This story originally appeared on AlterNet.
There's a lot of buzz about COP15, the big climate-change meeting coming up -- what exactly is all the hype about, and why should you care? Here's a simple breakdown.
1. What the heck is it?
COP15 is the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties, the highest body of the United Nations Climate Change Convention, and it will take place this year Dec. 7-18. There will be 192 countries participating and a whole bunch of nongovernmental organizations, as well. The event will be in Copenhagen and is hosted by the Danish government. COP14 was in Poland last year.
One of the most well-known COP meetings was COP3 in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, which resulted in the Kyoto Protocol, a document now signed by over 180 countries and put into action in February 2005. The protocol set binding emissions targets for greenhouse gases (GHG) for 37 industrialized countries and the European Union, committing them to reducing their GHG emissions an average of 5 percent against 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.
"Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity, the protocol places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of 'common but differentiated responsibilities,'" explains the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The U.S., which contributed over 30 percent of global GHG emissions in 1990 never signed the Kyoto Protocol, and the country's reluctance to commit to international climate change negotiations has long stymied the process. Until, perhaps, now ...
2. What are they trying to accomplish?
The goal of the COP15 is to get as many countries as possible (and particularly big emitters like the U.S.) to enter into a binding agreement to reduce GHG emissions enough to prevent catastrophic results from climate change.
Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, told Environment & Energy Publishing that he was hoping four important questions would be answered in Copenhagen:
3. Why does the future of the world depend on it?
This is really serious stuff. The best science tells us that we need immediate action on climate change to prevent catastrophic results. This month the U.N. Environment Program released an updated report following the groundbreaking findings in 2007 by the International Panel on Climate Change that basically said thing are are going to be as bad as the IPCC predicted or worse.
"The pace and the scale of climate change is accelerating, along with the confidence among researchers in their forecasts," UNEP Director Achim Steiner said in the report.
What UNEP found was that we've already committed ourselves to an increase in temperature above pre-industrial levels by 1.4 degrees Celsius by 2100, and if we don't get our acts together soon -- meaning making 25-40 percent reductions in CO2 emissions from 1990 levels by 2020 -- we're looking at 4.3 degrees Celsius increases or worse.
A few degrees may sound like not a big deal, but actually it's quite bad. Here are some details from Matt McDermott at Treehugger to put it in perspective:
That effectively signs the extinction warrant for about half of all animal and plant life on the planet; it means coral reefs are gone due to ocean acidification; it means ice-free summers in the Arctic, sets both Greenland and Antarctica on the melting path to multimeter sea-level rise; and it means the glaciers in the Himalayas are doomed.
In human terms, that means half of all humans will face water shortages; it means widespread starvation in South and East Asia, as water availability plummets and crop yields drop; it means much the same thing in Africa; the Mekong [River] Delta is 20 percent flooded and Ho Chi Minh City is 10-20 percent underwater; the Nile Delta (source of much of Egypt's food) is inundated with saltwater; same thing for most of Bangladesh.
In the United States, it means localized temperature increases (think the Great Plains) of up to 7 degrees Celcius; it means severe water problems in the Sierra Nevada mountains, which supply meltwater to California agriculture; crop yields plummet in the Midwest; insect-borne diseases like dengue fever, historically confined to the tropics, spread to 28 states; coastal cities like Miami, New York, New Orleans and others have to contend with a sea-level rise of more than a meter.
If you want some numbers: By 2030, 500,000 people could die due to climate change -- 99 percent of them in the developing world, which it should be pointed out have historically done very little to cause the problem. Already an estimated 300,000 people are seriously affected by climate change.
In economic terms, by 2030 the global economy could take a $340 billion hit.
Really, we can't put enough pressure on the governments and international organizations meeting in Copenhagen to put politics aside and come up with a truly comprehensive and fair treaty to reduce GHG emissions.
4. Will the U.S. screw it up for everyone again?
Of course that's always a possibility, but there's ample reason to be hopeful that things will turn out differently this year. For one, we've got a president who actually understands the science and appreciates the seriousness of the issue. We've also got Congress lumbering away on a climate bill, although just how effective that bill may end up being is still in question.
It's looking more and more likely that the U.S. won't have passed a comprehensive climate bill before Copenhagen, which is bad news, but does not necessarily spell disaster for the negotiations.
David Fogarty from Reuters explains:
In reality, the U.S. Senate might pass the climate bill in the first part of 2010, allowing President Barack Obama's administration to bring a 2020 target and financing pledges to the table during a major U.N. climate meeting in Bonn [Germany] in June.
At worst, nations would have to wait until annual U.N. climate talks in December 2010.
Of course, if the Senate doesn't get its act together and no bill comes to pass, then there is a glimmer of hope, but it's quite weak. Fogarty writes:
The U.S. Senate votes against the climate bill, but other nations reluctantly go ahead with many measures to fight climate change anyway, hoping the United States will formally join the global effort at some point.
In the worst-case scenario, negotiations start to resemble failed trade talks that repeatedly stall. Nations instead work on bilateral clean-energy and carbon-offset deals that fail to achieve major reductions in the growth of emissions.
The trouble is we are dealing with a very limited time line, so making sure the U.S government is on board and our country is pulling its fair share of the weight is essential. And the sooner, the better.
5. What can I do?
While world leaders will get to make some big decisions behind the negotiating table, that doesn't mean the rest of us should sit idly by. There are a bunch of ways to get involved:
The best thing to do is get active -- whether it's with a local group working on climate change or an international effort. We need to keep the pressure on world leaders -- here at home and abroad.
