to fight climate change on Saturday, calling on the world to collectively cut and then eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but imposing no sanctions on countries that don’t.

Loud applause erupted in the conference hall outside Paris after French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius gavelled the agreement Saturday. Some delegates started crying. Others embraced.

The countries had been negotiating the pact for four years after earlier attempts to reach such a deal failed.

Shortly after the deal was adopted, Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna tweeted: “History is made. For our children.”

U.S. President Barack Obama tweeted that approving this landmark deal is “huge” and touted American leadership on the issue.

The agreement, South African Environment Minister Edna Molewa said, “can map a turning point to a better and safer world.”

The deal now needs to be ratified by individual governments and would take effect in 2020.

It is the first pact to ask all countries to join the fight against global warming, representing a sea change in UN talks that previously required only wealthy nations to reduce their emissions.

‘We didn’t sleep very much’

Under the deal, countries will have to publish greenhouse gas reduction targets and revise them upward every five years, while striving to drive down their carbon output “as soon as possible.”

The final text of the agreement commits countries to keeping global warming “to well below 2 degrees C” and hopes to limit it to 1.5 C, with the goal of a carbon-neutral world sometime after 2050.

“It is my deep conviction that we have come up with an ambitious and balanced agreement,” Fabius said in introducing it Saturday morning at the closing session of the summit.

Laurent Fabius at climate change summit
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, centre, introduced the climate pact in Paris. He is flanked by French President François Hollande, left, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. (Stéphane Mahé/Reuters)

“We all worked a great deal. We didn’t sleep very much.”

The 31-page text, called the Paris Agreement, was distributed to countries for them to assess, then agreed to at a plenary session.

Fabius, flanked by French President François Hollande and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, called the pact “a historic turning point” and said it contained some key provisions. Those include terms making the accord legally binding, as well as the 1.5 C goal — below the 2 C standard scientists say is essential to limiting potentially catastrophic climate change.

France Climate Countdown
The slogan ‘NO PLAN B’ is projected on the Eiffel Tower at the COP21 conference near Paris. Thousands of activists gathered under the tower Saturday to urge further action to limit global warming. (Francois Mori/The Associated Press)

That was a key demand of developing countries ravaged by the effects of climate change and rising sea levels.

Another major debate has been over a promise that developed countries should provide $100 billion annually to help poorer states deal with the consequences of climate change. The text sets that figure as a floor by 2020.

Earlier in the day, Elizabeth May, leader of Canada’s Green Party, agreed with Fabius that the draft text was ambitious but balanced.

“Having it presented with Ban Ki-moon on one side of Laurent Fabius and the president of France, François Hollande, on the other side, very clearly they are saying, ‘This is the best we’re going to get, not just now, but probably ever. Grab it with both hands,'” May said in an interview.

“And then we start the work, which is substantial, to constantly push for greater levels of emission reductions than what we now have.”

The Green Party later tweeted its congratulations to May, McKenna and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Not far enough, critics say

Shortly after the tentative deal was introduced Saturday, thousands of protesters in Paris, under the close watch of riot police, held hands beneath the Eiffel Tower and denounced the pact as too weak to save the planet.

Danielle Lefait, a retired deaf student teacher, said she was protesting because she is afraid of the environmental risks of proposed shale gas extraction in her town of Arras in northern France. Other protesters were angry the accord didn’t do more to force governments to give up fossil fuels blamed for warming the planet.

Naomi Klein
Canadian environmentalist Naomi Klein says the pledges countries have made would fail to limit global warming to 2 C or less, let alone meet the more ambitious 1.5 C target. (Nahlah Ayed/CBC)

The pact doesn’t have any mechanism to punish countries that don’t or can’t contribute toward its emissions-reduction goals.

Negotiators from more than 190 countries were in Paris to create something that’s never been done before: an agreement for all countries to reduce man-made emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and help the poorest adapt to rising seas, fiercer weather and other impacts of global warming.

This accord marks the first time all countries are expected to pitch in — the previous emissions treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, only included rich countries.​ Canada signed on to Kyoto, but later backed out in 2011.

The Pembina Institute, a Canadian environmental think-tank, said Canada will only be able to meet the emissions targets under the new Paris Agreement if it brings in a national minimum standard for carbon pricing.

