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Global outrage as oil executive named head of UN climate talks

January 17, 2023

There is universal condemnation today on the breaking news that the United Arab Emirates has appointed a veteran oil industry insider to preside over the upcoming UN climate talks that will happen later this year in Dubai.

The news this morning that Sultan al-Jaber, the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil, will be the new chair of the climate talks is a new low for the UN climate process.

The COP’s credibility was already battered by recent events in Egypt, with accusations of greenwashing, undue corporate influence of fossil fuel lobbyists, and attacks and intimidation of climate activists by the host nation.

The announcement ironically came the day after the journal Nature published an editorial saying that: “UN climate conferences are too beholden to oil and gas interests. Like-minded nations must come together to keep climate hopes alive.”

But the appointment of Al-Jaber, who is described as a “veteran technocrat” seems to be the final straw for many climate activists and experts.

The polluting oil-pumping fox has literally taken over the hen house. As Aljazeera points out this morning: Al-Jaber’s firm “pumps some 4 million barrels of crude a day and hopes to expand to 5 million daily, generating more of the heat-trapping carbon dioxide that the UN annual climate negotiations aim to limit.”

Tasneem Essop, the executive director of Climate Action Network International, told the Guardian that if Al-Jaber, “does not step down as CEO, it will be tantamount to a full-scale capture of the UN climate talks by a petrostate national oil company and its associated fossil fuel lobbyists.”

She added: “As civil society we [will] demand that Al Jaber does the right thing and either stand aside or step down.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Upcoming UN Climate Talks in Glasgow Are a Make-or-Break Moment

October 5, 2021

This image provided by NASA shows Hurricane Florence from the International Space Station on September 12, 2018. | Photo by NASA via AP

The Upcoming UN Climate Talks in Glasgow Are a Make-or-Break Moment

Failure to halt greenhouse gas emissions is not an option—though it’s frighteningly likely

In early November, government leaders from around the world will meet in Glasgow, Scotland, for the latest round of United Nations–sponsored climate change negotiations. This year’s climate summit—COP26, in UN-speak—will be the most important since the 2015 talks in Paris, and this will be true however the meeting unfolds. If Glasgow is a “success,” this will be taken as a sign that our faltering international institutions might actually, if just barely, be able to spur the planetary mobilization we now desperately need. If it’s a “failure,” well, no such luck—it will become even more difficult to imagine cooperative planetary action, at scale and in time to avoid a truly catastrophic shift in the climate system.

How will we tell if Glasgow is a success? This is a tough question, one that involves judgments about both the geophysical realities of a destabilized Earth and the “realities” of our political systems, which are clearly not up to the challenge. The storms and the firestorms are looming large, and so too is the catastrophe of “vaccine apartheid,” which under Boris Johnson’s government has queued up a summit that does not promise to be either safe or inclusive. Even in the best case, the Glasgow COP is not going to yield anything like a world historic breakthrough. Given that a breakthrough is exactly what we need, how can we ever hope to judge the UN talks as even a measured success? By attending to key details. Keep in mind that, six years after Paris, plenty of people in the climate movement still can’t say “Paris” without saying “failure,” and this despite the obvious fact that, had the Paris Agreement not been completed before Donald Trump’s election, we would now be in even more terrifying straits.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sport, Fashion, and Tourism: Corporate Greenwash’s New Frontiers at the UN Climate Talks

December 12, 2018

Sport, Fashion, and Tourism: Corporate Greenwash’s New Frontiers at the UN Climate Talks

What do Adidas, Hilton hotels, and the World Surfing League all have in common?

They’re all climate champions, apparently.

They also have a lot of customers and fans. Much more than most climate activists – just take a look at their Twitter followings – which could explain why this year’s annual UN climate talks welcomed them with open arms.

But are the industries serious about addressing the problem, or are they simply following a greenwash playbook rolled out by the fossil fuel industry each year at the talks?

Fanbase

“With its global reach, universal appeal and the power to inspire and influence millions of people around the globe, sport is uniquely placed to drive global climate action and encourage crowds to join in”, International Olympic Committee member, former Olympic bobsledder, and Prince of Monaco, Prince Albert II, told the conference.

“As countries here in Katowice prepare to turn their climate commitments into reality, we stand ready to leverage the power of sport to support their efforts”, he said. Mainly through making sportspeople ambassadors for climate change, and trying to offset some of the many, many flights major athletes and clubs take.

The sports industry isn’t alone at stepping up to the plate in the former coal town of Katowice, where this year’s talks are being held.

Climate change is “a risk and challenge we take seriously”, Daniella Foster, Hilton’s senior director of Global Corporate Responsibility told a side event. That’s why the hotel chain is looking at ways to “gamify” the “guest engagement piece” of its sustainability strategy – developing an app to help users save energy when they stay. The company has also pledged to cut its environmental footprint in half by 2030.

