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Kyoto: A Citizens Guide to “Losing it Like Trudeau”
By Mike Kaulbars
December 19, 2011
Keeping a list, checking it twice
With respect to Trudeau I am thinking more in terms of “finding it” rather than “losing it.” Presumably Trudeau’s “losing it” refers to one’s composure or some such. I am thinking more in terms of moral outrage, sense of decency, one’s basic humanity, or any number of related ways of understanding what it means to be human. Then again, in the face of moral crimes such as were committed in Durban, perhaps losing ones composure is also evidence that one has not lost one’s humanity.
Suicide pact at Durban
By Gwynne Dyer
“A plan to save the planet for the future of our children and grandchildren? Don’t be fooled. It was an almost total failure.
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Over the past 15 years of climate negotiations there has been a steady decline in the seriousness of the response. The Kyoto Protocol in 1997 committed the developed countries to stabilize their emissions and then cut them by an average of six percent by 2012. Developing countries were exempt from any controls, because they were not then emitting very much. And deeper emission cuts would come in a second phase of Kyoto, beginning in 2012.“
Dyer is quite right, the seriousness of climate negotiations and the willingness to commit to actually doing something has decreased in reverse proportion to the gravity and urgency of the situation. Durban not merely needed to extend Kyoto, it needed to radically adjust the timetable to be in line with the scientific facts that we have learned since 1997. On that basis alone Durban was a staggering failure of epic proportions.
As if that weren’t enough Canada promptly states it’s intent to pull out of the Kyoto Accord entirely. Jon Bennet at Rabble dissects the alleged reasoning in “Kyoto: The Conservative government’s shameful action“, which as mentioned before, are complete nonsense.
After Durban: We must pull the emergency brake before the 1 per cent drive us off the cliff
“This is now about political power. Forget speaking truth to power. We are going to need to take power, and transform power. It’s an almost unbelievable challenge in front of us, especially the younger generations.
Those of us who grew up in the neo-liberal years were told again and again that politics was the art of the possible, but now we face a situation where we must do the impossible.
Walter Benjamin once wrote: “Perhaps revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake.” Pulling that emergency brake today will require a global movement like we have never seen before.
We are going to need a revolution. An energy revolution. A social revolution. And a revolution in international relations — waging war on climate change, instead of war on countries with the misfortunate of sitting on top of oil and other coveted resources.
To achieve all this we are going to need to summon an unprecedented collective will to take back the public sphere, including the media, and we will have to re-imagine our democracy, our cities, our societies, and our daily lives.
But our first task is clear: Those who have driven us to this perilous point — the 1 per cent, the rich, selfish, shortsighted, uncultured and ignorant ruling class of our times — must be removed from behind the wheel once and for all. (And have their keys taken away, too, for good measure.)
System change, not climate change — this is indeed our only option left.”
Why Aren’t More of Us Losing it Like Trudeau?
[Continue reading: Kyoto: A Citizens Guide to “Losing it Like Trudeau”]Kyoto Accord quick tour: Taiwanese animation on Canada’s Kyoto betrayal
“Crazy Taiwanese animation explains Canada’s Crazy Kyoto withdrawal“
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The Canadian Position summarized simply
Marcus Brigstocke uses this analogy to explain the climate policies of the industrialized west, and it particularly applies to Canada.
The politics of climate are very much like when a large group of people go out to dinner together. Some had only water, most only a soup and/or a salad, a few had a full meal, and a couple arrived late but then had an expensive desert and a brandy, and so on.
Canada is the one who had soup, salad, two appetizers, an entree, a full gourmet main course, three side dishes, desert, artisan coffee, an aperitif, a bottle of vintage wine, a glass of port and a brandy. Now that the bill has arrived Canada is insisting that the only ‘fair’ solution is if everyone pays an equal share.
Yes, we really are that appallingly self-serving and ignorant.
