Paris Agreement

Trump Reelection Looms Over COP29; Climate Conference Disappoints

November 15, 2024 Schuyler Mitchell, Truthout. Educate! climate crisis, COP29, Donald Trump, Paris Agreement

For decades, making progress on global climate action has felt like trying to tunnel through a mountain with only a spoon and some elbow grease. When people suggest alternative tools that are perhaps better equipped for tunnel-digging, or maybe even float the idea of climbing over the mountain, they’re dismissed and demeaned as too idealistic. Other people will stare straight at the mountain and declare that it doesn’t exist. And some other people think that instead of creating the tunnel, we should just strip the mountain, sell the tinder and build a casino on top. Meanwhile, the mountain is growing. And the spoon is broken.

Banks Financed Fossil Fuels By $6.9 Trillion Since The Paris Agreement

May 14, 2024 Shawna Ambrose, Rainforest Action Network. Educate! Big Banks, climate crisis, Fossil Fuels, Investments, Paris Agreement

The 15th annual Banking on Climate Chaos (BOCC) report employs a new, expanded data set that credits each bank making financial contributions to a deal instead of only crediting banks in leading roles. It cuts through greenwash, covering the world’s top 60 banks’ lending and underwriting to over 4,200 fossil fuel companies and the financing of companies causing the degradation of the Amazon and Arctic. Backgrounder of the report’s key findings can be found here. Since the Paris Agreement in 2016, the world’s 60 largest private banks financed fossil fuels with USD $6.9 trillion. Nearly half – $3.3 trillion – went towards fossil fuel expansion.

G20’s New Delhi Declaration Is A Successful Balancing Act

September 12, 2023 People's Dispatch. Educate! climate crisis, G20, IMF, Lula da Silva, Narendra Modi, New Delhi declaration, Paris Agreement, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Ukraine

The 18th Summit of G20 (Group of 20) concluded in New Delhi with the adoption of a joint declaration on Sunday, September 10. The declaration reiterated the G20’s commitment to UN Sustainable Development Goals and raised the need to reform global decision-making with the inclusion of more voices from the Global South. The two day meeting of world’s top economies concluded with Indian Prime Ninister Narendra Modi handing over the presidency to Brazil which will host the summit next year. The New Delhi summit with the theme “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” or “One Earth, One Family, One Future” invited the African Union (AU) as its 21st member with its chairperson Azali Assoumani joining the proceedings.

Worsening Climate Shocks Risk Distracting From Efforts To Reduce Carbon Emissions

February 17, 2023 Laurie Laybourn, IPPR. Educate! Carbon emissions, climate crisis, Environment, Paris Agreement

The world is entering a more difficult stage of the climate and ecological crisis where its symptoms are drawing attention away from efforts to tackle its root causes, according to a new report published by the IPPR and Chatham House think tanks. Huge resources are being deployed to respond to the growing number of climate disasters and complex crises linked to environmental destruction. But such demands could come at the cost of diverting effort away from the rapid switch now needed to decarbonise the global economy. The report argues that this risks creating a vicious circle, or ‘doom loop’: the impacts of the climate and nature crises draw focus and resources away from tackling their underlying causes and the urgent steps needed to address them.

Save The Planet – Nicaragua And The Climate Crisis

November 24, 2022 Teri Mattson, Popular Resistance. Podcast – WTF is Going on in Latin America & the Caribbean climate crisis, COP27, Nicaragua, Paris Agreement

Under the slogan Uniting the world to tackle climate change, the forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), which will be held in Glasgow (UK) from 1 to 12 November 2021, will bring together representatives of some 200 governments with the aim of accelerating climate action to fulfill the Paris Agreement. The Presidency of the conference is already working with civil society and business to prepare the annual event and inspire climate action ahead of the event. What is COP: The Conference of the Parties or COP is the supreme body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), a treaty that sets out the basic obligations of the 196 states (or parties) and the European Union to combat climate change.

