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195 Nations Approve Historic Climate Accord
195 Nations Approve Historic Climate Accord
Following late-night negotiations and years of anticipation, delegates from 195 countries have agreed to curb the worst effects of climate change by limiting warming to "well below" 2 degrees Celsius. The agreement, the result of an international climate summit outside Paris and approved December 12, aims to be the world's roadmap to kicking the fossil fuel habit, with a possibility of an even more ambitious 1.5-degree goal in the future.
Even with the agreement in hand, political obstacles and technological challenges remain to reining in global warming. Individual countries will have to swap greenhouse gas‒emitting energy sources like coal, oil and natural gas for low-emission sources such as wind, solar and nuclear power. Along with yet-to-be-realized technologies that pull greenhouse gases from the air, these changes are meant to reduce net carbon emissions to zero in the second half of the century. By 2020, countries will release their long-term plans to cut emissions. Every five years, countries will reassess their progress and tweak their carbon-cutting goals.
COP21 has been signed
After a last-minute weakening of the text, COP21 has been accepted in Paris by almost 200 countries (that's our world, basically) and the French minister of Foreign Affairs, Laurent Fabius, hammered it off before proceeding with the group hug of world leaders.
The draft text [PDF] is currently available, but a crucial change in article 4 point 4 on page 21 is no longer there after the last-minute "oh sorry we were tired and made a typo".
Read about it on The Guardian.
Let me say in conclusion: Thank you Paris! Politics is the art of what is achievable.
Polar bears - Terrorists : 1 - 0 [Caution: to view this link you MUST accept the site cookie popup] (violent cartoon, possibly NSFW)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:12AM
climate change = 18!
emissions = 14!
climate = 12!
reduction = 4!
coaltion = 3
energy = 3
greenhouse gases = 3
carbon = 2
warming = 1
Internatioanl Atomic Energy Agency = 1
solar = 0
nuclear = 0
renewable = 0
wind = 0
coal= 0
gas = 0
fossil = 0
-
so anyone want to wager what this REALLY means?
I guessing it's like so:
Fossiles cannot be used to further grow the "western"-standard way of life for the whole planet. There's just not enough ... "climate".
However, there's this tiny "hole" down the stars, two stories down, then left where the light-bulb isn't working correctly, left, back behind the curtain where you can don a radiation suit and enter to apply for a non-carbon 0.5-1 GW turn-key power-plant as coal replacement.
Oh and you can pick-up a solarpanel on the way out and home for your kids to play around with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:24AM
oops, renewable = 1
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:13AM
You know you're envious of my collection of Diamond studded Dildos.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:28AM
Previously its concern was driving economic growth above 8%, also that advice from other nations not to burn so much coal China protested was foreign meddling in its foreign affairs.
That complaint might seem unreasonable but consider that China was once a colony of England; read up on the Opium Wars. One has to respect their feelings. It's unproductive to do otherwise.
However, Beijing just a few days ago declared a Red Alert air pollution day. One-half of cars were kept off the road, schools were shut down, air-raid like warnings were sounded in the subways advising not to breathe the air.
That Red Alert day was no more serious than many previous days of pollution it's just that China is realizing it really does have a problem and that it's best not to shove it under the matress anymore. Doubtlessly today's life expectancy is dramatically shorter than under the Communist economy, when everyone rode bicycles - even US Ambassador George Bush.
Someone registered hepa-filter.cn [hepa-filter.cn] and I expect is moving lots of product. I bought a Honeywell filter for my ex, it was about CAD$100.00 and it completely relieved her dust allergy. I got it at Canadian Tire, I expect in the US you can buy them in most Big Box stores.
They were originally developed to keep Plutonium out of the air during the Manhattan Project. Inhaling just a tiny speck of it will cause bone necrosis so HEPA just has to be an effective filter.
Solar is a lot more efficient and cheaper than it used to be. China is the world's leading photovoltaic manufacturer, if it's not already installing solar panels locally I expect it will do so soon.
Tiny Tim's crippling disease in The Night Before Christmas was Ricketts, an ultimately-fatal Vitamin D deficiency that's caused by not being exposed to sunlight. It is very, very important that children play outdoors in the sun. Here in America we have Vitamin D-fortified milk but possibly the food in China, or in some parts of China, does not have added vitamins.
Even so, for a child to not even be permitted to play outdoors will cause all manner of problems as an adult. I used to roam for miles with my parent's consent, their only concern was that I be home for supper every night. The result is that as an adult, I am very much into taking risks that other adults would not. No one intimidates me for example, I feel safe walking at night through the worst parts of inner cities. Someone who was not permitted to play outside likely could not do that as an adult.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:36AM
Not sure if that's true:
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:45AM
Hildebrandt? I don't clearly recall. But he attended UC Berkely in the early 1950s. I don't recall when the book was written but it quite clearly stated that Plutonium causes bone necrosis.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:42AM
I Should Not Drink And Post.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @09:06AM
That Red Alert day [in Beijing] was no more serious than many previous days of pollution
...if you integrate the capital in with all the other filthy places where heavy industry make it incredibly nasty for miles and miles and miles.
