Durban deal will not avert dangerous climate change by AP, IPS, One Climate, Guardian News & agencies 2:50am 11th Dec, 2011   Dec 12, 2011    Climate deal keeps UN talks on track but lacks cuts in emissions scientists say are needed now. (Associated Press)    The hard-fought deal at a global climate conference in South Africa keeps talks alive but doesn’t address the core problem: The world’s biggest carbon polluters aren’t willing to cut emissions of greenhouse gases enough to stave off dangerous levels of global warming.    “We avoided a train wreck and we got some useful incremental decisions,” said Alden Meyer, of the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists.    “The bad news is that we did very little here to affect the emissions curve which is accelerating, and the impacts of climate change which are climbing day by day.”    Scientists say that if levels of greenhouse gases continue to rise, eventually the world’s climate will reach a series of tipping points, with irreversible melting of ice sheets, serious sea levels rises, droughts, flooding and more extreme weather patterns.    The two-decade-long climate negotiations have been focused on preventing global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.2 degrees Celsius) above current levels by the end of this century.    A report released before the Durban talks by the U.N. Environment Programme said greenhouse gas emissions need to peak before 2020 for the world to have a shot of reaching that target. It said that’s doable only if nations raise their emissions pledges. In Durban, they did not.    The deal extends by five years the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that has binding emissions targets for some industrial countries but not the world’s biggest carbon polluters, China, India and the United States.    The Durban agreement also envisions a new accord with binding targets for all countries to take effect in 2020. And it sets up the bodies that will collect, govern and distribute monies to poor countries suffering the effects of climate change.    “But the core question of whether more than 190 nations can cooperate in order to peak and bring down emissions to the necessary level by 2020 remains open — it is a high-risk strategy for the planet and its people,” UNEP chief Achim Steiner said.    Climate talks have been bogged down by rifts between rich and poor, between fully industrialized nations and emerging economies, about how to share the burden of reducing greenhouse emissions.    Held back by a skeptical Republican Congress, the U.S. doesn’t want to commit to any binding deal unless it also imposes strict emissions targets on China and India. The latter insist their targets should be more lenient because, historically, the West has a bigger share of the blame for man-made warming.    Meanwhile, the atmosphere keeps filling up with heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels. Figures from the U.N. weather agency show the three most powerful greenhouse gases reached record levels last year and were increasing at an ever-faster rate.    Dec 11, 2011    Durban deal will not avert catastrophic climate change, say scientists and environmentalists. (Guardian News)    Scientists and environmental groups warned that urgent action was still needed to rescue the world from climate change, despite the deal sealed in Durban after two weeks of talks.    Andy Atkins, executive director of Friends of the Earth, said: "This plan leaves the planet hurtling towards catastrophic climate change. If Durban is to be a historic stepping stone towards success the world must urgently agree ambitious targets to slash emissions."    Although governments managed to find a last-minute deal that should lead to the first legally binding global agreement on climate change covering developed and developing countries, they did not discuss whether their pledges to cut emissions would prevent dangerous levels of global warming.    Under the Durban agreement, governments will now spend four years negotiating how far and how fast each country should cut carbon emissions.    Atkins said the science was clear – the current emissions targets set by developed and developing countries were inadequate, and if they were not strengthened, the poorest would be hurt most.    "Millions of the poorest people around the globe are already facing the impacts of climate change – countries like the US who have done most to create this crisis must now take the lead in tackling it," he said. Other environmental groups and scientists agreed.    "What is positive in Durban is that governments have reopened the door to a legally binding global agreement involving the world" major emitters, a door which many thought had been shut at the Copenhagen conference in 2009," said Bill Hare, director at Climate Action Tracker.    "What remains to be done is to take more ambitious actions to reduce emissions, and until this is done we are still headed to over 3C warming. There are still no new pledges on the table and the process agreed in Durban towards raising the ambition and increasing emission reductions is uncertain in its outcome."    Bob Ward of the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics said the current pledges from countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions were not enough to hold global temperatures to 2C above pre-industrial levels, beyond which scientists say climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible.    He said that, according to the United Nations environment programme, countries current emissions pledges would collectively mean that global annual emissions of greenhouse gases would be about 50bn tonnes in 2020, similar to the total in 2011.    But to have a 50-50 chance of avoiding global warming over 2C, scientists estimate that global annual emissions would need to fall to about 44bn tonnes in 2020, to less than 35bn tonnes in 2030 and less than 20bn tonnes in 2050.    Ward said: "That means the current pledges for emissions reductions are not consistent with the two degrees target, although they would, if delivered, move us halfway between "business as usual" and the path on which we would need to be in 2020."    