The first milestone of the Copenhagen Accord came and went, without any sign of hope that we could avoid catastrophic climate change.
Instead, observes Greenpeace News, the pledges of the main polluters seem to be toward devastation of the existing climate. Greenpeace draws such an inference from the kind of targets that those with a big carbon footprint are promising, ones that avoid reduction of human-caused global warming pollution significantly enough to steer away from climate catastrophe.
Source: The Third Degree.
“While three degrees of warming would likely be catastrophic. But even 2 degrees C risks possible partial, but irreversible de-glaciation of the Greenland ice sheet and even the West Antarctic ice sheet, that could eventually lead to sea level rise of several meters. Half-of-one degree more could lead to 20-80% loss of the Amazon rain forest and countless species that live in the rain forest.”
The only way the Copenhagen Accord could possibly be a useful political declaration was if its January 31st deadline had been met with tougher new greenhouse gas emission targets. After all, its stated goal is supposed to be to keep global temperatures from rising above 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
But governments tried to green wash their failure at the UN Copenhagen climate summit by merely repeating existing targets and dressing them up as action. So far, these targets will fail to hold global warming to below 3 degrees C; an increase which threatens to have horrendous consequences.
For instance, as HuffPo contributor Gazelle Emami has observed, Canada’s pledge to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions actually represents an increase of 2.5% over the 1990 baseline.
Greenpeace International glumly notes that “the European Union repeated its target of a 20 percent emissions cut against 1990 levels – old news, and only half of what is required.”
“The US is sticking by the meagre 17 percent of 2005 levels but making that dependent of domestic legislation.” To give teeth to any new international agreement on climate change, observes Greenpeace, “it must be set in a legally binding agreement.”
I’ll get you, my pretty, and your little bit of food and water, too.
The other major polluter, China, insists that any reductions will be voluntary. As HuffPo contributor John Heilprin reports, the United Nations warns that while the goals on reducing greenhouse gases announced by major industrialized nations are a step forward, they are insufficient to forestall the disastrous effects of climate change by mid-century.
By 2020, industrialised nations must cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 1990 levels and developing countries need to reduce their projected growth in emissions by 15-30%. Further, the industrialised world needs to provide developing countries with new and additional funding of at least USD 140 billion annually to support clean energy and other mitigation activities, forest protection and adaptation.
It is the poorest and those least responsible for causing the problem who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. The fight for survival of millions of people around the world and countless species of plants and animals is the brutal reality as permafrost melts, sea levels rise, tropical storms batter continents and once-fertile lands battle with floods or drought. But climate change knows no borders – we will all feel its impacts. It threatens economies, environments, human society and welfare.
Related articles by Zemanta
- Sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated, could hit 6 feet by 2100 (climateprogress.org)
- UN says nations’ greenhouse gas pledges too little (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Countries Submit Emission Goals (nytimes.com)
4 Comments
New York Treehugger Matthew McDermott relays a warning from WRI (World Resources Institute): US proposals for net reductions in greenhouse gas emissions compare poorly to what is necessary.
“the precipitous decline in September sea ice extent in recent years is mainly due to the cumulative loss of multiyear ice”
“Even if all man-made greenhouse gas emissions were stopped tomorrow and carbon-dioxide levels stabilized at today’s concentration, by the end of this century the global average temperature would increase by about 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 2.4 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, which is significantly above the level which scientists and policymakers agree is a threshold for dangerous climate change.” — Charles H. Greene, Cornell professor of earth and atmospheric sciences..
In “Plan B 4.0, Mobilizing to Save Civilization,” Lester R. Brown and the Earth Policy Institute advocate lowering income taxes while raising pollution taxes. They believe that a carbon tax is critical to a change of behavior in federal energy policy.
He writes, “One way to correct market failures is tax shifting—raising taxes on activities that harm the environment so that their prices begin to reflect their true cost and offsetting this with a reduction in income taxes. A complementary way to achieve this goal is subsidy shifting. Each year the world’s taxpayers provide at least $700 billion in subsidies for environmentally destructive activities, such as fossil fuel burning, overpumping aquifers, clear-cutting forests, and overfishing.”
“There’s something unbelievable about the world spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to subsidize its own destruction.”
4 Trackbacks
[...] an emissions adjusted Renewable Electricity Standard? Would this in some way function as a carbon fee, which policymakers agree is necessary to cut GHG emissions. Thus, greater incentive would go to [...]
[...] blog has suggested before that federal policy makers seem comfortable envisioning global devastation. This conclusion came [...]
[...] Pledging Global Devastation [...]
[...] Thanks to the Big Gav, we learn that USA Today has picked up on the idea, envisioning property owners or contractors covering warehouse roofs with cheap solar panels. 2 retardants to such development: 1) lack of utility coöperation in buying back the power (they rather would have brown outs, SoCal) and 2) lack of feed-in tariffs (instead the Fed continues to subsidize environmental devastation). [...]