[Going Green] Evidently 200 Countries Agree with Importance of Climate Issues

roxxfan · Dec 12, 2015

http://news.yahoo.com/final-push-landmark-climate-deal-end-fossil-fuel-040818222.html?nf=1

World seals landmark climate accord, marking turn from fossil fuels

By Alister Doyle and Barbara Lewis

PARIS (Reuters) - Global climate envoys agreed a landmark accord on Saturday, setting the course for a "historic" transformation of the world's fossil fuel-driven economy within decades in a bid to arrest global warming.

At the tail end of the hottest year on record and after four years of fraught U.N. talks often pitting the interests of rich nations against poor, imperiled island states against rising economic powerhouses, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius took just minutes to declare the pact adopted to the standing applause and whistles of delegates from almost 200 nations.

Hailed as the first truly global climate deal, committing both rich and poor nations to reining in rising emissions blamed for warming the planet, it sets out a sweeping long-term goal of eliminating net man-made greenhouse gas output this century.

It also creates a system to encourage nations to step up voluntary domestic efforts to curb emissions, and provides billions more dollars to help poor nations cope with the transition to a greener economy.

Calling it "ambitious and balanced", Fabius said the accord would mark a "historic turning point" in efforts to avert the potentially disastrous consequences of an overheated planet.

In some ways its success was assured before the summit began: 187 nations have submitted detailed national plans for how they will contain the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, commitments that are the core of the Paris deal.

While leaving each country to pursue those measures on its own, the agreement finally sets a common vision and course of action after years of bickering over how to move forward.

(Reporting By Emmanuel Jarry, Bate Felix, Lesley Wroughton, Nina Chestney, Richard Valdmanis, Valerie Volcovici, Bruce Wallace and David Stanway; Editing by David Evans and Clelia Oziel)

B-Bob · Dec 12, 2015

Thanks, OP. While we are blessed to have a few resident members of the BBS who are smarter and more knowledgeable than 200 nations combined -- brave souls who see through the words of climate activists -- we must regret that these key individuals were not invited to the Paris discussions.

Also,

Bobbythegreat · Dec 12, 2015

WE DIDN'T LISTEN!!!!

B-Bob · Dec 12, 2015

Here comes one now!

bigtexxx · Dec 12, 2015

Please explain what exactly is "binding" and how it will be binding.

Commodore · Dec 12, 2015

they'll all return home on their private jets and giant motorcades, but your SUV is the real problem

Thankfully, there is nothing binding here. Much as Obama would wish, we don't empower a single individual to have this much control over our lives.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p>"Raise your hand if you're wealthy and you want the middle and lower classes to pay higher energy prices!" <a href="https://t.co/X0S4HN5JUi" title="http://twitter.com/CounterMoonbat/status/675770256086855680/photo/1">pic.twitter.com/X0S4HN5JUi</a></p>— Countermoonbat (@CounterMoonbat) <a href="https://twitter.com/CounterMoonbat/status/675770256086855680" data-datetime="2015-12-12T20:12:38+00:00">December 12, 2015</a></blockquote>
<script src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

B-Bob · Dec 12, 2015

random twitter guy with beard said: ↑

spectacularly myopic and dumb tweet about "raise your hand"
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Raise tweet submit finger if you want a bunch of the poorest people in the world to live under the water line. Thanks! I knew we could count on ya.

DudeWah · Dec 12, 2015

B-Bob said: ↑

Raise tweet submit finger if you want a bunch of the poorest people in the world to live under the water line. Thanks! I knew we could count on ya.
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Sucks what's gonna happen to Bangladesh.

It's far away though, so who cares about them, right? I wonder what the climate issues deniers feelings will be about possible "climate refugees" that may very well become a reality.

B-Bob · Dec 12, 2015

DudeWah said: ↑

Sucks what's gonna happen to Bangladesh.

It's far away though, so who cares about them, right? I wonder what the climate issues deniers feelings will be about possible "climate refugees" that may very well become a reality.
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Right you are, but fear not. There are plans to make the country both impenetrable for refugees and also unappealing as a destination for them anyway.

It may just work!! Have faith, and vote Trump.

AroundTheWorld · Dec 12, 2015

It's good that they made that deal, but it's questionable whether it will make any difference at all, since there are no sanctions.

Cohete Rojo · Dec 12, 2015

So they are all vegans, right?

MojoMan · Dec 12, 2015

So, what tangible changes is this going to mandate that will actually be implemented here in the US?

I hear the lefties all hooting and hollering, but I do not get the sense that there is any meat in this sandwich. So, where's the beef?

