So what’s been happening with the climate talks?
With the hottest year on record 2010… we are somewhat warm to what’s been happening.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, catastrophic storms, fires, floods, freak out climate cycles, monsoons out of season and snow out of cycle… what is the Earth trying to tell us?
What Nature knows that we don’t?
Why can’t we all agree to get along with the planet?
From Cancun to Durban there is a hike to be sure, but we’ll go there.
Why?
Is there a deal on sight?
Our population is to be 7 billion this year and we are all living longer…
Talk about resource strains.
But we can surely make it.
Or not?
Are we doomed to a failure of nerves and a lack of resolve?
Because with business as usual we won’t make it. Sorry to break the news to you.
But we decimate other species at an alarming rate and now the bees are going away too.
Surely our turn is coming up in the Darwinian waiting room of the extinction office.
With our lovely yellow bees gone… we’ll be left to fend for our selves.
Because who is gonna pollinate our edible plant species?
What about our crops?
What of the trees that suck down CO2?
Even our funeral flowers have to be pollinated somehow to come into being…
Who is gonna do this humongous job if the bees are gone?
Are we warming the planet, killing the beneficial species and in the process destroying our lifeline by killing off our agriculture beyond the point of no return?
Will we be unable to feed ourselves? And is that a smart solution for the obesity epidemic?
Not much has been said or written about the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since the flurry of post-Cancun commentary. We at the Environmental Parliament held a few meetings in London afterwards about Cancun and the future of the UNFCCC but nothing else came of it.
In the US, the President Obama’s leadership and the Democratic party got a “shellacking,” at the midterm elections. And some eager beaver, agenda bearing insiders of the Beltway, have blamed the magnitude of the Democrats’ defeat on their support for the failed climate bill.
Bullshit.
But perhaps falling victim and in response to this conventional ”manufactured” wisdom, the president has virtually removed “climate” from his vocabulary. That likely make it even more politically difficult for the US to be an active participant in the climate talks.
At the UN, Secretary General Ban Ki Moon started distancing himself when he reportedly decided to end his personal involvement with the international climate negotiations.
Robert Orr — assistant secretary general for strategic planning and key adviser to UN, SG Ban Ki Moon — pointedly told the Guardian that “it is very evident that there will not be a single grand deal at any point in the near future.”
With that in mind, he said: ”Ban will have to tack back and forth between the multilateral negotiating process and national realities on the ground.”
But as we experience now in Japan, Nature waits for nobody and no one. No matter what the reasons for inactivity, we’ll pay the price…
And as NASA released new data showing conclusively that 2010 was the hottest year on record, we have been warned…
Global surface temperatures in 2010 tied 2005 as the warmest on record, according to an analysis released Wednesday by researchers at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York.
The two years differed by less than 0.018 degrees Fahrenheit. The difference is smaller than the uncertainty in comparing the temperatures of recent years, putting them into a statistical tie. In the new analysis, the next warmest years are 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007 and 2009, which are statistically tied for third warmest year. The GISS records begin in 1880.
The analysis found 2010 approximately 1.34°F warmer than the average global surface temperature from 1951 to 1980. To measure climate change, scientists look at long-term trends. The temperature trend, including data from 2010, shows the climate has warmed by approximately 0.36°F per decade since the late 1970s.
“If the warming trend continues, as is expected, if greenhouse gases continue to increase, the 2010 record will not stand for long,” said James Hansen, the director of GISS.
From NASA:
Now, it would appear that legislation to combat climate change in the world’s second largest emitter –and by historic levels, by far its biggest emitter– is hopeless stalled. You know how a series of blunders killed climate change legislation in the US Senate and with the climate deniers taking over Congress the hope is long in the tooth.
But–all hope is not lost. It would appear that the executive branch is trying to take things into its own hands and use its regulatory powers to combat carbon emissions and other harmful activities. For example, just today the Environmental Protection Agency vetoed what would have been the largest coal strip mining operation in the country. In return the Republicans in Congress want to strip EPA from it’s powers to control CO2 and it’s budget rendering it unable to operate…
So it becomes evident that what we really need is comprehensive climate change legislation in the United States, but better yet comprehensive agreements globally and a framework of multulater institutions working to that end.
The road between a binding Kyoto successor agreement and where the negotiations are now is really long. Granted we have obstacles to overcome, but there are a few stops along the way that may give us the chance to move even this slow and dysfunctional UN process in that direction. The first UNFCCC meeting since Cancun is planned for April 3 in Bangkok, Thailand. That is where senior government negotiators will meet to hammer out disputes and then again make a session planned for June in Bonn, before environmental ministers travel to Durban SA for a new round of COP at the end of 2011.