Beijing Issues First Ever Red Alert Over Air [thebeijinger.com]
The problem is spreading over every city in the country.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:34AM
55 gt CO2 = 2 ˚C
40 gt CO2 = 1.5 ˚C
So 1 ˚C = 30 gt CO2. How do they get these numbers?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday December 13 2015, @08:32AM
https://a248.e.akamai.net/f/681/7401/5m/netstorage.discovery.com/feeds/brightcove/asset-stills/sci/125302935197912910600301197_Uranus.jpg [akamai.net]
I'm going to buy my defensive radar from Temu, just like Venezuela!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @05:46PM
Its just difficult to take such things seriously, like it came from a schematic image in a kindergarten text book showing X smokestacks =one degree.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @08:58PM
—https://www.baytoday.ca/national/canada-ups-climate-ambition-in-paris-despite-lacking-plan-to-meet-current-goals-79646 [baytoday.ca]
(as opposed to 3.6 degrees, says the same source, if we continue with business as usual)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by iamjacksusername on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:44AM
I don't see Congress ratifying this agreement any time soon. Like Kyoto, but most won't live up to it if costs too much money. Where are its teeth? Right now, there aren't any and likely will never be as China and India have rejected the US proposal for independent audits of emission goals... emission goals on targets each country selects for itself, "Intended Nationally Determined Contributions." So, not only is there no enforcement, the goal posts are wherever each country wants them to be. So, good luck with that.
Link: http://abcnews.go.com/International/world-leaders-scramble-finalize-historic-climate-change-deal/story?id=35716685/ [go.com]
Link: http://www.france24.com/en/20151211-how-will-cop21-accord-be-enforced-paris-climate-talks/ [france24.com]
In contrast, WTO agreements work because it does not try to create some external enforcement body and relies on fundamental economic principles... e.g., a country can ultimately do what it wants but no country wants to start a trade war so there are powerful economic forces built into its rules. Which is why a trade based solution would be much more effective imo.
I always thought the best balanced solution would be environmental import duties.
1) Come up with an externalized pollution cost dollar amount per type of good based on our own country's environmental regulations.
2) Require that all imports include the externalized cost of the good. So, it would be in the form of their country of origin's environmental regulations (e.g., you cannot dump benzene into a river) so no import duty added or, for example, if the good is manufactured someplace where the manufacturer can dump benzene in to the river, then the externalized pollution dollar cost is added as an import duty.
It would incentivize developing countries to create and enforce environmental regulations comparable to Western regulations by removing the economic advantages of no regulations. It would also remove some of the advantages of off-shoring due to lax environmental regulations which is why developing countries would fight it. I think that would have a much greater impact than some international agreement with no teeth.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Sunday December 13 2015, @09:47AM
Well, maybe the (150 million?) US Republicans are against the agreement, because it goes too far for them, even with the "shall reduce emissions" watered down to "should reduce emissions".
Similarly, the (150 million?) people of Bangladesh might be against the agreement, because it doesn't go far enough, they'll be under water when Greenland melts.
So it's a compromise agreement.
Increased taxes on imports sounds like a good idea but would it work or would it just make smuggling and fraud more lucrative.
I agree this agreement has no teeth; maybe its only value is that it is a piece of paper saying "the world will now begin to reduce fossil fuels", which is a very important piece of paper to wave in the faces of directors of pension funds.
Investment in fossil fuel companies will now be less safe in the long term.
Let's hope that very weak effect will be enough.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @10:19AM
Having lived in that part of the world, I am fairly certain that the leadership of Banglesh would happily drown half their population as long as their own villas were intact and their Singaporean bank accounts stayed fat.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday December 13 2015, @01:24PM
I agree this agreement has no teeth; maybe its only value is that it is a piece of paper saying "the world will now begin to reduce fossil fuels", which is a very important piece of paper to wave in the faces of directors of pension funds.
If those directors take climate change hype as being more important than the future of their pension, then that's a solid indication that your funds should not be in that pension fund. After all, your very important piece of paper is still just a piece of paper (at least, if you bothered to print it out, that is). And to be blunt, I think we're about a century further behind on global warming and its harm than these treaty signatories think we are. The fact that the treaty completely ignores adaptation is a huge problem for me. The fact that the treaty ignores the carbon temperature forcing errors and likely IPCC exaggeration is a problem for me.