At the climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009, nations failed to write a treaty though they did sign up to a lesser form of agreement, in which the world" biggest emitters – developed and developing – set out targets to curb their carbon by 2020.    However, the targets that have been set will be subject to review from 2013-15 to decide whether they should be toughened, especially in the light of a scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change due out in 2014.    Celine Charveriat, director of campaigns and advocacy for Oxfam said "Governments must immediately turn their attention to raising the ambition of their emissions cuts targets and filling the Green Climate Fund. Unless countries ratchet up their emissions cuts urgently we could still be in store for a 10-year timeout on the action we need to stay under two degrees of temperature increase."    Greenpeace International director Kumi Naidoo said: "The chance of averting catastrophic climate change is slipping through our hands with every passing year that nations fail to agree on a rescue plan for the planet."    "There are still no new pledges and the process agreed in Durban towards raising the ambition and increasing emission reductions is uncertain in its outcome," said Bill Hare, Director of Climate Analytics, a non-profit climate science advisory group based in Germany.    COP 17 President, South Africa" Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, had pleaded with countries to put their self-interest aside "for the greater good of the planet and its people."    Even if a strong legally binding treaty is agreed to in 2015, it will have to ratified by governments before going into force. It took several years to ratify the Kyoto Protocol that the U.S. backed and then failed to ratify following the election of George W Bush.    Waiting until 2020 to make major cuts means those cuts will have to be far deeper and far more costly to have any hope of keeping temperatures below two degrees Celsius, said Bill Hare, director at Climate Action Tracker.    "The world’s collective level of ambition on emissions reductions must be substantially increased, and soon," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Powerful speeches and carefully worded decisions can’t amend the laws of physics. The atmosphere responds to one thing, and one thing only – emissions," said Meyer.    In a statement, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon claimed the deal represented "an important advance in our work on climate change".    But the deals language left some warning that the wording left huge loopholes for countries to avoid tying their emissions to legal constraints, and noted that there was no mention of penalties.    "They haven"t reached a real deal," said Samantha Smith, of WWF International. "They watered things down so everyone could get on board."    Many developing countries lamented the deal- for failing to address what they called the most urgent issue, to move faster and deeper in cutting carbon emissions.    Leading scientists say that unless those emissions - chiefly carbon dioxide from power generation and industry - level out and reverse within a few years, the earth will be set on a irreversible path of rising temperatures that lead to ever greater climate catastrophes.    December 11, 2011    Climate deal delays new concerted effort on greenhouse gases. (LA Times)    Negotiators at the climate change meeting in South Africa struck a deal to avoid the collapse of international negotiations over global warming, averting the worst fears of environmental advocates but doing little to immediately advance the cause of limiting greenhouse gas emissions.    The agreement in effect would postpone new concerted global action on climate change for at least eight years. The mood at the United Nations gathering in Durban was somber as the talks ended, participants said, largely because many questions remained unanswered and the risk of a catastrophic increase in global average temperature had not been reduced.    Under the deal, nations committed themselves to talks aimed at reaching a legally binding agreement by 2015 that would limit emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming. The limits would not go into effect until 2020 at the earliest.    Most countries have agreed to voluntary emission-reduction goals that scientists and environmentalists consider too modest. Without significant cuts in greenhouse gases, the world would be on course for a jump in global temperature of at least 3.5 degrees, which would profoundly disturb water, weather and agriculture almost everywhere, according to widely accepted climate models.    Research has shown that poor nations, particularly in South Asia and Africa, will bear the brunt of the damage from global warming, in part because they are more dependent on agriculture than wealthier countries.    “The Durban outcome is useful in that it shows the way forward to a legal agreement,” said Steve Herz, senior attorney with the Sierra Club"s International Climate program. “But it is profoundly disappointing in that it does little to spur governments to act on the underlying problem. It"s as if we spent all day negotiating the terms of a contract with a plumber, while watching a burst pipe flood our kitchen.”    The talks occurred against a backdrop of increasingly grim climate news, including a finding that greenhouse gas emissions in 2010 jumped by the greatest amount on record.    Facing the prospect of widespread harm, some of which has already begun, developing countries and nongovernmental groups pushed for the nearly 200 participants at the two-week Durban conference to drop their incremental approach to reducing emissions. But major emitters — particularly India, the U.S. and China, threw up roadblocks to the urgently required action.    Dec 2011    Climate change is a matter of justice, say Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson.    Before the Copenhagen climate change summit two years ago, the two of us sat together in Cape Town to listen to African farmers from different countries tell us how climate change was undermining their livelihoods.    