https://socialistaction.org/2017/11/14/bonn-talks-underway-scientists-see-grim-future-for-climate/
Bonn talks underway; scientists see grim future for climate
/ 23 hours ago
Nov. 2017 Germany coal
Nov. 5 protest in Germany’s coalfields.
By MICHAEL SCHREIBER
At the same time that Donald Trump was gallivanting around Asia, with
objectives that included arming Japan with U.S. missiles and cajoling
China into the plan to isolate North Korea, other heads of state were in
Bonn, Germany, for the 23rd annual “Conference of the Parties” (COP23)
UN-sponsored climate talks. The two weeks of discussions, Nov. 6-17,
were aimed at negotiating ways to implement the goals of the 2015 Paris
Climate Accord.
As the conference opened, the World Meteorological Organization released
data showing that 2017 is apparently the hottest non-Niño year on
record, and is expected to join the two previous years as the three
hottest in modern history.
Several days earlier, scientists with the U.S. Global Change Research
Program published a report with similar conclusions. They affirmed from
“thousands” of scientific studies that human activity is likely to be
the cause of the steady increase in global temperatures. The amount of
CO2 in the atmosphere (over 400 ppm) is at a concentration unsurpassed
in the last three million years, when global temperatures and sea level
were significantly higher than today—and the concentration is still rising.
The report presented a grim prognosis for the future, in which the
Atlantic coast of the United States could be swamped by rising seas and
regularly battered by heavy storms. The report predicted heat waves
becoming common, an increase in forest fires in the American West, and
drastically reduced water resources with possible chronic drought in the
United States by the end of the 21st century. Worldwide sea levels could
continue to rise for centuries to come, as the ice sheets and glaciers melt.
The chairman of the Bonn conference, Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe “Frank”
Bainimarama, opened the sessions with greetings “from one of the most
climate-vulnerable regions on earth” and called on the delegates to
“make the Paris Accord work.”
“The need for urgency is obvious,” he said, referring to the tremendous
hurricanes, floods, droughts, and forest fires of the last year and
more. “Our world is in distress from the extreme weather events caused
by climate change.”
It musn’t be overlooked, however, that the goals agreed to in Paris were
far from sufficient to keep rising temperatures from reaching even more
catastrophic levels. Even if the current pledges for cuts in carbon
emissions were attained, they would still mean at least 3C of global
warming above pre-industrial levels—which would likely result in rising
seas that inundate island and coastal areas, widespread drought and crop
failures, famine and mass migrations, tremendous loss of species, and
countless other tragic and unchecked consequences.
The Bonn conference is entrusted with creating a mechanism to achieve
the objectives of the Paris Accord, while leaving space for those goals
to be raised higher. But success, even on limited terms, is not assured.
On the first day of the conference, less developed countries, led by
India, questioned whether the wealthier countries could be trusted,
since they had failed to meet many of their pledges to reduce carbon
emissions made at earlier COPs.
And in turn, some wealthier and more developed countries have been
complaining of initiatives requiring them to contribute $100 billion a
year to help poorer nations deal with the effects of climate change.
Since Trump announced that the U.S. is pulling out of the Climate
Accord, it is not clear whether the U.S. will contribute at all to the
fund for poorer nations.
The United States, the world’s second largest polluter, sent an official
delegation to the talks, although their agenda seemed ridiculously out
of sync with the professed goals of the conference. The U.S. said that
it planned to use the venue to promote American energy resources,
particularly fossil fuels, as a way that poorer countries could meet
their energy needs.
The U.S. presentation was called “The Role of Cleaner and More Efficient
Fossil Fuels and Nuclear Power in Climate Mitigation.” Speakers from
Peabody Energy, a coal company; NuScale Power, and nuclear engineering
firm; and Tellurian, a liquefied natural gas exporter, were on the program.
Plans by the Trump administration, and other world leaders, to sell more
fossil fuels on the world market were given a loud rebuke by German
climate activists. Just a day before the opening of the COP23
conference, about 4500 protesters, some holding signs reading “system
change, not climate change,” gathered in the Rhineland coalfields in
Germany.
“Germany’s lignite mines are among the biggest coal mines in the world,”
Zane Sikulu, a Climate Warrior from Tonga, said in a statement. “If we
don’t shut them down, we have no chance as Pacific Islanders. We’re here
to protect our land, our culture, and our identities as Pacific people.”
Janna Aljets, a spokesperson for the environmental alliance Ende
Gelände, which helped organize the action, said in a statement: “On the
international stage, politicians and corporations present themselves as
climate saviors, while a few miles away, the climate is literally being
burned,”
“Fossil fuels must stay in the ground,” Aljets added. “We are here at
the scene of destruction to send out a clear signal for climate justice.”
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November 14, 2017 in Environment. Tags: climate
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