Gutter Snipe · Dec 12, 2015

DudeWah said: ↑

Sucks what's gonna happen to Bangladesh.

It's far away though, so who cares about them, right? I wonder what the climate issues deniers feelings will be about possible "climate refugees" that may very well become a reality.
Click to expand...

Nothing is going to happen to Bangladesh... Because people are completely capable of dealing with the trivial increases of 3 mm of sea level rise a year. If you really care about poor people in developing countries, subsidize fossil fuel use and let them develop their economies. Massive use of natural resources is how we got where we are today.

But no, the green pushers want transfer payments and to restrict fossil fuel use. Transfer payments always benefit the rich in developing countries and very rarely the poor. Face it, they usually have a messed up situation because of corruption to begin with. The fact is, for anyone who sincerely believes in man-made catastrophic global warming, the third world reaching par with the west is a nightmare. Think of billions of more consumers polluting mother earth!

I'd rather see them develop and reach some of the level of creature comforts that we have. The green movement has yet to prove to me that their fear of of CO2 is worth hurting our economy or limiting fossil fuel use in developing countries.

bigtexxx · Dec 12, 2015

bigtexxx said: ↑

Please explain what exactly is "binding" and how it will be binding.
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Can somebody please answer this? I honestly would like to know, and I haven't been able to find it in all the media reports out today. All those have is a lot of liberal self congratulation and backslapping.

DudeWah · Dec 12, 2015

Gutter Snipe said: ↑

Nothing is going to happen to Bangladesh... Because people are completely capable of dealing with the trivial increases of 3 mm of sea level rise a year. If you really care about poor people in developing countries, subsidize fossil fuel use and let them develop their economies. Massive use of natural resources is how we got where we are today.
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You're wrong. On what basis do you claim that? Bangladesh is already experiencing issues due to climate change.

Also I'm not sure where you're getting your "3mm a year" info. Almost all case studies I've seen have mentioned something between 6-10 mm. Furthermore, it may be "trivial" to you. But, it's not anywhere near trivial at all for the citizens of a country that is barely above sea-level to start with.

In Bangladesh, 40% of productive land is projected to be lost in the southern region of Bangladesh for a 65cm sea level rise by the 2080s. About 20 million people in the coastal areas of Bangladesh are already affected by salinity in drinking water.
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http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/pr...re-floods-and-cyclones-world-bank-report-says

I'm not gonna lie. I cant take what you're saying seriously because of your refusal to acknowledge an actual issue that will very likely become even more of a reality than it already is.

Here's another report:

Parul Akter travelled across Bangladesh to escape the flood waters, but they seem to have followed her. The shack she shares with her husband and four children in Dhaka, the nation’s capital, sits on the edge of the sprawling Korail slum – next to a lake. When it rains, dank water sloshes into their shelter. Only the bed, raised up on bricks, stays dry. “This room is all we have, so we need to stay here no matter what happens,” said Akter.

Seven years ago, a monsoon flood left nothing standing in their village, located in Bhola on the country’s south-west coast. “We had no option but to climb up the banks with our belongings immediately,” said Akter. “Within a week, we moved to Dhaka to start a new life.”

Every day, some 2,000 people settle in the Bangladeshi capital. It’s nothing new – for generations the city has been a magnet for men and women escaping rural poverty. But now there’s another driver that experts say has accelerated the race to the capital: the Earth’s changing climate, which has already made life extremely difficult in stretches of this pancake-flat country threaded with rivers. In the coming decades, millions more “climate refugees” around the world are expected to make similar journeys. In a cruel irony, many will wind up in cities even more ill-equipped to withstand the changing climate.

Bangladesh contributes just 0.4 metric tonnes per capita to the carbon emissions fuelling climate change (the US produces 17 and the UK 7.1), but will suffer its effects badly. Within three decades, the country is expected to be at least 2C hotter. By 2080, the seas could be 2ft higher.

The glaciers in the Himalayas will melt faster, sending more floodwaters to batter the Bay of Bengal. Cyclones will wrack the coast more frequently, and with more intensity. Salty seawater will pollute drinking supplies. Fertile land will be destroyed.

In a cruel irony, many refugees will wind up in cities even more ill-equipped to withstand the changing climate

Some of this is already happening. There have not been many studies indisputably tying Bangladesh’s rural exodus to climate. But research indicates that the majority of migrants hail from coastal areas that are already experiencing rising sea levels, increased salinity, destructive floods and cyclones. At least 400,000 people move to Dhaka every year, according to the World Bank, while the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates that 70% of Dhaka’s slum-dwellers moved there fleeing some sort of environmental shock.