UNEP: Meeting Global Climate Goals Requires ‘Rapid Transformation’

November 9, 2022 Zeke Hausfather and Daisy Dunne, Resilience. Educate! Carbon emissions, climate crisis, Environment, Paris Agreement

The world faces a “rapidly closing window” to meet the Paris Agreement’s goals, warns the latest “emissions gap” report from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). The report, which explores the impact of new pledges and the “gap” toward meeting the Paris targets, finds that while progress has been made in recent years to mitigate emissions and deploy more clean energy, it is insufficient to put the world on a path to limit warming to well-below 2C or to 1.5C this century. Despite ambitious pledges, there has been “limited progress” in the year since COP26, it says. In a stark warning, the new UNEP report says that incremental change is “no longer an option” and that avoiding dangerous levels of warming will require a “wide-ranging, large-scale, rapid and systemic transformation”.

1.5 Degrees Paris Climate Target Not ‘Safe Or Appropriate’

May 25, 2022 David Spratt and Ian Dunlop, Resilience. Educate! climate crisis, Environment, Paris Agreement, Tipping point

Climate tipping points in the Antarctica, the Arctic and the Amazon are at risk of being reached before or at the current level of global warming of 1.2 degrees Celsius, requiring a “major rethink” of global climate goals and the action necessary to achieve them, according to a recent report. A ‘tipping point’ is a threshold at which a small change initiates a larger, more critical change, taking the climate system from one state to a discreetly different state, which may be abrupt and irreversible. Climate Dominoes: Tipping point risks for critical climate systems, is published by Breakthrough – National Centre for Climate Restoration.

Why Developing Countries Say Net-Zero Is ‘Against Climate Justice’

October 28, 2021 Emily Pontecorvo, Grist. Educate! climate crisis, Climate Justice, net zero, Paris Agreement

In less than a week, world leaders will convene in Glasgow for the most important climate conference of the year, the United Nations’ COP26. One of the biggest questions of the conference is whether developed countries like the U.S. will finally cough up the rest of the money they promised to poorer nations a decade ago to help them cut emissions and adapt to climate change. But as the conference draws near, the paucity of funding isn’t the only thing drawing the ire of developing countries and breeding distrust. Last week, a coalition of 24 developing nations that work together on international negotiations issued a statement criticizing rich countries for proselytizing a universal goal of net-zero by 2050. “This new ‘goal’ which is being advanced runs counter to the Paris Agreement and is anti-equity and against climate justice,” the statement from the ministers of the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC) Ministerial said.

Governments Still Fall Dangerously Short Of Paris Agreement Commitments

October 20, 2021 350.org. Educate! climate crisis, COP26, Governance, Paris Agreement

The 2021 Production Gap Report, first published in 2019, measures the gap between governments’ planned production of coal, oil, and gas and the global production levels consistent with meeting the Paris Agreement temperature limits. But two years later, the 2021 report finds the production gap mostly unchanged. In fact, over the next two decades, governments are collectively projecting an increase in global oil and gas production, and only a small decrease in coal production. Taken together, their plans and projections see global, total fossil fuel production increasing until at least 2040, creating an ever-widening gap. “The devastating impacts of climate change are here for all to see. There is still time to limit long-term warming to 1.5°C, but this window of opportunity is rapidly closing,” says Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP.

Energy Lawsuits Pact Seen Threatening Paris Climate Deal

October 6, 2021 Arthur Neslen, Reuters. Educate! climate crisis, Finance and the Economy, Lawfare, Paris Agreement

Brussels - Fear of multi-billion-euro lawsuits from fossil fuel investors is putting the Paris agreement on climate change at risk, one of the deal's architects has warned. Compensation claims from a pact that allows companies to sue countries over policies that affect their investments could amount to more than a trillion euros by 2050, according to one estimate. The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) was originally drawn up to protect energy firms as the Soviet Union crumbled, but new analysis suggests it could allow coal plants in 54 signatory states to keep belching carbon dioxide for more than a decade. "The integrity of the Paris agreement is critically undermined by the Energy Charter Treaty," said Laurence Tubiana, the French climate change ambassador during negotiations for the Paris agreement.