Each explained how floods and drought, and the lack of regular seasons to sow and reap, were outside their normal experience. Their fears are shared by subsistence farmers and indigenous people worldwide – the people who are bearing the brunt of climate shocks, even though they played no part in causing them.    Since then the situation for poor people in Africa and elsewhere has deteriorated even further. In its latest report, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concludes that it is virtually certain that, in global terms, hot days have become hotter and occur more often; indeed, they have increased in frequency by a factor of 10 in most regions of the world.    Moreover, the brutal paradox of climate change is that heavy precipitation is occurring more often as well, increasing the risk of flooding. Since 2003, east Africa has had the eight warmest years on record which is no doubt contributing to the severe famine that now afflicts 13 million people in the Horn of Africa.    These are the consequences that a mere 1C of warming above pre-industrial levels have wrought. The UN Environment Programme"s recently published report, Bridging the Emissions Gap, shows that over the course of this century, warming will likely rise to 4C unless we take stronger action to cut emissions. Yet the latest evidence demonstrates that we are not acting – the International Energy Agency"s World Energy Report 2011 reveals that CO2 emissions have rebounded to a record high.    Where is the global leadership that must respond urgently? We desperately need a global deal.    Climate change is a global problem: if countries are not confident that others are addressing it, they will not feel an imperative to act themselves. So, having a legal framework with clear and common rules to which all countries are committed is critically important – and the only assurance we have that action will be taken to protect the most vulnerable.    The first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol expires at the end of 2012. So the European Union and the other Kyoto parties (the United States never ratified the agreement, and the protocol"s terms asked little of China, India, and other emerging powers) must commit to a second commitment period, in order to ensure that this legal framework is maintained.    At the same time, all countries must acknowledge that extending the lifespan of the Kyoto protocol will not solve the problem of climate change, and that a new or additional legal framework that covers all countries is needed. The Durban meeting must agree to initiate negotiations towards this end – with a view to concluding a new legal instrument by 2015 at the latest.    All of this is not only possible; but also necessary, because the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy makes economic, social, and environmental sense. The problem is that making it happen requires political will, which, unfortunately, seems in short supply. Climate change is a matter of justice. The richest countries caused the problem, but it is the world"s poorest who are already suffering from its effects. The international community must commit to righting that wrong.    Political leaders must think inter-generationally. They need to imagine the world of 2050, with its 9 billion people, and take the right decisions now to ensure that our children and grandchildren inherit a liveable world.    • Mary Robinson is the former president of Ireland and president of the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice. Archbishop Desmond Tutu is the archbishop emeritus of Cape Town and Nobel Peace laureate.    December 6, 2011    World "Heading for 3.5 C Warming" reveals German Study. (AFP)    Current pledges for curbing carbon emissions will doom the world to global warming of 3.5 C, massively overshooting the UN target of 2 C, researchers reported at the climate talks here on Tuesday.    Output of heat-trapping carbon gases is rising so fast that governments have only four years left to avert a massive extra bill for meeting the two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) target, they said.    "The current pledges are heading towards a global emissions pathway that will take warming to 3.5 C goal (6.3 F)," according to an estimate issued by a consortium of German researchers. The world is on a "high-warming, high-cost, high-risk pathway," they said.    The report, compiled by Climate Analytics and Ecofys, which are German firms that specialize in carbon data, was issued on the sidelines of the 194-nation UN talks in Durban.    The 2 C (3.6 F) goal, initiated at the Copenhagen Summit of 2009, was enshrined at last year"s conference of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).    Accompanying these objectives is a roster of pledges by nation-states about what they intend to do to rein in their emissions. The promises mark the first time that all countries declared specific carbon-curbing actions. But the measures are not subject to any international compliance regime and do not incur any penalties if they are not met.    The report said current pledges would lead to global emissions in 2020 of 55 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) or its equivalent in 2020. This is 11 billion tonnes above the 44 billion tonnes consistent with meeting the 2 C (3.6 F) objective smoothly.    The figures carried in the report concur with similar estimates, published last month by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the UN Environment Program (UNEP).    Scientists caution that 2 C (3.6 F) is no guarantee of a safe haven against climate change and consider 3.5 C (6.3 F) to be an extremely dangerous scenario.    It would badly worsen droughts, flood and storms and affect sea levels, spelling famine and homelessness for tens of millions.    * One Climate offerred live interactive coverage of the United Nations Climate Talks in Durban - with multimedia, interviews, analysis, live blogs, commentary, videos from a global civil society perspective.    http://oneworldgroup.org/oneclimate-tv    * Visit the link below to access our Durban interactive coverage.    * Terra Viva and Inter Press Service are also offering coverage from a Global South perspective in a number of differing languages. http://www.ips.org/TV/cop17/ Visit the related web page
	Next (more recent) news item
	Next (older) news item