“On their own, provincial commitments will not ensure Canada does its fair share to reduce emissions consistent with the science of global warming,” Pembina’s federal policy director, Erin Flanagan, said in a statement.

One problem with the text’s aggressive temperature targets is that the pledges countries have made so far would fail to limit global warming to even 2 C or less in the long term, Canadian activist Naomi Klein said in an interview with CBC News.

Klein also took issue with a clause that rules out any liability for climate change.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said, “where countries are literally fighting for their very survival, and because of that desperation they’re being asked something that they really need a lot, which is their right to seek compensation later on.

“And I think Canada backing that position is really quite immoral.”

With files from CBC’s Kyle Bakx, The Associated Press and Reuters

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Politics, Activism, Fascism/Corporatism, Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein and Jeremy Corbyn: COP21 - Climate Emergency (Dispatch 5)

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reposted from Vice News, Dec 12, 2015

As the COP21 climate talks reach their final crucial stages, outside of the negotiation halls in Paris environmental NGOs, grassroots organizations, climate justice activists and trade unions from all over the world have been uniting to form a new global green movement.

One of its driving forces is Canadian social activist Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs The Climate. She has been speaking at activist meetings and talking to UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who before being elected committed to a 100 percent sustainable energy transition in the UK by 2030.

The last week of the COP21 has seen the opening of the climate action zone, a space for civil society to mobilize and prepare its final protest showdown at the end of the conference on December 12, now known as “D12”.

VICE News meets Naomi Klein and Jeremy Corbyn and finds out what this new international climate justice movement has in store for the end of the summit.

Watch “Police Clash With Protesters in Paris: COP21 - Climate Emergency (Dispatch 1)”

Watch “Climate Activism Under Attack: COP21 - Climate Emergency (Dispatch 2)”

Watch “Toxic Tours and Civil Disobedience: COP21 - Climate Emergency (Dispatch 3)”

Watch “Cop-Outs and Denial: COP21 - Climate Emergency (Dispatch 4)”

Read “With Protests Banned in Paris, Climate Activists Embrace Other Forms of Expression”

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Ecocide, Politics, Fascism/Corporatism, biodiversity, climate science

Grand promises of Paris climate deal undermined by squalid retrenchments

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COP21 UN climate change conference in Paris. Whatever happens now, we will not be viewed kindly by succeeding generations. Photograph: Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA

By George Monbiot, reposted from The Guardian, Dec 12, 2015

By comparison to what it could have been, it’s a miracle. By comparison to what it should have been, it’s a disaster.

Inside the narrow frame within which the talks have taken place, the draft agreement at the UN climate talks in Paris is a great success. The relief and self-congratulation with which the final text was greeted, acknowledges the failure at Copenhagen six years ago, where the negotiations ran wildly over time before collapsing. The Paris agreement is still awaiting formal adoption, but its aspirational limit of 1.5C of global warming, after the rejection of this demand for so many years, can be seen within this frame as a resounding victory. In this respect and others, the final text is stronger than most people anticipated.

Outside the frame it looks like something else. I doubt any of the negotiators believe that there will be no more than 1.5C of global warming as a result of these talks. As the preamble to the agreement acknowledges, even 2C, in view of the weak promises governments brought to Paris, is wildly ambitious. Though negotiated by some nations in good faith, the real outcomes are likely to commit us to levels of climate breakdown that will be dangerous to all and lethal to some. Our governments talk of not burdening future generations with debt. But they have just agreed to burden our successors with a far more dangerous legacy: the carbon dioxide produced by the continued burning of fossil fuels, and the long-running impacts this will exert on the global climate.

With 2C of warming, large parts of the world’s surface will become less habitable. The people of these regions are likely to face wilder extremes: worse droughts in some places, worse floods in others, greater storms and, potentially, grave impacts on food supply. Islands and coastal districts in many parts of the world are in danger of disappearing beneath the waves.

A combination of acidifying seas, coral death and Arctic melting means that entire marine food chains could collapse. On land, rainforests may retreat, rivers fail and deserts spread. Mass extinction is likely to be the hallmark of our era. This is what success, as defined by the cheering delegates, will look like.