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People Act Where US Fails On Climate

November 14, 2017

People Act Where US Fails On Climate

The United States is experiencing a wide range of climate impacts from major hurricanes in the South to unprecedented numbers of wildfires in the West to crop-destroying drought in the Mid-West. In October, the General Accounting Office reported that the US has spent over $350 billion in the last decade on disaster relief and crop insurance, not counting this year’s hurricanes. These costs will continue and rise.

We are past the time to make a major commitment to the transformation we need to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis. Imagine the benefits that such a commitment would have in creating a cleaner environment, better health and more jobs and, if structured in a way that is democratized and benefits the public, in ending environmental racism and economic injustice.

Climate talks in Germany

The 23rd session of climate talks is taking place right now in Bonn, Germany. The United States formally withdrew from its commitment to the Paris climate treaty, but delegations of people from the US are in attendance to show their commitment to addressing the climate crisis. A group of organizations, such as 350.org and Indigenous Environmental Network, presented their climate platform as “the people’s delegation.” They are calling for a just transition to a fossil-free future and an end to market schemes to offset carbon use.

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Agreement in Paris Paves Road For The End of Fossil Fuels

December 12, 2015

Agreement in Paris Paves Road For The End of Fossil Fuels

paris climate conference cop21

After two weeks of negotiations here in the airport hangars of Le Bourget, 195 parties are expected to sign a global pact that will curb global warming pollution and rapidly escalate the growth of the clean energy solutions the world needs.

The consensus here is that the Paris deal on the table is a good one. Could it be better? Of course. But this deal is about as good as it is going to get from a consensus process involving 195 countries.

The reduction targets in the plan are in line with what scientists say needs to happen, and most importantly this deal strikes a balance between what has to happen to avoid the most calamitous impacts of climate change, with the realties faced by developing nations that do not have the resources to go it alone in reducing fossil fuel consumption.

On a personal note, having now been involved in this UN negotiating process in various capacities for close to a decade, I have to say that this is truly an historic day for humanity.

It has been a very long road that started long before these talks here in Paris.

The Long History of Climate Negotiations

While this official UN process began 21 years ago, it was in 1988 when a panel of scientists was struck called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), bringing together everything we knew about climate change in a series of papers that would serve as the justification for a global treaty on greenhouse gas emissions. Over the coming years, the IPCC would issue reports on the state of climate science that grew more certain in its conclusions and more dire in it predictions.

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COP21: Canada’s new goal for limiting global warming ‘perhaps a dream’

December 11, 2015

COP21: Canada’s new goal for limiting global warming ‘perhaps a dream’

Target ambitious but not impossible, scientists say

Canada is currently committed to reducing emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, which is 'nowhere near strong enough' to stay below the country's new stated target, an environmental scientist says.

Canada is currently committed to reducing emissions 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, which is ‘nowhere near strong enough’ to stay below the country’s new stated target, an environmental scientist says. (CBC)

This story is part of CBC News special coverage of climate change issues in connection with the United Nations climate change conference (COP21) being held in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11.

Canada’s new Liberal government has upped the ante on its promises to help slow global warming, joining other countries at the Paris climate talks that say a previously agreed upon global target falls short of protecting everyone’s interests.

Canada supports a long-term goal of limiting rising average temperatures to within 1.5 C of pre-industrial levels, although 2 C remains the official target.

The 1.5 C goal is ambitious, scientists say, but not impossible. Success requires immediate action from all governments, including Canada’s, and enough buy-in from citizens to spark some big changes.

‘Train’s almost left the station’

A half-degree change in the target may not seem like much, but scientists say it means the world’s average emissions would have to decline more sharply, over less time.

“1.5 degrees is a hope — perhaps a dream,” says Rob Jackson, an environmental scientist at Stanford University in California. “As a practical matter, the train’s almost left the station.”

‘That level of commitment is nowhere near strong enough.’– Rob Jackson, environmental scientist at Stanford University

If global carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase by two per cent each year, the world’s average temperature could be 2 C hotter within 20 years and 3 C hotter within 30 years, according to a paper Jackson co-authored and published this summer.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will Paris Conference Finally Achieve Real Action on Climate?

December 2, 2015

Will Paris Conference Finally Achieve Real Action on Climate?

The emission pledges from the world’s nations still fall short of the goal for limiting global warming. But as negotiators convene in Paris this week, there is cautious optimism that a significant international agreement on climate can be reached.

Six years after the last negotiations crashed so spectacularly in Copenhagen, climate delegates assemble in Paris this week to fix the world’s atmosphere. This time, despite the high security following the recent terrorist attacks in the French capital, they will meet in a better mood.

