Obama Administration Announces Weak Carbon Pollution Cuts Ahead of Paris Climate Talks
MAGE DISTRIBUTED FOR AVAAZ – More than 100,000 people march through midtown Manhattan on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014 as part of the People’s Climate March, a worldwide mobilization calling on world leaders meeting at the UN to commit to urgent action on climate change and 100% clean energy in New York. (John Minchillo/AP Images for AVAAZ)
Note: Friends of the Earth also issued a statement criticizing the Obama administration actions as inadequate with Friends of the Earth Climate and Energy Program Director Benjamin Schreiber saying: “As the historically largest climate polluter, the United States has a moral imperative — as well as a legal obligation under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — to take climate action commensurate with the demands of climate science and justice. The U.S. Intended Nationally Determined Contribution does not do that. Instead, it moves us closer to the brink of global catastrophe, with increasing food and water shortages, conflict, climate exodus and the potential deaths of millions; particularly in countries least resourced to cope with the shocks of more intense weather patterns.”
Greenpeace said that the US actions “would not do enough to avert global catastrophe.” They added that the track record of the Obama administration is not hopeful: “The administration is leading us in the wrong direction when it comes to expanding extraction of coal, gas and oil from public lands and dumping these climate polluting fuels onto the global market. The Obama administration now has a history of setting decent targets and offering nice talking points on climate, but not backing that up with urgent and significant actions to move away from fossil fuels.” Greenpeace pointed out that on the same day that the carbon plan was announced the administration approved drilling by Shell in the Arctic.
– Popular Resistance
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WASHINGTON— The target for carbon pollution cuts announced today by the Obama administration uses deceptive accounting to disguise weak reductions that won’t prevent catastrophic warming. U.S. negotiators will take this climate plan to December’s United Nations climate talks in Paris.
“The starting gun in the race against global warming went off a long time ago, but the United States is still just jogging,” said Kevin Bundy of the Center for Biological Diversity. “We need a stronger strategy. Global efforts to prevent catastrophic climate change depend on the United States making much more ambitious cuts to planet-warming pollution.”
Under the Obama plan, the United States would still be emitting at least 5 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution a year by 2025, according to Center calculations based on the EPA’s most recent emissions inventory. By way of comparison, the entire continent of Africa emitted just over 3 billion tons in 2011.
The proposed U.S. target ostensibly would cut greenhouse pollution economy-wide by 26 to 28 percent from 2005 emissions levels by 2025. But the Obama administration calculated reductions from a “base year” of 2005, when emissions were even higher than they are now. That masks the stark inadequacy of the U.S. effort.
Using the international standard base year of 1990, the target translates to reductions of just 14 to 16 percent by 2025. But the U.S. and other developed countries must cut pollution by at least 25 percent to 55 percent below 1990 levels by 2025 to do their fair share in helping to avoid a climate catastrophe, according to calculations by a team of climate scientists tracking international negotiations.
Each nation attending the Paris talks is required to propose a reduction target — or “intended nationally determined contribution” — representing “fair and ambitious” steps beyond those already underway. The U.N. climate framework also requires developed countries like the U.S. to shoulder a greater burden based on their historic contributions to the problem and their capacity to make changes.
Earth suffered the hottest year in recorded history in 2014. Rising temperatures are already contributing to a growing risk of drought and other dangerous forms of extreme weather. A recent U.N. report warned that global warming will cause food shortages, flooding of island nations and coastal cities, and mass wildlife extinctions.
A recent Nature study found that about a third of the planet’s oil, half of all natural gas reserves and more than 80 percent of the world’s coal must remain in the ground by mid-century to avoid dangerous global warming.
That’s why the Center has called on the Obama administration to support an agreement in Paris that eliminates developed country fossil fuel use by 2050 and offers aggressive financial and technological support for clean-energy development in developing countries.
“We can’t keep relying on dirty fossil fuels and hope to preserve a livable climate,” Bundy said. “President Obama has a moral duty to pursue a global agreement that keeps most oil, coal and gas in the ground and helps developing nations leapfrog into clean-energy economies.”