And failure, even on their terms? Well that is plausible too. While earlier drafts specified dates and percentages, the final text aims only to “reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible”. Which could mean anything and nothing.

In fairness, the failure does not belong to the Paris talks, but to the whole process. A maximum of 1.5C, now an aspirational and unlikely target, was eminently achievable when the first UN climate change conference took place in Berlin in 1995. Two decades of procrastination, caused by lobbying – overt, covert and often downright sinister – by the fossil fuel lobby, coupled with the reluctance of governments to explain to their electorates that short-term thinking has long-term costs, ensure that the window of opportunity is now three-quarters shut. The talks in Paris are the best there have ever been. And that is a terrible indictment.

People dressed as polar bears demonstrate near the Eiffel Tower in Paris, during COP21. Photograph: Matt Dunham/AP

Progressive as the outcome is by comparison to all that has gone before, it leaves us with an almost comically lopsided agreement. While negotiations on almost all other global hazards seek to address both ends of the problem, the UN climate process has focused entirely on the consumption of fossil fuels, while ignoring their production.

In Paris the delegates have solemnly agreed to cut demand, but at home they seek to maximise supply. The UK government has even imposed a legal obligation upon itself, under the Infrastructure Act 2015, to “maximise economic recovery” of the UK’s oil and gas. Extracting fossil fuels is a hard fact. But the Paris agreement is full of soft facts: promises that can slip or unravel. Until governments undertake to keep fossil fuels in the ground, they will continue to undermine the agreement they have just made.

With Barack Obama in the White House and a dirigiste government overseeing the negotiations in Paris, this is as good as it is ever likely to get. No likely successor to the US president will show the same commitment. In countries like the UK, grand promises abroad are undermined by squalid retrenchments at home. Whatever happens now, we will not be viewed kindly by succeeding generations.

So yes, let the delegates congratulate themselves on a better agreement than might have been expected. And let them temper it with an apology to all those it will betray. SOURCE

 

Preventing Ecocide, Politics, Activism

Statement by Environmental Defence’s Executive Director Tim Gray on the tabling of an international agreement on climate change in Paris

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PRESS RELEASE from Environmental Defence, Dec 12, 2015

Paris, France – At last a historic international agreement on climate change has been finalized. Now it’s up to citizens and their governments to ensure a safe future, free from catastrophic climate impacts. And that means Canada has work to turn its strong words in Paris into actions at home.

The agreement sets essential goals for protecting our climate, such as striving to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, so that globally carbon pollution peaks (and then descends) as soon as possible.

While we are pleased an agreement has been reached, our work is far from over. There is a gap between the laudable goals in the Paris agreement and the actions needed to attain them.

Current pledges made by countries to reduce emissions are too weak to stay below the safe 1.5 degree warming limit. We are in great danger of being locked into dangerous climate change, as the Paris agreement has no requirement for these commitments to be reviewed or strengthened in the near future.

Over the next year, Canada must strengthen its own emission reduction commitment and work with other countries to create a plan to ensure governments will review and update their commitments to reduce carbon pollution and provide climate financing.

The financing package in the agreement remains inadequate in ensuring developing countries have the ability to adapt to the worst impacts of climate change, while following a cleaner path to development. Canada must work with other industrialized countries to ensure that at least $100 billion in climate assistance is delivered to poor, vulnerable countries by 2020, every year, with mechanisms to increase that annual commitment.

With the adoption of a final Paris climate change agreement, it is now up to citizens in Canada and around the world to mobilize, to demand faster and greater action on climate change.

The Canadian government needs to show that it is serious about tackling climate change at home by acting on its promises in the recent election and its commitment here in Paris to strive to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

That means developing a new federal climate framework in the next 90 days which establishes more ambitious measures than have been attempted by previous governments. Success requires an all-government approach to cut emissions reductions quickly, with a goal of decarbonising our economy by 2050.

Some of these measure should include:

  • Ensuring a high price on carbon emissions for all of Canada
  • Creating a new, strong, credible process to review all high-carbon energy projects, including a climate test
  • Establishing regulations to reduce carbon pollution from industry
  • Investing heavily in clean public transit, clean energy, and more efficient buildings
  • Developing national strategies to accelerate the shift to electric vehicles, enable energy efficiency, and attract clean energy investment

Our world is already transforming, with investments in clean power surpassing those in dirty fossil fuels, with the acceleration of the development and use of clean energy technologies, and with millions around the world mobilizing to say no to more dirty energy and yes to safe, prosperous communities, resilient ecosystems and a stable climate.

About ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENCE (environmentaldefence.ca): Environmental Defence is Canada’s most effective environmental action organization. We challenge, and inspire change in government, business and people to ensure a greener, healthier and prosperous life for all.

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Preventing Ecocide, Politics, climate science

World climate accord hailed as turning point from fossil fuels

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French President Francois Hollande (L) takes his seat at a plenary session with Foreign Affairs Minister Laurent Fabius (C), President-designate of COP21, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21) at Le Bourget, near Paris, France, December 12, 2015. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe

By Richard Valdmanis and Valerie Volcovici, reposted from REUTERS, Dec 12, 2015

PARIS (Reuters) - French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius presented a landmark global climate accord on Saturday, a “historic” measure for transforming the world’s fossil fuel-driven economy within decades and turn the tide on global warming.

At the tail end of the hottest year on record and after four years of fraught U.N. talks often pitting the interests of rich nations against poor, imperiled island states against rising economic powerhouses, Fabius urged officials from nearly 200 nations to support what he hopes will be a final draft.

“Our responsibility to history is immense,” Fabius told thousands of officials, including President Francois Hollande and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in the main hall of the conference venue on the outskirts of Paris.

“If we were to fail, how could we rebuild this hope?” he asked. “Our children would not understand or forgive us.”

Barring any last-minute objections as negotiators pore over the final text for the next few hours, they will reconvene at around 1545 local time (9.45 a.m. EST) to approve the agreement, a major breakthrough in global efforts to avert the potentially disastrous consequences of an overheated planet.

Calling it an “ambitious and balanced” agreement, Fabius said it would mark a “historic turning point” for the world. Hollande cautioned that the pact would not be “perfect for everyone”, urging delegates to see the common need.

“Faced with climate change our destinies are bound together,” he said.

In talks that lasted into the early morning, officials appeared to have resolved the final sticking points, and Fabius highlighted the key points: a more ambitious goal for limiting the rise in global temperatures to less than 2 degrees Celsius; a $100 billion a year floor for funding developing nations beyond 2020; and a five-year cycle for reviewing national pledges to take action on greenhouse gas emissions.

Prior to the session, China’s top negotiator Gao Feng said there “there is hope today” for a final pact, while Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony De Brum told Reuters: “I think we’re done here.”

A deal, if finalised, would be a powerful symbol to world citizens and a potent signal to investors - for the first time in over two decades, both rich and poor nations will agree to a common vision for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, and a roadmap for ending two centuries of fossil fuel dominance.

While some climate change activists and U.S. Republicans will likely find fault with the accord - either for failing to take sufficiently drastic action, or for overreacting to an uncertain threat - many of the estimated 40,000 officials and environmentalists who set up camp on the outskirts of Paris say they see it as a long overdue turning point.

Six years after the previous climate summit in Copenhagen ended in failure and acrimony, the Paris pact appears to have rebuilt much of the trust required for a concerted global effort to combat climate change, delegates say.

“Whereas we left Copenhagen scared of what comes next, we’ll leave Paris inspired to keep fighting,” said David Turnbull, Director at Oil Change International, a research and advocacy organization opposed to fossil fuel production.

NOT ENOUGH, OR TOO MUCH?

From the outset, critics have said the emerging deal had serious weaknesses, most prominently the fact that envisaged emissions cuts will not be enough to keep warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) over pre-industrial times, the level scientists say is needed to avert the worst effects of warming including severe droughts and rising sea levels.

Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the last major climate deal agreed in 1997, the Paris pact will also not be a legally binding treaty, something that would almost certainly fail to pass the U.S. Congress. Instead, it will be largely up to each nation to pursue greener growth in its own way, making good on detailed pledges submitted ahead of the two-week summit.

DESTINIES BOUND

After talks that extended into early morning, the draft text showed how officials had resolved the stickiest points. Hollande cautioned that the pact would not be “perfect for everyone”, urging delegates to see the common need while reviewing key compromises that are certain to leave some nations unsatisfied.