That’s because, in the preceding months, more than 150 nations have put pledges for future emissions on the table for the decade between 2020 and

Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images

French foreign minister Laurent Fabius (right) and environment minister Segolene Royal at a preliminary event at the COP 21 climate summit in Paris.

2030. And the world’s biggest two emitters of heat-trapping greenhouse gases — the U.S. and China — are in harmony after a bilateral agreement in Washington last year.

But if the diplomats enter the home stretch more optimistic than in Copenhagen, climate analysts warn that the national “contributions” on offer still don’t meet the negotiators’ self-declared task of capping global warming at two degrees Celsius. About 2.7 degrees is the most optimistic guess of the long-term outcome of the pledges. A victory for diplomacy should not be confused with a victory for the climate.

So, is the glass half full or half empty?

On the downside, time is running out to halt the continuing accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This year, the world is a record one degree warmer than pre-industrial levels — exactly halfway to the two-degree ceiling. The much discussed warming hiatus of the past decade is over.

A strong agreement on climate in Paris would drive change forward.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Near Boiling Point on Global Warming

December 2, 2015

Near Boiling Point on Global Warming

Rising global temperatures – if they exceed 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels – threaten to unleash havoc across the planet, including mass dislocations of desperate people that will make the current flood of Syrian refugees look like a tiny warm-up, writes Nat Parry.

With more than 40,000 negotiators from 196 governments descending on Paris this week to negotiate a comprehensive accord to tackle climate change, it is hard to imagine that they could possibly reach an agreement that will satisfy everybody.

The interests that each country brings to the table are so complex and diverse – especially when it comes to the touchy subjects of climate reparations and ensuring effective enforcement mechanisms for any sort of “binding” deal on how to actually reduce carbon emissions to safe levels – it is inconceivable that everyone (or anyone) will feel content at the end of these marathon negotiations in two weeks.

This is likely why the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, a Costa Rican diplomat named Christiana Figueres, has for months been lowering expectations for the outcome of the summit.

While the goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) has long been deemed necessary to avoid the most serious effects of climate change – a future of drowned cities, desertifying croplands, and collapsing ecosystems – Figueres acknowledges that the negotiations, based on the declared “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs) of each country at the table, will probably not result in reaching that 2-degree goal.

“I’ve already warned people in the press,” she said this summer. “If anyone comes to Paris and has a Eureka moment — ‘Oh, my God, the INDCs do not take us to 2 degrees!’ — I will chop the head off whoever publishes that. Because I’ve been saying this for a year and a half.”

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Eyes down: how setting our sights on soil could help save the climate

December 1, 2015

Eyes down: how setting our sights on soil could help save the climate

The world’s soils store four times more carbon than its plants.

The world’s soils could be a key ally in the fight to limit global warming to 2℃, thanks to their ability to store carbon and keep greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

France’s agriculture minister Stéphane Le Foll has founded an ambitious international research program, called “4 pour mille” (“4 per 1000”), which aims to boost the amount of carbon-containing organic matter in the world’s soils by 0.4% each year.

The program was launched officially today at the United Nations climate summit in Paris, with the hope to sign up as many nations as possible.

How much carbon do soils store? A lot. At about 2.4 trillion tonnes of carbon, soil is the largest terrestrial carbon pool, and the top 2 metres of the planet’s soils hold four times as much carbon as all the world’s plants. Carbon stored in soil can also stay there for a very long time relative to carbon in plants.

Thanks to recently published maps of global soil carbon stocks, we can work out how much extra carbon needs to be stored in soils (and where) in order to meet the target.

The size of the task

There are roughly 149 million square kilometres of land in the world, so if all the world’s soil carbon were dispersed evenly there would be 161 tonnes per hectare. Hitting the 0.4% target would mean increasing soil carbon stocks by 0.6 tonnes (600 kg) of carbon per hectare per year, on average.

But of course, soils around the world vary widely in carbon storage – tropical peat soils, for example, hold about 4,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare, whereas sandy soils in arid regions may only hold 80 tonnes per hectare. The type of above-ground vegetation and how quickly the soil microbes use the carbon can also affect the amount of storage. Generally speaking, only a quarter of organic matter added to soil ends up being stored as carbon in the long term.

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France Arrests 24 Climate Activists Using New “State Of Emergency” Laws, As Clashes Break Out In Paris – Live Feed

November 29, 2015

France Arrests 24 Climate Activists Using New “State Of Emergency” Laws, As Clashes Break Out In Paris – Live Feed

As Intellihub’s Shepard Ambellas writes, one-hundred and fifty heads of government, a.k.a. the elite, are gathering over the course of the next few weeks for a massive climate summit that’s anticipated to attract and indoctrinate over 40,000 visitors from around the globe. The summit, dubbed COP21, is sponsored by the United Nations (UN) and will reportedly focus on combating climate change. However it’s doubtful that geoengineering, which ironically is mostly to blame for current climate patterns, will even be a topic of interest to scheduled speakers. To boot any chance of that information making it out to the general public is limited as 24 activists have already been placed under house arrest.”