Joe Biden’s New Climate Pledge Isn’t Fair Or Ambitious

April 26, 2021 Rishika Pardikar, Jacobin Magazine. Educate! Carbon emissions, climate crisis, Joe Biden, Paris Agreement

On Thursday, President Joe Biden announced that the United States will cut emissions by 50 to 52 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 as part of its commitment to the 2016 Paris Agreement on climate change. Biden’s announcement came during the administration’s virtual Leaders Summit on Climate, which aimed to push climate action around the world. A key goal of the summit was “to keep a limit to warming of 1.5 degree Celsius within reach.” A 2018 special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that global greenhouse gas emissions need to drop by 50 percent by 2030 to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. But Biden’s emissions pledge will not do enough to reach this goal, according to an analysis by Climate Action Tracker, a scientific organization that measures governmental climate action.

‘True Climate Leadership’ By US Would Be 60% Emissions Reduction By 2030

March 17, 2021 Kenny Stancil, Commondreams. Create! climate crisis, Green New Deal, Joe Biden, Paris Agreement

For the Biden administration to meet its long-term target of net-zero emissions by 2050, the United States must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 60% below 2005 levels by 2030, according to a new report released Thursday. In its analysis (pdf), Climate Action Tracker (CAT) found that in order for the U.S. to do its fair share to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C by the end of the century—the goal of the Paris Agreement—the country must slash at least 57% to 63% of its emissions by the end of the decade and provide financial support to developing nations striving to transition away from climate-destroying fossil fuels. Having officially rejoined the Paris Agreement earlier this year, the Biden administration is currently preparing to unveil a new domestic emissions reduction target, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC).

Coalition Pushes For 50% Carbon Cut By 2030

February 23, 2021 Mitchell Beer, The Energy Mix. Create! Carbon emissions, climate crisis, John Kerry, Paris Agreement

The United States officially rejoined the Paris Agreement Friday, with climate envoy John Kerry warning that high-stakes negotiations at COP 26 in Glasgow this fall represent the “last, best hope” to avert catastrophic climate change. “This is a significant day, a day that never had to happen,” Kerry said. “It’s so sad that our previous president, without any scientific basis or any legitimate economic rationale, decided to pull America out. It hurt us and it hurt the world.” Now, he added, the U.S. is re-entering the landmark 2015 accord “with a lot of humility, for the agony of the last four years”. The expression of “contrition” from the Biden administration is “balanced by a desire to resume the mantle of leadership at a time when almost every country is struggling to undertake the swift emissions cuts required to avert disastrous global heating of 1.5°C above the pre-industrial era, as outlined in the Paris deal,” The Guardian writes.

Shifting The Balance Of Forces Through Sanctions Against Trump And US Carbon Capital

November 5, 2019 Patrick Bond, Climate Futures: Reimagining Global Climate Justice. Organize! boycott, climate crisis, Paris Agreement, Trump

Future climate scenarios are not only in the hands of state and corporate leaders; they depend upon the extent to which climate movement activists’ current political philosophies, analyses, strategies, tactics, and alliances either weaken or strengthen the prevailing balance of forces. The most important barrier to reducing climate change remains Washington’s philosophy, crudely expressed in 1992 when President George H. W. Bush told the Rio Earth Summit, “The American way of life is not up for negotiations” (Deen 2012). In the same spirit, the Donald Trump administration removed the US from the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement in June 2017 on the grounds that compliance will be too expensive for the world’s largest economy (Trump 2017).

Shell Oil Executive Boasts That His Company Influenced The Paris Agreement

December 10, 2018 Kate Aronoff, Theintercept.com Educate! Climate Change, Paris Agreement, Shell Oil

The executive, Shell’s Chief Climate Change Adviser David Hone, made his comments at the international climate change conference COP 24 on Friday. Hone was candid about just how much of a hand his company — through their involvement with the International Emissions Trading Association — had in writing the Paris agreement. The agreement is the centerpiece of the conference in Poland, where delegates are trying to draft a rulebook for how to implement it. IETA is a business lobby comprised of corporations including fossil fuel producers that pushes for “market-based climate solutions,” including at United Nations climate talks.

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