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Why it matters
Remember Kyoto? Most Nations Don’t
Ban pleads for Kyoto in warning of climate deadlock
“While Kyoto alone will not solve today’s climate problems, it is a foundation to build on with important institutions. It provides the framework that markets sorely need. … It is important that we do not create a vacuum.”
Kyoto’s death would leave a toxic legacy among developing countries, which see the treaty as a totem of solidarity between rich and poor, and leave the UNFCCC with only a voluntary approach for taming carbon emissions.”
Meles: Durban Summit Must Salvage ‘Essence of Kyoto’
“Given the current global financial environment, Meles indicated Tuesday’s strategy conference had concluded that this is not the time for the hard positions which led to failure of previous climate summits.
“We are going to Durban to negotiate, not to issue declarations of principle,” Meles said. “So we have discussed ways of us engaging all the key actors flexibly. But of course flexibility does not mean lack of principle. You have to have your principle as an anchor, around which you can engage others flexibly.”
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We stayed in Durban so that we could make a mess of it
[Continue reading: Kyoto Accord quick tour: Taiwanese animation on Canada’s Kyoto betrayal]Arctic Methane Emergency
Here are two important stories, quite possibly the most important I’ve posted since I began running the WestCoastClimateEquity blog in September 2008:
First, there’s the piece in The Independent by Steve Connor, Science Editor.
Shock as retreat of Arctic sea ice releases deadly greenhouse gas
Russian research team astonished after finding ‘fountains’ of methane bubbling to surface
GISS Arctic Surface Temperature Anomaly for November 2010
Dramatic and unprecedented plumes of methane – a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide – have been seen bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean by scientists undertaking an extensive survey of the region.
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
In an exclusive interview with The Independent, Igor Semiletov, of the Far Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said that he has never before witnessed the scale and force of the methane being released from beneath the Arctic seabed.
“Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing,” Dr Semiletov said. “I was most impressed by the sheer scale and high density of the plumes. Over a relatively small area we found more than 100, but over a wider area there should be thousands of them.”
Scientists estimate that there are hundreds of millions of tonnes of methane gas locked away beneath the Arctic permafrost, which extends from the mainland into the seabed of the relatively shallow sea of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. One of the greatest fears is that with the disappearance of the Arctic sea-ice in summer, and rapidly rising temperatures across the entire region, which are already melting the Siberian permafrost, the trapped methane could be suddenly released into the atmosphere leading to rapid and severe climate change.
Click here to read more of this article and view a map of the area of concern.
This leads us to look at what the Arctic Methane Emergency Group is doing.
They’ve been at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) 2011 Fall Meeting in San Fransisco, and on December 8, Professor Peter Wadhams (Professor of Ocean Physics, Cambridge University) and Arctic Methane Emergency Group Chairman, John Nissen gave a presentation on the need for geoengineering in the Arctic to prevent runaway climate change.
And here are some of their conclusions, giving us great hope.
What is an Appropriate Response for a Planetary Emergency?
1. First and foremost, the meltdown of the Arctic summer sea ice, with the Arctic already emitting additional methane to the atmosphere, must be declared a planetary emergency.
2. The immediate emergency response is to stabilize Arctic sea ice and Arctic carbon by cooling the Arctic. This is certainly doable and can be done safely.
3. We also have to immediately and drastically cut global CO2 and methane emissions, which can be done. The science is definite on the need to reach zero emissions; we have to rapidly develop the capacity to extract CO2 directly from the air, which can be done by several methods, both biological and technological.
4. To achieve these urgent goals, it is necessary (as has been urged by peace and social groups for many years) that the vast amounts of funds and human resources devoted to the military and aerospace industries be diverted to the great enterprise of stabilizing the Arctic, protecting our planet, and rescuing our future.
5. There are, of course, also many personal lifestyle changes that will help reduce global carbon emissions and it is hoped that people will take advantage of them all when they become aware of the dire emergency we are now in.
