United Nations Climate Change Talks
Climate Change can cause extreme storms or droughtNews: COP19 isn’t getting a lot of coverage in the news media, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important.
What’s happening – what are the implications, and what’s the drama?
Official documentation is full of jargon and long acronyms, so here’s my take on what’s going on.
What Is COP19?
It’s the United Nations discussions trying to forge a new agreement on Climate Change.
The Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997 where developed nations agreed to reduce their carbon emissions by about 5% by 2012. But the US didn’t sign, and Canada pulled out in 2012.
The Copenhagen Summit in 2009 gained agreement from the world’s major economies to curb their emissions, which was good, but the cuts were far less than scientists say we need.
In Between
In September, world scientists told us things are serious – if we don’t stop burning fossil fuels, there will be irreversible damage to our planet. Just before COP19 started, the strongest typhoon ever to make landfall devastated the Philippines.
All this should make people more willing to act to prevent catastrophic climate change.
The Drama
Japan was supposed to decrease its carbon emissions by 25% by 2020. It’s the 5th largest greenhouse gas emitter. Instead, it will actually increase them. Japan cites the Fukushima disaster as their reason for going back to fossil fuels, and also says their original emissions target was set by a previous government and was “unfounded”.
Australia voted in a climate-sceptic government which is already opening up new fossil fuel opportunities. The country used to be a global leader in sustainability. Having previously agreed to reduce their emissions by 5%, scientists now believe that the country will increase emissions by a massive 12% under Abott’s policies.
Canada applauded Australia’s new moves, and continues its policy of extracting tar sands oil (a particularly dirty fossil fuel), and its other resources.
Poland, the hosts of GOP19, caused their own controversy by hosting a coal summit (coal is highly carbon-intensive) at the same time as GOP19. Coincidence? Unlikely. It provides most of Poland’s energy, and in fact there are plans to double the size of their largest coal power plant.
Hurricane KatrinaDeveloping countries say they need finance to help them move towards low-carbon economies, but it’s not easy to see where such finance would come from. Some developing countries say that in addition, they want “loss and damage” – a type of compensation for them suffering the effects of climate change which was not their own doing. There is little or no support for that.
What Will Happen?
Although the picture is grim, there are a large number of people working behind the scenes at COP19 to try to reach agreement.
We’ll see what happens at the end of the conference.
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I wrote a post about COP18 a couple of years back and as far as I can see no progress has been made – if anything some countries are moving backward.
It’s a bit depressing isn’t it – I mean we blog and we try our best to influence behaviour but how are we meant to get people engaged if our governments are putting up these hurdles that everyone is going to have to overcome?
I really don’t want to be the one saying “I told you so” when the shit hits the fan…
I remember your post Steve and I agree, no progress has been made, and in some cases the opposite has occurred. I’m still hopeful that grass-roots green movements, bloggers and individuals will cause and inspire significant change, even though it’s sometimes hard to see how we can generate enough influence. But we’ll keep trying!
This news is devastating, what we need are the complete opposite types of people in power who will reverse these trends.
You’re right Lois, and with politicians making decisions based only on their best probability of being voted in again, and with people with massive financial clout influencing government behaviour, I’m not sure how we’d get those complete opposite types of people in power. “Green” parties always seem so small (and many people see them as perhaps tinged with a “radical” label) compared to more mainstream political parties. Sigh. It’s a massively difficult problem, and we’re all going to regret the decisions being made now about carbon emissions – it is indeed devastating. But I’m not giving up hope, and I’m sure you’re not either!