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Climacide: Survival Rebranding

Climacide: Survival Rebranding

A 15-year old Swedish girl bitch slapped the world’s representatives at the recent climate conference in Poland. She stood before them and called them frauds and fakers, while they sat in limp silence. She said they’d had their chances to do something effective about the climate crisis, and they had failed. It was time for them to get out of the way and leave the solution to the next generation, whose future was at stake.

The delegates applauded lamely and resumed their assignment of crafting an intricate  rule book for implementing the earlier Paris climate accords, which were admittedly voluntary, unenforceable and insufficient to the magnitude of the crisis. The American contingent in Poland even staged an event glorifying the burning of more coal—but “clean” coal with some carbon capture to make such operations benign.

This scene repeats a familiar pattern now reduced to a ritual. Professed experts and interests gather to assess what has been done. They concede their efforts have been earnest but inadequate. Some among them, plus intruders, pitch a fit about how little has been accomplished. All pledge to do better—and then go home and continue doing much the same as before.

These rituals apparently have the endurance to continue while the seas rise into the conference halls, the forests burn down around them and the people are rioting in the surrounding streets.

The world began formally addressing the issue this way with the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988—IPCC. At that time global warming was becoming a common name for the looming disaster. But this wasn’t scientifically sound because the evidence showed an increase in hot and cold spikes, rains and droughts, storms and calms around a gradually rising average global temperature in pace with atmospheric carbon dioxide increases from human activities. And global warming sounded too hellishly fire and brimstone apocalyptic.

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Will the Paris Climate Talks Be Too Little and Too Late?

Will the Paris Climate Talks Be Too Little and Too Late?

At the upcoming U.N. climate conference, most of the world’s major nations will pledge to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But serious doubts remain as to whether these promised cuts will be nearly enough to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change.

It’s Paris or bust. Climate diplomats are preparing for a United Nations climate conference in the French capital in December that scientists say is probably the last realistic chance for the world to prevent global warming going beyond 2 degrees Celsius. Some kind of a deal will probably be done. But will it be one more diplomatic fudge or a real triumph for the climate?

In the run-up to Paris, governments have been asked to deliver pledges to cut emissions of the greenhouse gases known to cause climate change. The pledges, covering the period between 2020, when the agreement should enter into force, and 2030, are known asIntended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs in the U.N. jargon. 

Christiana Figueres

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Christiana Figueres, U.N. chief climate negotiator

Major nations including the United States, China, the European Union, and Russia have submitted their INDCs. But unlike the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which only set targets for industrialized nations, all countries are expected to make pledges before Paris.

Many of the pledges sound ambitious, but analysis suggest they fall far short of what is likely to be needed to prevent warming beyond 2 degrees C (3.6 F) later this century — a goal set by nations at the Copenhagen climate negotiations in 2009. “It is clear that if the Paris meeting locks in present climate commitments for 2030, holding warming below 2 degrees could essentially become infeasible,” Bill Hare of Climate Analytics, a think tank, said during preliminary negotiations held in Bonn, Germany, this month. 

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China Blocks Carbon Review Sought by U.S. at UN Talks – Bloomberg

China Blocks Carbon Review Sought by U.S. at UN Talks – Bloomberg.

China rejected scrutiny of efforts to limit carbon emissions, a key tool that the U.S. says is necessary as more than 190 countries work to devise a new deal to fight climate change.

Chinese negotiators sought yesterday at a climate conference in Lima, Peru to delete provisions in a draft text that would have paved the way for other countries and non-governmental organizations to submit questions about its carbon-reduction plans, according to environmental groups that are official observers to the talks. The carbon pledges are to be included in a global deal that would be sealed next year and start from 2020.

U.S. lead climate envoy Todd Stern this week told reporters in Washington that all national pledges should be subject to scrutiny by other countries, saying “the sunshine is intended to prod countries to be as ambitious as possible” in limiting carbon emissions. The U.S. and China last month jointly announced efforts they plan to make under a new climate deal that nations seek to reach next year.

“The spirit of constructive cooperation of the U.S.-China agreement seems to have come to a full stop,” Liz Gallagher, senior adviser to the policy analyst E3G said today in an interview in Lima, where two weeks of United Nations climate talks began on Monday.

Chinese negotiator Su Wei didn’t immediately reply to an e-mail seeking comment.

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Olduvai II: Exodus
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