“Faced with climate change our destinies are bound together,” he said.

In a win for a broad coalition of “ambitious” nations, the agreement would set a tougher goal for limiting the rise in global temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius.

Nations would have to reach a peak in greenhouse emissions “as soon as possible” and achieve a balance between output of manmade greenhouse gases and absorption - by forests or the oceans - “by the second half of this century”.

“If agreed and implemented, this means bringing down greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero within a few decades. It is in line with the scientific evidence we presented,” said John Schellnhuber, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

It also requires rich nations to maintain a $100 billion a year funding pledge beyond 2020, and use that figure as a “floor” for further support agreed by 2025, providing greater financial security to developing nations as they wean themselves away from coal-fired power.

And most countries would review their domestic pledges for tackling greenhouse gas emissions every five years, though it makes an exception for those who have already committed to measures out to 2030, resolving a disagreement with China.

NOT ENOUGH, OR TOO MUCH?

While some climate change activists and U.S. Republicans will likely find fault with the accord - either for failing to take sufficiently drastic action, or for overreacting to an uncertain threat - many of the estimated 40,000 officials and environmentalists who set up camp on the outskirts of Paris say they see it as a long overdue turning point.

Six years after the previous climate summit in Copenhagen ended in failure and acrimony, the Paris pact appears to have rebuilt much of the trust required for a concerted global effort to combat climate change, delegates say.

“Whereas we left Copenhagen scared of what comes next, we’ll leave Paris inspired to keep fighting,” said David Turnbull, Director at Oil Change International, a research and advocacy organization opposed to fossil fuel production.

Leaders of vulnerable low-lying countries - who brought together more than 100 nations in a “high ambition coalition” at the talks, striving for the strongest possible language - have portrayed the Paris talks as the last chance to avoid the catastrophic consequences of rising temperatures.

Without joining together for immediate action, they had warned, greenhouse gas emissions would be certain to push the planet’s ecosystem beyond the 2C tipping point. They appeared to have carried the day, as Fabius said the text would seek to keep the rise to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius and if possible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees.

While scientists say national pledges thus far are still too little to prevent that happening, the agreement should set out a roadmap for steadily increasing or “ratcheting up” those measures in order to head off calamity.

President Xi Jinping has promised that carbon dioxide emissions from China’s rapidly developing economy will start falling from around 2030, and does not want to revisit the target.

(Reporting By Emmanuel Jarry, Bate Felix, Lesley Wroughton, Nina Chestney, Richard Valdmanis, Valerie Volcovici and David Stanway; Editing by Jonathan Leff and David Evans)

 

 

 

 

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Preventing Ecocide, Ecocide ALert, Ecocide, Politics, Activism, Fascism/Corporatism

Climate Justice Movement “Extremely Disappointed” in COP21 Draft’s “Failure to Step Up”

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Terming the COP21 climate change conference in Paris as “important”, a noted green economist today claimed that the summit’s failure would “dramatically increase” the risk of global environmental catastrophe

reposted from Democracy Now!, Dec 12, 2015

Talks at the U.N. climate summit in Paris have been extended into the weekend as representatives from nearly 200 nations work to finalize a global accord. A new draft text includes the voluntary target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels. Including the 1.5 degrees Celsius target meets a key demand of low-lying and vulnerable nations. But environmentalists and civil society have criticized its voluntary nature along with many other provisions, including a failure to address gender equity; the weakening of access to financial assistance for vulnerable nations; the omission of specific dates for carbon cuts; and the failure to address military carbon emissions. The U.S. military alone uses $20 billion of energy a year—more than any other single U.S. consumer. We examine what is in the latest draft text—and what has been left out—with a roundtable of women: Chee Yoke Ling, a legal adviser to the Third World Network based in Malaysia; Ruth Nyambura, a Kenyan political ecologist; and Kandi Mossett, an indigenous activist from North Dakota and an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network. “We want to get out of this sinking ship, but countries like the U.S. are holding the lifeboats,” Nyambura says.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re broadcasting live from the COP21 in Paris, France, where representatives of nearly 200 nations are working to finalize a global accord to prevent the most catastrophic impacts of climate change. The negotiations have been extended into the weekend. Officials released a 27-page draft text late Thursday. It still includes nearly 50 points of disagreement. The nonbinding text includes the target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which is 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels. That’s a key demand of low-lying and vulnerable nations.