6. The Arctic Methane Emergency Group is investigating all possible options for developing the capacity to safely cool the Arctic within a couple of years.
See their Brochure flipbook and have a look at their Workshop Report, where they identify means to reduce the threat of methane being emitted from sources in the Arctic in such quantities as to have a major impact on global warming. These include:
- cooling the Arctic, regionally or locally, using Solar Radiation Management (SRM-type geoengineering);
- management of the methane environment at the local level (see below); and
- capture or destruction of methane, already in the atmosphere.
[Continue reading: Arctic Methane Emergency]
COP17: Climate Change Terrorism is “Politically Pragmatic”
U.S. Climate Envoy Todd Stern: Staying Below The 2°C Threshold Is Just A ‘Guidepost’
Over at ThinkProgress Brad Johnson dissects the US position at the climate talks:
“At a press conference on Wednesday, top U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern explained to reporters in Durban that he sees the goal of limiting global warming to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — more than double the amount of existing warming — as a “guidepost,” instead of “some kind of mandatory obligation”:
“I think that we look at two degrees as an important and serious goal which ought to guide what we do, which ought to guide the action that we take in order to try and attain it. That is — so it’s important, it’s serious, and it’s a guidepost I would say. That is still different from looking at it as an operational cap that you must meet, and that if you, you know, see yourself off of it based on science, then you have some kind of mandatory obligation to change what you’re doing, whether you’re in the United States, or Europe, or China, wherever you might be. I think you have — I mean, I think as we look at science, and we see the trajectories, it ought to inform our sense of what needs to be done. It might well cause us or anybody else to say, jeez, we need to do more. But we don’t see it as akin to a national target.
Watch it:
At the beginning of the Durban climate talks, U.S. climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing brushed aside concerns that commitments made under the Cancun agreements in 2010 put the world on a pathway much higher than 2°C, arguing there are “essentially an infinite number of pathways” that allow stronger cuts starting in 2020 to “stay below 2 degrees.” Pershing later conceded that it is “desirable to do a great deal earlier” but argued the negotiators have to be “politically pragmatic.”
Infinite ways to spell ‘i n s a n i t y’?
“… it’s a guidepost I would say.”
Right, and “Warning: lethally toxic high voltage radioactive explosive” is just a health tip.
Stern’s statement is trivially true; any information is a “guidepost.” This particular guidepost informs us that 2oC is almost certainly catastrophic and knowingly going above it is insane. The cavalier manner with which he tosses the statement out, as though we were talking about highway signs advising motorists about rest stops, is criminally irresponsible.
OK, that’s not entirely fair. Departments of Transportation generally take rest stop signs far more seriously than our governments regard climate change. If you think that last statement was unfair, consider how most highway rest stops actually have visible, appropriate and accurate signage. Compare that to our various governments inaction on climate change, QED.
” … infinite number of pathways” that allow stronger cuts starting in 2020 to “stay below 2 degrees.”
Actually it’s entirely possible that we have already missed the 2oC window of opportunity. If we haven’t, 2015 is almost certainly too late, and to imagine we will do it in 2020 is delusional.
Stern is effectively saying that while large cuts in carbon emissions are impossible now, total and virtually instantaneous de-carbonization in 2020 can be accomplished any number of ways. Just what mythical being with magical powers does he imagine is going to make that happen? It’s an absurd claim to make.
“…as we look at science, and we see the trajectories, it ought to inform our sense of what needs to be done.”
Yes, it ought to, so why isn’t it? Why do the Durban positions of the USA and Canada look like they are guided by the science of the 1950s? To invoke science as somehow informing what is/has happened in Durban is a ludicrous obscenity.
Statement of the Obvious
So ” … negotiators have to be “politically pragmatic.”?
Let me see if I got this right:
There is a lack of political will for change because the public does not support real action. It seems that after years of being lied to about how serious the problem really is (or indeed if there even is a problem), the public does not seem to understand just how serious the problem really is. Is that it in a nutshell?
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