McKibben said recently: "Temperatures will continue to go up, and a lot of damage will be done. What we are working for is to prevent change so large that civilization itself will be challenged, and that's still possible (we hope). But only if we get to work right away."
Follow Tara Lohan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TaraLohan
Laurie David: Why I'm Joining The Hopenhagen Movement
I'm joining Hopenhagen because everything I love and care about is at stake. I do not want the day to come when my daughters ask us why we did not do more.
2. NYTimes will still advertise Land Rovers and Cadillac and not 38 mpg manual, no AC, no electric windows and locks, 4 door Aveos, and Yaris's and other smaller fuel efficient cars.
3, Gore will not invest in the Syracuse Electric car plant
4. Gore won't sell his two ton, 300 horse Cadillac he drove in his movie.
5. American will not increase domestic oil production even though it was proven that importing oil from Angola and Chad, etc creates more co2 because of buring the B diesel fuel in tankers to get here...intsead of shipping it from the OCS to Houston or 369.
6 Liberal Sierra Club members will continue to drive SUVs and Cadillacs to their meetings and bitch about Exxon and the API. . ( got it on film )
Joe Vecchio u-tube. LeavingTheDemocrats
1. Ideas will be presented.
2. Things will be discussed.
3. Everyone will agree that immediate action needs to be taken.
4. All parties will argue over the best action to be taken.
5. No action will be taken.
"We will have very little leverage over climate in the next couple of decades if we're just looking at carbon dioxide," Shindell said. "If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we're much better off looking at aerosols and ozone."
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/warming_aerosols.html
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[B]lack carbon emissions have steadily risen, largely because of increasing emissions from Asia. Black carbon -- small, soot-like particles produced by industrial processes and the combustion of diesel and biofuels -- absorb incoming solar radiation and have a strong warming influence on the atmosphere. ...
The regions of Earth that showed the strongest responses to aerosols in the model are the same regions that have witnessed the greatest real-world temperature increases since 1976. The Arctic region has seen its surface air temperatures increase by 1.5 C (2.7 F) since the mid-1970s. ...
That makes sense, Shindell explained, because of the Arctic's proximity to North America and Europe. The two highly industrialized regions have produced most of the world's aerosol emissions over the last century, and some of those aerosols drift northward and collect in the Arctic. Precipitation, which normally flushes aerosols out of the atmosphere, is minimal there, so the particles remain in the air longer and have a stronger impact than in other parts of the world. ...
Shindell [says] "Right now, in the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the Arctic, the impact of aerosols is just as strong as that of the greenhouse gases."
We in the rich west has caused the problem. We have to be the first to solve it. Of course China and India must help, but we are the prime responsible.
That was the bad news.
The good news is, that it is really good buisness. Reducing your fossil energy consumption to EU level pr unit GDP will save all of your oil import, and thereby reducing your foreign deficit with 60%. Energy savings would saveyou a lot of money, and investments in green technology will be the boom of the 21st century, making it possible to re-industrialise America.
In Denmark we have earned a lot of money on energy saving and green tech. Cooperations like Vestas (windmills), Novozymes(enzymes), Rockwool (insulation), Danfoss (thermostats) ect generates both income and work.
We have just opened the largest sea wind farm in the world on Horns Rev 2 supplying 100.000 families with electricity. So don't whine. There are worlds to conquer and money to be made.
I think a Carbon Tax would be much simpler and transparent.
But we'll take what we can get...
1) Jesus returns as prophesized and brings us the new heaven and new earth as mentioned in the New Testament.
2) The entire planet is destroyed, and Jesus doesn't come back. Who'd want to live on a God forsaken planet (such as ours would be in this scenario) under ANY circumstances????
'New work suggests scientists and policy makers can't ignore interactions between greenhouse gases and light-scattering particles'
'Analyses using the revised model suggest that the aerosol-stifling power of methane and carbon monoxide considerably boosts the planet-warming effect of these gases. Previous studies have shown that a kilogram of methane, over the course of a century, warms Earth about 25 times more effectively than a kilogram of carbon dioxide does. But add in methane’s hydroxyl-consuming effect, and its planet-warming potential jumps to 28 times that of CO2, an increase of 12 percent, Shindell says. (Scientists use carbon dioxide as a baseline largely because it is a common, long-lived greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and its warming effects are well known.)'
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/48940/title/Aerosols_cloud_the_climate_picture
Without legalizing hemp and renegotiating bad trade deals we wont have a green economy or a good economy.
Fall of the Republic;
please email this URL far and wide.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WourPs56Shc
there is an American, a man from California (cannot recall his name), who is at the center of the electric car and infrastructure changes. i truly hope his successes in copenhagen can translate to real change here in the U.S.
on Australian TV last night.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ndHwW8psR8&feature=player_embedded
2-23 In Search Of... The Coming Ice Age (Part 1 of 3)
The way you have done it makes you look as if you are actually serious.
"The USA refuses to sign a treaty to reduce its pollution," answered a climate activist.
The USA? asked the elder, perplexed. All of this is about the USA signing a treaty or not?
"Yes, the USA must live up to its responsibilities," said a political scientist.
And people believe they will? said the elder. They believe the government will honor the treaty if they sign it?
"They must," said a legal scholar. "It's international law."
The elder walked away shaking his head, recalling hundreds of years of broken treaties and injustice. I know the air's getting bad, he said, but don't hold your breath.
Goerge Carlin saving the planet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUHNn3bmL8o