Precisely my response. But I have 51 year old and 43 year old daughters
who will be here 30 years from now and things don't sound very promising for
what life will be like then.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Abby Vincent
Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2015 8:28 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: COP21: What It Does-and Doesn't-Accomplish
OK, there is an upside to being old and not having grandchildren.
Abby
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Miriam Vieni
Sent: Sunday, December 13, 2015 2:30 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] COP21: What It Does-and Doesn't-Accomplish
COP21: What It Does-and Doesn't-Accomplish
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/cop_21_what_it_does_-_and_doesnt_-_accom
plish_20151212/
Posted on Dec 12, 2015
By John Atcheson / Common Dreams
A walkway near the COP21 climate change conference in Paris. (COP PARIS /
CC BY-SA 2.0) This piece originally ran on Common Dreams.
The deadline for coming up with an agreement at COP 21 [was] extended until
Saturday. But the penultimate draft of the agreement has been published,
and we now know the basics of what will emerge.
There are some positive things coming out of the meeting, but it's important
to understand what it does - and doesn't - accomplish in terms of avoiding
catastrophic climate change.
On the plus side the High Ambition Coalition picked up steam as the
conference came to a close. This is a group of nations who are advocating a
stringent reporting regime to measure the extent to which countries are
meeting their pledges, as well as limiting warming to no more than 1.5 C.
Led by the island nations, as the Meeting progressed, Canada, the US, the
EU, and other developed nations came together joined the coalition. On
Friday, Brazil joined the group. While the final wording on the overall goal
is still being hammered out, the agreement recognizes 1.5 C as a safer
target in several areas.
The bad news? 1.5 C is nothing more than aspirational. Here's why.
We can only emit about 200 billion more tonnes of carbon dioxide to have
even a 66% chance of staying below 1.5 C. Since we are emitting about 40
billion tonnes per year (about 44 billion US tons), we will blow through the
budget by 2020, the year in which the Paris agreements are to start being
implemented. In other words, that ship will have sailed before the Agreement
is in effect.
Now, about that 66% probability. A core precept of risk analysis and risk
management is that dangers which are irreversible, widespread and
consequential demand very high safety margins. Nothing could be more
consequential than the destruction of the climate we evolved in, and it's
irreversible in all but geologic time.
Given this, a goal built on something approaching a 100% probability of
safeguarding the climate would make more sense. Hell, even 90% seems ...
well . foolhardy. But the fact is, whether we choose a target of 1.5 C or 2
C, the target for a 90% margin of safety is gone. So we're now reduced to
playing Russian roulette with our future - but because we've delayed action
for so long, we've got bullets in two chambers, instead on one.
The only way a target of 1.5 C has any meaning whatsoever at this point, is
if we commit to extracting massive amounts of carbon from the
atmosphere-something we have no idea how to do, and something we have not
committed to doing.
Claims that the agreements coming out of Paris are "binding" are misleading.
What's binding are the pledges submitted as part of each participating
country's Intended Nationally Determined Contribution, or INDC. So far, 180
countries have submitted pledges. However, there is no mechanism that makes
achieving these pledges binding. That's about as meaningful as "Of course
I'll still love you in the morning."
As mentioned earlier, the high ambition coalition is advocating reporting
progress toward achieving goals, and this kind of transparency-in theory-can
make countries take those goals more seriously, but at this point, any
action is purely voluntary, and there are not sanctions for failing to act.
The agreement will NOT hold warming to 2 C, or even 2.7 degrees C.
Even assuming every country meets its pledges, if countries do not agree to
greater cuts after those being made in Paris, the world will likely warm by
3.5 C or more-perhaps as high as 4.6 C, which is more than 8 degrees F.
This is nothing less than catastrophic.
But even this devastating outcome ignores a mighty big elephant in the
global living room.