But environmentalists and civil society have expressed concern that the target is voluntary and also about many other points in the text, including the weakening of access to financial assistance for vulnerable nations, the omission of specific dates for carbon cuts, and the failure to address military carbon emissions. The U.S. military alone uses $20 billion of energy a year—more than any other single U.S. consumer.

Well, to talk more about what’s in the latest draft text and what’s been left out, we’re joined by three guests. Chee Yoke Ling is with us, legal adviser to the Third World Network. She is based in Beijing. Kandi Mossett is an indigenous activist from North Dakota and an organizer with the Indigenous Environmental Network. And Ruth Nyambura also joins us, a Kenyan political ecologist.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Chee Yoke Ling. Tell us about this latest draft that is working towards the final document.

CHEE YOKE LING: We are, in the climate justice movement, extremely disappointed with this latest draft, because we are actually here to have a Paris agreement to step up the implementation of our climate actions. And what actually governs climate actions for the countries of the world in the United Nations is already a treaty that exists, so the United Nation Climate Change Convention is a treaty that’s been around for more than 20 years. And we are here in Paris trying to reach an agreement to actually step up implementation. So if we look at what countries have agreed to do more than 20 years ago, then for what we are calling today, they scale up action, this actually—a very important principle is historical responsibility, because the global warming we see today is the result of accumulated greenhouse gases. And scientists—this is a scientific point. I think we need to stress that. So that’s why the convention, the U.N. treaty, says we must have [inaudible] have to do more of the share of cutting emissions, and then developing countries avoid emissions as—you know, in the same developmental pathway, and do more—

AMY GOODMAN: Isn’t it a big deal that 1.5 degrees, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit—

CHEE YOKE LING: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —as we say in the United States—

CHEE YOKE LING: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: —has been agreed upon?

CHEE YOKE LING: There’s no agreement, actually, because we say that if we want to cut that, the question is: How do we share? How do we share the responsibility of doing the actions that will bring us to 1.5? Now, there’s been a lot of reporting about, you know, sure, many vulnerable countries, small island states, and even some of the bigger developing countries. They want strong action. But the 1.5 has to be in the context of actions that are fair, so that the rich and those who can do more should do their share, and then the poor should be helped to actually do their share. So what we see here, to get to the 1.5, where everybody is treated the same, where we see the rich countries, like the United States and the European countries or Japan, saying that “We will try to do the best, on a voluntary basis,” and they’re backing off from what they agreed to do 20 years ago. “We’re not cutting emissions at home,” in Europe or North America. “We’re not going to give money to help other countries do it.” So, 1.5 is a nice number, but how do you get to 1.5 in terms of real actions?

AMY GOODMAN: Ruth Nyambura, you are from Kenya, from eastern Africa, where President—well, President Obama’s family is from. Can you talk about your reaction to this—well, it’s the pre-final accord that we are just seeing now?

RUTH NYAMBURA: Well, I mean, the sentiment on the ground is basically, we seem to be on the Titanic, and all of us are sinking, and especially those of us from the Global South. We want to get out of this sinking ship, but can’t come out of it because the developed countries, led by the U.S., are holding the lifeboats. So we are stuck in this thing that’s going down.

It’s really—I mean, we really have to call it—it’s disgusting that we are—that we’re here. There’s no other way to call it. We have floods in India. We have drought in the last—the last five years. We’ve had drought every two, three years in eastern Horn of Africa. We are seeing the impact of the climate crisis, and not just with the dramatic—you know, the floods, the hurricanes and the typhoons—what’s happening to pastoralists, what’s happening to farmers on the ground, the unseen and less dramatic impacts of the climate crisis. And it’s really a shame that on a day that should be the last day of the negotiations, we are not there. We don’t even seem like we’re ever going to be there, to get commitments that actually reflect the lived realities of the people most impacted by the climate crisis and the consensus in the scientific community.

AMY GOODMAN: Women, in particular, how are they affected? And why are women affected any differently than any other person?