In 2012, A S Moniruzzaman Khan, the director of the Centre for Climate Change and Environmental Research at BRAC University, tracked 1,500 families migrating to cities, mostly Dhaka.

Almost all cited the changing environment as the biggest reason for their decision. They were struggling to find fresh water to drink, as rising seas spilled into rivers.

“Ten years back, the area was freshwater – now it is not,” Khan said. He heard of women and children having to walk an extra five hours each day to find clean water. The task was considered too dangerous, so men went instead – taking a sizeable chunk out of the earnings of the family’s main breadwinner. “If you provide water, this migration issue would probably never come,” said Khan.

It’s not just Bangladesh. All over the world, people are or will be on the move – in Africa, largely due to drought; in Asia, floods. By 2060, there could be between 25 million and 1 billion environmental migrants. And cities will be their primary destination. Foresight, a UK government research body, says that by 2060 there will be 192 million more people living in vulnerable urban coastal floodplains, mainly in Asia.

“Those moving to water-stressed or low-lying coastal cities in developing countries may paradoxically find themselves exposed to greater climate-change related risks,” a 2014 report by IOM reads.

Part of the problem is population. Asia’s megacities show no signs of shrinking, even as rising sea levels render them more vulnerable to storm surges.

A 2011 study of the 20 most populous cities expected to be exposed to coastal flooding by 2070 placed Dhaka third, behind Mumbai and Calcutta. Also in the top 10 are Guangzhou, Ho Chi Min City, Shanghai, Bangkok and Yangon. Miami is the only city in a developed country to feature on the list.

But despite the challenges, solutions for environmental migrants rarely feature on urban development plans. Climate refugees still have no legal standing under international law. No binding global agreements contain provisions for them, despite the first assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990 suggesting that “the gravest effects of climate change may be those on human migration”.

Specialists had hoped that the climate talks in Paris starting on 30 November would persuade countries to prioritise the issue. But environmental migration has reportedly been removed from the final agenda, though it could be reintroduced during negotiations.

Suriya Begum, an 18-year-old who moved to a slum in Dhaka from the southern coast in search of a better life. Photograph: Munir Uz Zaman/AFP/Getty Images

‘Every city has a carrying capacity’

In Dhaka, meanwhile, a teeming megacity of more than 15 million people packed into a 325 sq km radius, the climate refugees are finding a city where everything is clogged – from roads and pavements to rivers and drains.

The slums, already home to hundreds of thousands, are expanding rapidly. Within two decades, the city’s population could double to 30 million.

Within three decades, Bangladesh is expected to be at least 2C hotter. By 2080, the seas could be 2ft higher

“Every boat has a carrying capacity, every city has a carrying capacity,” said Sarder Shafiqul Alam, a senior researcher at the International Centre for Climate Change and Development and Bangladesh’s representative at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Asian Climate Change Resilience Network. “If that carrying capacity is over-burdened and over-burdened, what will happen? Boat will capsize. City will do something like that.”

People coming to Dhaka after environmental disasters face more problems, he said. “They’re not getting enough safe water to drink; they’re not getting sanitation facilities.”

In yet another irony, even though Dhaka is prone to flooding, it is also running dry. About 90% of the city’s water supplies come from ground reserves, which are depleted by three metres a year. There’s a supply-demand gap of 500m litres a day, according to a 2014 report, leading to chronic shortages and protests in the summer months.

Long-term groundwater depletion causes the earth to sink, which exacerbates flooding, a major problem in Dhaka. It can also lead to the intrusion of salty water into the supply – the same problem that contributes to rural-urban migration.

On the face of it, climate change is poised to be the latest disaster to cripple Bangladesh, a nation that has been beset by compounding crises since it was founded in 1971.

But Bangladeshis are accustomed to bouncing back. Or, as Khan puts it: “Our people like to face challenges.”

The country boasts the world’s largest non-profit, BRAC, and is the birthplace of micro-finance, thanks to Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus. Armies of field workers have responded to climate challenges with innovation. Farmers whose salt-washed land is unfit to grow regular rice have turned to salt-tolerant strains, or raised shrimp instead. And there has been a concerted effort to persuade villagers not to leave their homes.

Some people argue, however, that environmental migrants have a legal claim to be resettled on public land. S M Mahmudul Hasan, 55, a community leader at Korail, has an encyclopedic knowledge of the residents, mostly families who migrated from places such as Bhola and Barial.