I think the most bizarre aspect of this whole affair are the people gleefully practicing economic suicide. For example, no one still has a counter to the problem that mitigation attempts cost a lot. For the evergreen example, Germany and Denmark still have way overpriced residential electricity prices. Germany's program actually is a slick way to subsidize industrial users at the expense of residential users too. The vast majority of carbon markets still have the same basic flaws in their construction (particularly, hard caps - fixed number of CO2 emission credits issued per year). People are proposing hard stops for their country's economy while allowing the developing world to continue unimpeded.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @09:04PM
Right, it won't be presented to the US Congress:
—http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-1214-paris-climate-20151213-story.html [latimes.com]
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:46AM
The text contains no enforcement mechanism and no validation that anyone is doing what they say. The nations of the world got together over Parisian food, spent a lot of money on wine, and drafted up a toothless wonder of a feel-good statement that won't amount to a hill of beans because it doesn't contain penalties for noncompliance. Then they got on their hydrocarbon-powered jets and went home.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @07:57AM
Oh, there are penalties for non-compliance. They may not be legally enforced, but they exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @08:48AM
I assume you refer to the destruction of our habitable space. If so, that is the whole thing they are supposedly trying to avoid so it doesn't count.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Sunday December 13 2015, @08:03AM
"Let me say in conclusion: Thank you Paris! Politics is the art of what is achievable."
The breathless reporting on this is unbelievable just like it was during kyoto.
This is an "aspirational" non-binding and very voluntary agreement. They may describe it any way they want but in legal terms all the "could"s were changed to "should"s. The only thing mandated is a 5 yearly report.
The usual suspects were behind the wording changes including the sneaky last minutes ones including the biggest polluters - China has all but wiped their ass with this agreement and they were the main ones we needed to change.
Apparently we should all be cheering because of an "agreement" (that's probably not even worthy of the name) to maybe possibly do something in the future if we can but no penalties for not doing anything like last time (kyoto). It is utter horse shit.
The greedy self-interested leaders of countries got together, spited puffery in an attempt at pretence and failed again to save humanity. No one should be surprised.
Our mighty leaders....I did not expect anything more from them, but I did from the media (which makes me an idiot I know). Shame on them.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @09:10AM
James Hansen, Father of Climate Change Awareness, Calls Paris Talks "A Fraud" [alternet.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Sunday December 13 2015, @09:34PM
If you think posting an article on a small alternative news website disproves my point then you are wrong.
Almost all the mainstream media are running with the breathless thing like this site has done. (I expected more from here actually)
Having said that. Good on this news website for running against the grain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @12:53AM
Perhaps you haven't noticed that I have repeatedly said here that Lamestream Media is an unreliable source of information and that their stuff, if consumed, should be treated with extreme skepticism unless validated by news outlets who haven't taken payoffs from megacorporations meant to influence the final product.
OTOH, Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting and Media Matters for America find AlterNet to be a reliable source of information.
Good on this news website for running against the grain.
I agree with you on that as I did with your initial point.
Your hostility is unwarranted.
AlterNet is typical of the sites I rely on for useful information.
Some here have said that sites I reference are partisan.
That seems to mean that those sites don't make a concerted effort to avoid reporting stories that reveal embarrassing|disgusting facts about incumbents|the status quo, in contrast to Lamestream Media.
Calling that partisan is quite silly.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Monday December 14 2015, @05:13AM
I see your signature confused me.
gewg: Opinionated individual who gives examples to support his positions.
I thought that was you disagreeing by way of providing that link.
Context is everything as always.
I retract my hostility and apologise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 14 2015, @11:28PM
Opinionated individual...
Yup, that was my post.
Some folks have spotted a gewg_ on Twitter.
That's another guy.
I started using the text moniker years before Twitter existed.
(Got the verbal version from my buddy in grade school.)
Apology accepted.
I foresee the 2 of us on the same side criticizing Lamestream Media, politicians, etc. in future threads.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 13 2015, @04:12PM
It's like someone who weighs 250 pounds, signing up for a gym membership, agreeing to cut back on snacks and beer, and agreeing to be weighed every few months. And the results will be posted.
It's a start, and about the best you were going to do given the subject. Now, we have to monitor the plan, and eventually go in and raise the bar a little, and then a lot.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Mr Big in the Pants on Sunday December 13 2015, @09:28PM
"and about the best you were going to do given the subject"
I am sorry but it's not fucking good enough then. It is weak. It is a sham. It result in no change in behaviour from what was going to happen anyway.
Something is NOT always better than nothing; this is flawed logic you are using.
Rather the talks be labelled a complete and utter failure so the world can see what is really going on than this pretence of doing anything.
What the politicians have done, which is EXACTLY what they wanted to do, was give the pretence of success and kick the ball to 2020 when almost none of them will still be in power. They get credit for nothing and then don't have to deal with the fallout.
China is a dictatorship so they don't give a fuck. The US will probably have a republican in by then or a republican senate so nothing will happen as per usual.
SAME SAME
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday December 13 2015, @02:23PM
I've seen analogies between this document and Evangelium Vitae from 20 yrs ago.
COP21 will have the same lasting enforced impact on climate change and the world economy as Evangelium Vitae had on the world WRT abortion and the death penalty. Oh wait that would be none at all, LOL.
Its a brutally effective analogy WRT the neoreaction view of the leftie cathedral, its just a steaming pile of meaningless holiness signalling, etc.
Well at least the meaninglessness is over and we can be propagandized with some new topic.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday December 14 2015, @01:30AM
COP21? More like COPOUT.
It's like a corporate meeting on a global scale.
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