Environmental activists frustrated COP24 deal not strong enough

Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna and environmental activists are emphasizing that more action is needed to combat climate change despite Saturday's deal reached by countries at a UN climate summit.

Canadian Minister of Environment and Climate Change
 Catherine McKenna said more work remains over the
 coming year after negotiators in Katowice failed to reach
 an agreement on emission trading.

In addition, some green groups and certain countries expressed frustration that more ambitious climate goals were not achieved during intense negotiations that ran into the weekend.  

Nearly 200 nations at COP24 agreed upon universal, transparent rules that will govern efforts to cut emissions and curb global warming and enable countries to put into action the commitments they made in the 2015 Paris climate accord.

Read the CBC story - “Environmental activists frustrated COP24 deal not strong enough.”

Poland’s coal miners: ‘EU climate proposals terrify us’

As Poland gears up to host this year’s UN climate summit, the government is on a charm offensive.

An old mine shaft in Katowice looms over
the glass buildings of the Silesian museum.

During two days in mid-September, brochures, videos, slides and dark-suited representatives succeed one another, portraying Katowice, the site of the talks, as a green success story. Chaperoned by civil servants, journalists are whizzed around the city in electric cars.

At its industrial peak in the 1980s, the capital of Upper Silesia counted 14 active coal mines. That figure has fallen to two, while museums, concert halls and sport facilities have mushroomed on former mining sites – not to mention the spaceship-like conference centre that will welcome up to 30,000 delegates in December.

Read the story by Natalie Sauer from Climate Home News - “Poland’s coal miners: ‘EU climate proposals terrify us’.”

Mohamed Nasheed had the dream, and now he is in gaol

Mohamed Nasheed - he should be in Paris talking
 about the Maldives becoming carbon neutral,
 but deposed by a military coup, he is now in gaol,
 while dictators who replaced him have invited
the oil industry to drill on his island nation.

One of the world’s leading climate campaigners is missing from the UN climate summit in Paris, because he is sitting in a prison cell after being deposed in a military coup. Former Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed was a key voice at the 2009 UN climate summit for island nations threatened by rising sea levels.

“Nasheed promised to take his whole country carbon neutral by 2020. Instead, the dictators running it now are inviting the oil industry in to drill,” says Democracy NOW!‘s guest Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org. “If you want to think about irony, it doesn’t get much better than that.”

Read the EcoWatch story - “Bill McKibben: ‘Paris Summit is Missing One of the Great World Leaders on Climate’ Because He’s in Prison.”

Feeling the 'heat' Australia comes in from the cold and wins praise

A

ustralia has been applauded by delegates at climate change ministerial talks in Paris for returning to active climate diplomacy.

Environment Minster
Greg Hunt.

With the major UN climate summit set to begin at the end of this month, some 60 countries have sent ministers to Paris for advance talks.

Climate activists have praised Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt's work for achieving a breakthrough in a six-year-old deadlock on a side protocol, delivering a bonus cut equal to two years' total global carbon emissions.

Read Peter Hartcher’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “Paris climate talks: Australia comes in from the cold.”

Carbon equilibrium has become serious carbon debt

The earth remained in carbon equilibrium for millennia, until humans seriously disrupted that delicate balance.

A few people plodding about the place did not interfere with that stability until a couple of centuries ago when man discovered how to unlock the carbon deposits the earth had squirrelled away over billions of years.

About two hundred years ago we stumbled upon oil and as the decade passed with build machines of every variety powered by internal combustion engines and armed with those we assaulted the world’s forests.

Like smoking to the human body, it was a direct attack on the world’s lungs and deforestation is now one of the key reasons we are now facing this profit and growth driven-dilemma of climate change.

The latest issue of The Conversation has a report on the recent UN Climate Summit in New York a new forest agreement — the New York Declaration on Forests, headed: “Stopping global deforestation will take more than words”, but appears to hold little hope of it making much difference.