Scientists know that we are at or near thresholds which have/will trigger
feedbacks that will cause even more warming. For example, just 3 of these
known feedbacks, by themselves, would add about 2.5 C more warming on top of
the 3.5 resulting from the Paris agreements, bringing total warming to 6 C
or nearly 11 F. At this point, we're really talking about a different
planet, not simply a warmed up Earth.
And there are no fewer than 12 feedbacks that could amplify warming, so even
this could be an understatement.
What COP 21 Accomplished: Probably the best thing to come out of the Meeting
was the establishment of a framework in which the majority of the world came
together and reached agreements to cut back on carbon, and both developed
and developing nations recognized a shared responsibility to act.
Differentiation, which addresses how developed and developing nations share
responsibility and costs for mitigating and adapting to climate change,
remains a sticking point. But even here there's been progress, in that both
the developed and developing world recognized they must ultimately act
together to meet this challenge. And India, the world's fourth largest
emitter, has indicated it would consider a cap to its emissions if it
received financial support adequate to speed a transition to a no-carbon all
renewable energy system.
So while there is much work to be done, this Agreement will provide a
foundation to build on, and a framework for future progress.
What it did not: In terms of outcomes, there's an enormous-and
disastrous-gap between what was agreed to, and what was needed.
This gap is all the more dangerous in that the carbon budgets used to
establish permissible emissions of GHGs have essentially-and all but
surreptitiously-rewritten how much risk we are willing to impose on future
generations.
The reason we're doing it, is precisely because we failed to act in the
past, and using lower margins of safety make it appear as though we have
more time to act than we do. Suggesting that a 66% likelihood of actually
meeting our goals is acceptable is a form of intergenerational terrorism at
worst, an act of intergenerational immorality at best.
It's as if we were looking into the eyes of our grandchildren and asking
them to endure outlandish risks so that we might follow a slightly less
disruptive path.
In essence, by playing with the margins of safety we are willing to accept,
we are obscuring the urgency of acting now-right now-by increasing the risk
we're willing to pass on to our children and their children. This is
inexcusable, and it is the greatest failure of the entire COP process.
John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, an eco-thriller
and Book One of a Trilogy centered on global warming. His writing has
appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the
San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers. Atcheson's book reviews
are featured on Climateprogess.org.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
COP21: What It Does-and Doesn't-Accomplish
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/cop_21_what_it_does_-_and_doesnt_-_accom
plish_20151212/
Posted on Dec 12, 2015
By John Atcheson / Common Dreams
A walkway near the COP21 climate change conference in Paris. (COP PARIS / CC
BY-SA 2.0) This piece originally ran on Common Dreams.
The deadline for coming up with an agreement at COP 21 [was] extended until
Saturday. But the penultimate draft of the agreement has been published, and
we now know the basics of what will emerge.
There are some positive things coming out of the meeting, but it's important
to understand what it does - and doesn't - accomplish in terms of avoiding
catastrophic climate change.
On the plus side the High Ambition Coalition picked up steam as the
conference came to a close. This is a group of nations who are advocating a
stringent reporting regime to measure the extent to which countries are
meeting their pledges, as well as limiting warming to no more than 1.5 C.
Led by the island nations, as the Meeting progressed, Canada, the US, the
EU, and other developed nations came together joined the coalition. On
Friday, Brazil joined the group. While the final wording on the overall goal
is still being hammered out, the agreement recognizes 1.5 C as a safer
target in several areas.
The bad news? 1.5 C is nothing more than aspirational. Here's why.
We can only emit about 200 billion more tonnes of carbon dioxide to have
even a 66% chance of staying below 1.5 C. Since we are emitting about 40
billion tonnes per year (about 44 billion US tons), we will blow through the
budget by 2020, the year in which the Paris agreements are to start being
implemented. In other words, that ship will have sailed before the Agreement
is in effect.
Now, about that 66% probability. A core precept of risk analysis and risk
management is that dangers which are irreversible, widespread and
consequential demand very high safety margins. Nothing could be more
consequential than the destruction of the climate we evolved in, and it's
irreversible in all but geologic time.