He further observes that “emergency powers” declared in the wake of the recent Paris attacks – in the name of terrorism – and adopted virtually overnight, were extended for a period of up to 90-days by the country’s leadership allowing for such activists to be jailed in advance of the summit or at anytime within period.

France 24 confirms the “pre-crime” arrests, writing that twenty-four environmental activists have been placed under house arrest ahead of the Paris climate summit, using France’s state of emergency laws. Two of them slammed an attack on civil liberties. The order ends on December 12, the day the Paris climate summit draws to a close.

French security forces have been on edge since Islamist gunmen killed 130 people in a deadly rampage across Paris on November 13, in the country’s worst ever terrorist attacks.

The ensuing state of emergency, declared by President François Hollande and extended by lawmakers for three months, has given police sweeping powers to search homes, handcuff residents and place people under house arrest, without judicial oversight.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Are We Already in Abrupt Climate Change?

September 11, 2015

Are We Already in Abrupt Climate Change?

In this week’s Radio Ecoshock, we cover global climate news, from the Syrian refugees to signs of an abrupt climate shift, with scientist Paul Beckwith. Plus I’ve got a few tidbits of news they just won’t tell you, and my new song aimed to promote activism for the Paris climate talks in late November this year.I’m Alex Smith, let’s go.Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality or Lo-FiOr listen right now on Soundcloud!(image courtesy of Milint Earth Day)CLIMATE NEWS ROUNDUP WITH PAUL BECKWITHOver the summer in the Northern Hemisphere, climate change put in an extreme appearance all over the world. It looks like 2015 will be the hottest year ever, another record-setting year in a string of hot years. Sooner or later, our civilization will begin to crack under the strain. Our next guest suggests a climate shift could be sooner than most people expect.It’s time for our climate roundup with climate scientist, and regular Radio Ecoshock guest, Paul Beckwith, from the University of Ottawa.

Climate change is behind one of the biggest stories of our times, the outpouring of refugees from the Middle East. Let me just read one paragraph from a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences March 2nd, 2015. The title is:“Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought”. The lead author was Colin Kelly.

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Is there a link between climate change and terrorism?

May 27, 2015

Is there a link between climate change and terrorism?

U.S. president says yes, but some climate analysts not so sure

Barack Obama has spent considerable time in recent months publicly explaining his positions on both climate change and violent extremism.

But in a Coast Guard commencement address last week, the U.S. president deliberately combined the two, saying that climate change “constitutes a serious threat to global security.”

Security analysts say the idea has been percolating in Western military circles for the past few years, but there is still skepticism about a direct link.

Francesca de Châtel, an Amsterdam-based researcher with an expertise in water issues in the Arab world, says that while issues such as climate change and terrorism are real, “bundling them all together” is problematic.

“Climate change implies a lot of unknowns, and then if you add to that conflict, which also implies unknown outcomes, it just creates an air of uncertainty and fear,” she says.

Stage-setting for climate talks

Still, for Obama, “climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country,” he told over 200 graduating Coast Guard cadets in Connecticut.

U.S. President Barack Obama used a recent commencement address for Coast Guard graduates to talk about the link between climate change and regional conflicts. (AP file photo)

The same day as Obama’s speech, the White House released a paper called “The National Security Implications of a Changing Climate.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Lima climate summit extended as poor countries demand more from rich | Environment | The Guardian

December 13, 2014

Lima climate summit extended as poor countries demand more from rich | Environment | The Guardian.

Climate talks in Lima ran into extra time amid rising frustration from developing countries at the “ridiculously low” commitments from rich countries to help pay for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

The talks – originally scheduled to wrap up at 12pm after 10 days – are now expected to run well into Saturday , as negotiators huddle over a new draft text many glimpsed for the first time only morning.

The Lima negotiations began on a buoyant note after the US, China and the EU came forward with new commitments to cut carbon pollution. But they were soon brought back down to earth over the perennial divide between rich and poor countries in the negotiations: how should countries share the burden for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and who should pay?

The talks were designed to draft a blueprint for a global deal to fight climate change, due to be adopted in Paris late next year. But developing countries argued that before signing on they needed to see greater commitments that the industrialised countries would keep to their end of a bargain to provide the money needed to fight climate change. After 10 days of talks, developing countries argued that those assurances were not strong enough.

By midweek, a little over $10bn had been raised for a green climate fund, intended to help poor countries invest in clean energy technology. That was below the initial target of $15bn and many of those funds will be distributed over several years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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