“They have lost their houses in natural disasters and have had no income in the villages,” he said.

Most now eke out a living as street sweepers, rickshaw drivers and domestic workers in slums where they face the constant threat of eviction. They miss the countryside. “Life in the village was good,” said Helena Akter, whose home in Barisal was swallowed by the river. “We had land to cultivate and our family lived happy all year round. In Dhaka, we struggle for survival.” But, she adds, “It feels good to be in Dhaka. Although we are poor, we don’t need to be afraid of losing our house in the river any more.”
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http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/dec/01/dhaka-city-climate-refugees-reality

fchowd0311 · Dec 12, 2015

Gutter Snipe said: ↑

Nothing is going to happen to Bangladesh... Because people are completely capable of dealing with the trivial increases of 3 mm of sea level rise a year. If you really care about poor people in developing countries, subsidize fossil fuel use and let them develop their economies. Massive use of natural resources is how we got where we are today.

But no, the green pushers want transfer payments and to restrict fossil fuel use. Transfer payments always benefit the rich in developing countries and very rarely the poor. Face it, they usually have a messed up situation because of corruption to begin with. The fact is, for anyone who sincerely believes in man-made catastrophic global warming, the third world reaching par with the west is a nightmare. Think of billions of more consumers polluting mother earth!

I'd rather see them develop and reach some of the level of creature comforts that we have. The green movement has yet to prove to me that their fear of of CO2 is worth hurting our economy or limiting fossil fuel use in developing countries.
Click to expand...

When a region's elevation is already below sea level, a 3mm rise in sea levels yearly will result in an exponential increase in natural disasters such as flash floods.

MojoMan · Dec 12, 2015

The Paris Conference was a fraud, according to former NASA scientist and leading AGW Alarmism extremist James Hansen:

James Hansen, father of climate change awareness, calls Paris talks 'a fraud'
The former Nasa scientist criticizes the talks, intended to reach a new global deal on cutting carbon emissions beyond 2020, as ‘no action, just promises’

Mere mention of the Paris climate talks is enough to make James Hansen grumpy. The former Nasa scientist, considered the father of global awareness of climate change, is a soft-spoken, almost diffident Iowan. But when he talks about the gathering of nearly 200 nations, his demeanor changes.

“It’s a fraud really, a fake,” he says, rubbing his head. “It’s just bull**** for them to say: ‘We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.’ It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”
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gifford1967 · Dec 12, 2015

It's hilarious watching all the climate change wingnuts in here complaining because the agreement wasn't strong enough. Could it be more clear that they have no core principles? They only care about perceived political victories.

They are the worst of the worst.

Amiga · Dec 13, 2015

bigtexxx said: ↑

Can somebody please answer this? I honestly would like to know, and I haven't been able to find it in all the media reports out today. All those have is a lot of liberal self congratulation and backslapping.
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http://www.vox.com/2015/12/12/9981020/paris-climate-deal

Legal status. This deal has a fairly odd legal status. The climate pledges themselves are not binding — if a country fails to cut emissions as much as it had promised, there are no penalties or anything. But much of the supporting structure is binding: the transparency mechanisms, the promise to come back every five years, etc. The main reason for this set-up is so that the treaty does not have to be ratified by the US Senate, which would never happen. (Though it also means a future US president could pretty easily abandon Obama's climate pledges.)
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Amiga · Dec 13, 2015

A good blog about the agreement from Michael Levi:

http://blogs.cfr.org/levi/2015/12/12/two-cheers-for-the-paris-agreement-on-climate-change/

The Bottom Line

The ultimate test of any climate change effort, of course, is whether it substantially reduces the risks of dangerous climate change. We will not know whether Paris meets this test for a long time. The Paris Agreement could survive as an international framework even as national actions on climate change turn out to be woefully inadequate to dealing with climate change. This could be the case even if the Paris Agreement were perfect (which it is not) since it is national politics and policies, not international agreements, that are the prime drivers of emissions-reducing actions. Paris looks like a success in part because, understanding that national politics and policies are paramount, its organizers wisely downplayed expectations for any deal. No one should forget that it is these modest expectations that Paris has largely met.

For the time being, though, the Paris Agreement deserves applause. It is a far sounder substantive foundation for international climate cooperation than the Kyoto Protocol ever was, and appears likely to enjoy much more legitimacy and thus staying power than the Copenhagen Accord ever managed. Foreign policy should be judged against the realistically available alternatives – and Paris, whatever one might reasonably say about what it doesn’t do, looks like a success against that measure. Now the hard work of building on it, within each country and internationally, begins.
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