RUTH NYAMBURA: I mean, again, we go back to the gender—unfortunately, the gender-ascribed roles that women have in the society. So we have, for example, globally, 70 percent of food production is by women. In some parts, it’s 80 percent of food production is by women. Women are the majority of the food producers. Across the whole agricultural sector, they basically hold it down. We have the externalization of the costs of extractive industries. When you have pollution, when water is taken away from communities, goes to mining companies, goes to corporations, women have to spend even more time looking for water, you know, both because of patriarchy and because of the way the system has been organized. So, to have a text, one, that is—basically says nothing, with nothing around gender equality, that still proposes market solutions, that brought about the climate crisis—and again, knowing how the function of the market in the capitalist system that we are in, women are—benefit the least, if at all. Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: So what needs to be done? What are you calling for, Ruth?

RUTH NYAMBURA: What we need, an ambitious—one, we need a binding commitment. When you talk about 1.5, again, 1.5 for many of us is still a death knell. But if you’re talking about 1.5, we must have mechanisms that actually—not just stating 1.5 degrees, we must have mechanisms that work, mechanisms that talk about food security, agroecology, funding that boosts agroecology, funding that—you know, adaptation, transportation, you know, issues about water, issues about access to land and resources. That must be taken into account in the document. Without that, it’s an empty document for women all over the world, and especially women from the Global South.

AMY GOODMAN: Kandi Mossett, tell us where you’re from in North Dakota and then how indigenous people are addressed, the concerns of indigenous people in the text.

KANDI MOSSETT: I grew up in a small town called New Town on a reservation in North Dakota. I’m a Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara woman. And this whole entire past two weeks has just been very heartbreaking and hard to take for us. It’s been a step backwards in the wrong direction. We actually have a text now where we’re just referenced in the preamble, so it’s not legally binding.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you mean?

KANDI MOSSETT: When we talk about—

AMY GOODMAN: The preamble is not legally binding?

KANDI MOSSETT: Right. So, there’s an article. When there’s language in the article, that’s legally binding language. And what they’ve actually done is taking out reference to indigenous peoples’ rights from the article and putting it only into the preamble, which is not legally binding. The same for human rights, the same for food sovereignty. There’s just different things that have happened in the text that—intergenerational equity is also in the preamble, so a lot of the youth are very upset as to what’s happening. And I think it’s kind of a shame that we’ve—actually, at the 21st COP, more than a shame, it’s a crime that we’ve taken a step backwards by taking out the rights of indigenous peoples. SOURCE

Preventing Ecocide, Ecocide, Politics, Activism, Fascism/Corporatism, climate science

James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks ‘a fraud’

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The former Nasa scientist criticizes the talks, intended to reach a new global deal on cutting carbon emissions beyond 2020, as ‘no action, just promises’

‘Many of the conservatives know climate change is not a hoax,’ James Hansen says. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod for the Guardian

by Hugh Muir, reposted from The Guardian, Dec 12, 2015

Mere mention of the Paris climate talks is enough to make James Hansen grumpy. The former Nasa scientist, considered the father of global awareness of climate change, is a soft-spoken, almost diffident Iowan. But when he talks about the gathering of nearly 200 nations, his demeanor changes.

“It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bullshit for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”

The talks, intended to reach a new global deal on cutting carbon emissions beyond 2020, have spent much time and energy on two major issues: whether the world should aim to contain the temperature rise to 1.5C or 2C above preindustrial levels, and how much funding should be doled out by wealthy countries to developing nations that risk being swamped by rising seas and bashed by escalating extreme weather events.

But, according to Hansen, the international jamboree is pointless unless greenhouse gas emissions aren’t taxed across the board. He argues that only this will force down emissions quickly enough to avoid the worst ravages of climate change.

Hansen, 74, has just returned from Paris where he again called for a price to be placed on each tonne of carbon from major emitters (he’s suggested a “fee” – because “taxes scare people off” – of $15 a tonne that would rise $10 a year and bring in $600bn in the US alone). There aren’t many takers, even among “big green” as Hansen labels environment groups.

Hansen has been a nagging yet respected voice on climate change since he shot to prominence in the summer of 1988. The Nasa scientists, who had been analyzing changes in the Earth’s climate since the 1970s, told a congressional committee that something called the “greenhouse effect” where heat-trapped gases are released into the atmosphere was causing global warming with a 99% certainty.