To add the necessary sense of urgency to those who will still listen… the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that out of some 100 crop species which provide 90% of food worldwide, 71 of these are bee-pollinated. In Europe alone, 84% of the 264 crop species are animal pollinated and 4,000 vegetable varieties exist thanks to pollination by bees. Bee colonies have been collapsing in many parts of the globe, and the famous report Global Bee Colony Disorders and other Threats to Insect Pollinators, cites more than a dozen potential factors ranging from declines in flowering plants and the use of memory-damaging insecticides to the worldwide spread of pests and air pollution. It urges that farmers be offered incentives to restore pollinator friendly habitats such as flowering plants next to crop producing fields.
Really scary stuff, because as you can see from the introduction of this famous new report from the UN Environment Program (UNEP) Global Honey Bee Colony Disorders and Other Threats to Insect Pollinators, it shows how a decline in the number of honey bees worldwide may presage what they call “a major extinction of biological diversity event.”
And in case you were wondering, yes, it is our fault: “Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to 7 billion people,” Mr. Steiner said, calling on the world to factor in the often invisible multi-trillion dollar services provided by nature.
But who is reading these reports and better yet, who is listening to their message?
In Cancun we muddled it thoroughly. El jeffe Calderon, the UNFCCC and the Mexican government invited big business to sort it out and thought they got something for nothing.
Here is what they got:
While in Cancun the government of Mexico worked hard to shed any responsibility from the public bodies and to instead offer this to corporations in the climate protection discussion that occurred over two weeks in December, the big businesses used the platform they provided to push only their narrow self interests. All the Power and Utility companies and the fossil fuel and even Coal companies were given free hand to ”rain shit” on the parade. Shell was a particularly dishonest participant and main actor of sinking Cancun. Early on Shell’s executive vice-president Graeme Sweeney joined Mexican Secretary of Economy Bruno Ferrari at a panel sponsored by the national development agency and the corporate PR body World Climate Forum, to discuss the role the private sector can play in preventing catastrophic climate change. And naturally Sweeney used every opportunity to emphasize the importance of funding R&D for carbon capture and sequestration—a promising but completely unproven technology to reduce emissions from coal plants.”
While Shell’s commitment to climate action PR is nice greenwashing, it also seems to be a glorified form of lobbying to cover up their underhanded criminal acts. Acts like the East Aglia University break in and hacking of servers… The same hacking and break in of the Environmental Parliament servers done between then and the Koch brothers and many more instances of malfeasance. And now the Mexicans and Figueres have given the blank check to run things in the climate negotiations too.
Add to it that UNFCCC leader Christiana Figueres is a corporate chick and we have grave cause for concern. Because businesses are simple profit driven entities beholden primarily to their investors and their mission as spelled out by long term business plans. They are not interested in the long term public health and well being. It is therefore very dangerous to allow them a prominent role in the climate negotiations.
But, confusing the world with vacant hope about keeping on burning fossil fuels and pushing for dubious solutions to the climate crisis wasn’t the only thing Shell oil company was doing to undermine the negotiations. In just one such action of many thousand other ones, we found out that Shell led a trade group in which Shell is a prominent member, to write an “urgent proposal” to the Japanese Government pressuring it to avoide a second Kyoto commitment period — at any cost.
Shell went on to say: “We urge JPN government to not accept the extension of the Kyoto Protocol under whatever circumstances,” and thus the Petroleum Association of Japan lobbied the Japanese government.
Had the government of Japan followed Shell’s and the trade group’s advice, it is very likely the Cancun outcome would have been even more tragic for all the people — worst for the poorest and least able to speak up — but beneficial for Shell and the Petroleum Industry.
Still from now until the end of the Durban summit, there are many contentious international climate issues to be resolved if the UN process is to produce a new binding treaty. Chief among them is how to extend the Kyoto Protocol while also curbing emissions from rapidly growing emerging economies like China.
As the actions of Shell and all other corporations at the Cancun World Climate Summit conference make clear, governments negotiating solutions to this and other climate problems would be wise to stay away and tread carefully. They should not confuse the best interests of corporations with those of the public.
That is why they need to be reminded regularly that they represent the People and not freaking Gaddafi’s oily friends…
The fact that oil companies and fossil fuel providers along with major governments guide you to the black hole of global warming isn’t lost on us…
Obviously it’s time for global Direct action. Sensible environmental action to put pressure where it matters most.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Add to it the fact that in 2011 the world’s population will hit 7 billion, and it becomes evident that we must act on Climate Change. Because, all these people need to be fed, clothed, warmed and cared for adequately with fresh water and wholesome food. So perhaps it’s not more fossil fuels we need, not more coal, not more nuclear, nor even space or resources, but rather we need more intelligence and ecological balance.