Given this, a goal built on something approaching a 100% probability of
safeguarding the climate would make more sense. Hell, even 90% seems ...
well . foolhardy. But the fact is, whether we choose a target of 1.5 C or 2
C, the target for a 90% margin of safety is gone. So we're now reduced to
playing Russian roulette with our future - but because we've delayed action
for so long, we've got bullets in two chambers, instead on one.
The only way a target of 1.5 C has any meaning whatsoever at this point, is
if we commit to extracting massive amounts of carbon from the
atmosphere-something we have no idea how to do, and something we have not
committed to doing.
Claims that the agreements coming out of Paris are "binding" are misleading.
What's binding are the pledges submitted as part of each participating
country's Intended Nationally Determined Contribution, or INDC. So far, 180
countries have submitted pledges. However, there is no mechanism that makes
achieving these pledges binding. That's about as meaningful as "Of course
I'll still love you in the morning."
As mentioned earlier, the high ambition coalition is advocating reporting
progress toward achieving goals, and this kind of transparency-in theory-can
make countries take those goals more seriously, but at this point, any
action is purely voluntary, and there are not sanctions for failing to act.
The agreement will NOT hold warming to 2 C, or even 2.7 degrees C.
Even assuming every country meets its pledges, if countries do not agree to
greater cuts after those being made in Paris, the world will likely warm by
3.5 C or more-perhaps as high as 4.6 C, which is more than 8 degrees F.
This is nothing less than catastrophic.
But even this devastating outcome ignores a mighty big elephant in the
global living room.
Scientists know that we are at or near thresholds which have/will trigger
feedbacks that will cause even more warming. For example, just 3 of these
known feedbacks, by themselves, would add about 2.5 C more warming on top of
the 3.5 resulting from the Paris agreements, bringing total warming to 6 C
or nearly 11 F. At this point, we're really talking about a different
planet, not simply a warmed up Earth.
And there are no fewer than 12 feedbacks that could amplify warming, so even
this could be an understatement.
What COP 21 Accomplished: Probably the best thing to come out of the Meeting
was the establishment of a framework in which the majority of the world came
together and reached agreements to cut back on carbon, and both developed
and developing nations recognized a shared responsibility to act.
Differentiation, which addresses how developed and developing nations share
responsibility and costs for mitigating and adapting to climate change,
remains a sticking point. But even here there's been progress, in that both
the developed and developing world recognized they must ultimately act
together to meet this challenge. And India, the world's fourth largest
emitter, has indicated it would consider a cap to its emissions if it
received financial support adequate to speed a transition to a no-carbon all
renewable energy system.
So while there is much work to be done, this Agreement will provide a
foundation to build on, and a framework for future progress.
What it did not: In terms of outcomes, there's an enormous-and
disastrous-gap between what was agreed to, and what was needed.
This gap is all the more dangerous in that the carbon budgets used to
establish permissible emissions of GHGs have essentially-and all but
surreptitiously-rewritten how much risk we are willing to impose on future
generations.
The reason we're doing it, is precisely because we failed to act in the
past, and using lower margins of safety make it appear as though we have
more time to act than we do. Suggesting that a 66% likelihood of actually
meeting our goals is acceptable is a form of intergenerational terrorism at
worst, an act of intergenerational immorality at best.
It's as if we were looking into the eyes of our grandchildren and asking
them to endure outlandish risks so that we might follow a slightly less
disruptive path.
In essence, by playing with the margins of safety we are willing to accept,
we are obscuring the urgency of acting now-right now-by increasing the risk
we're willing to pass on to our children and their children. This is
inexcusable, and it is the greatest failure of the entire COP process.
John Atcheson is author of the novel, A Being Darkly Wise, an eco-thriller
and Book One of a Trilogy centered on global warming. His writing has
appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the
San Jose Mercury News and other major newspapers. Atcheson's book reviews
are featured on Climateprogess.org.
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