A New York Times report of the 1988 testimony includes the radical suggestion that there should be a “sharp reduction in the burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide”, a plea familiar to those who have watched politicians who have traipsed up to the lectern or interviewer’s microphone in Paris over the past two weeks.

After that, things started to get a little difficult for Hansen. He claims the White House altered subsequent testimony, given in 1989, and that Nasa appointed a media overseer who vetted what he said to the press. They held practice press conferences where any suggestion that fossil fuels be reduced was considered political and unscientific, and therefore should not be uttered.

“Scientists are trained to be objective,” Hansen says. “I don’t think we should be prevented for talking about the the implications of science.” He retired from Nasa in 2013. “That was a source of friction. I held on longer than I wanted, by a year or two. I was in my 70s, it was time for someone else to take over. Now I feel a lot better.”

A man rides his bicycle on yellow paint poured on the street during a protest by activists from environmental group Greenpeace on the Champs-Elysee in Paris. Photograph: Christophe Ena/AP

From being possibly America’s most celebrated scientist, Hansen is now probably its most prominent climate activist. He’s been arrested several times in protests outside the White House over mining and the controversial Keystone pipeline extension.

He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia University. When he’s in New York, he lives near the campus, surrounded by books piled on groaning shelves. Hansen’s not slowing down – he’s involved in a climate lobbying group and still undertakes the sort of scientific endeavor which helps maintain his gravitas.

One particular paper, released in July, painted a particularly bleak future for just about anyone living near the coast. Hansen and 16 colleagues found that Earth’s huge ice sheets, such as those found in Greenland, are melting faster than expected, meaning that even the 2C warming limit is “highly dangerous”.

The sea level could soon be up to five meters higher than it is today by the latter part of this century, unless greenhouse gases aren’t radically slashed, the paper states. This would inundate many of the world’s cities, including London, New York, Miami and Shanghai.

“More than half of the world’s cities of the world are at risk,” Hansen says. “If you talk to glaciologists privately they will tell you they are very concerned we are locking in much more significant sea level rises than the ice sheet models are telling us.

“The economic cost of a business as usual approach to emissions is incalculable. It will become questionable whether global governance will break down. You’re talking about hundreds of million of climate refugees from places such as Pakistan and China. We just can’t let that happen. Civilization was set up and developed with a stable, constant coastline.”

The paper has yet to be fully peer reviewed and some of Hansen’s colleagues, including his protege at Nasa, Gavin Schmidt, have voiced their doubts whether sea level rise will be quite this bad, with the IPCC projecting up to a meter by 2100.

Brickbats are thrown in a bipartisan way. Hansen feels Obama, who has made climate change a legacy issue in his final year in office, has botched the opportunity to tackle the issue.

“We all foolishly had such high hopes for Obama, to articulate things, to be like Roosevelt and have fireside chats to explain to the public why we need to have a rising fee on carbon in order to move to clean energy,” he says. “But he’s not particularly good at that. He didn’t make it a priority and now it’s too late for him.”

Hansen is just as scathing of leading Republicans who have embraced climate science denialism to the chagrin of some party elders.

Leading presidential candidates Donald Trump, Marco Rubio and Ben Carson have all derided evidence that the world is warming due to human activity while Ted Cruz, another contender, has taken time out from his campaign to to sit on an inquiry into climate science that has heard testimony from a rightwing radio host who has no scientific background.

“It’s all embarrassing really,” Hansen says. “After a while you realise as a scientist that politicians don’t act rationally.

“Many of the conservatives know climate change is not a hoax. But those running for president are hamstrung by the fact they think they can’t get the nomination if they say this is an issue. They wouldn’t get money from the fossil fuel industry.”

There is a positive note to end on, however. Global emissions have somewhat stalled and Hansen believes China, the world’s largest emitter, will now step up to provide the leadership lacking from the US. A submerged Fifth Avenue and deadly heatwaves aren’t an inevitability.

“I think we will get there because China is rational,” Hansen says. “Their leaders are mostly trained in engineering and such things, they don’t deny climate change and they have a huge incentive, which is air pollution. It’s so bad in their cities they need to move to clean energies. They realise it’s not a hoax. But they will need co-operation.” SOURCE