Climate change: "too little too late"

“Too little, too late. Er, I mean, absolutely nothing has been done, and now it's too late.”

---Guy McPherson

UN official: World failing over climate change

UN Climate bureaucrats

Yahoo,

17 September, 2013

LONDON (AP) — International leaders are failing in their fight against global warming, one of the United Nations' top climate officials said Tuesday, appealing directly to the world's voters to pressure their politicians into taking tougher action against the buildup of greenhouse gases.

Halldor Thorgeirsson told journalists gathered at London's Imperial College that world leaders weren't working hard enough to prevent potentially catastrophic climate change.

"We are failing as an international community," he said. "We are not on track."

Thorgeirsson, a senior director with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was speaking with two years left to go before the world powers gather in Paris for another round of negotiations over the future of the world's climate, which scientists warn will warm dramatically unless action is taken to cut down on the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.

One of the main points of contention is how to divide the burden of emissions cuts between industrialized nations and emerging economies such as India and China, the world's top carbon polluter. The lack of progress in recent years has fueled doubts over whether a binding deal is possible at all.

Thorgeirsson seemed to strike a pessimistic note Tuesday, talking down the idea that Paris — or any other conference — would produce a grand bargain that would ensure the reductions needed to prevent a dangerous warming of the Earth's atmosphere. He even seemed to suggest that a global solution to the issue wasn't likely until the effects of climate change came barreling down on peoples' heads or flooding into their homes.

"I don't think that an international treaty will ever be the primary driver for the difficult decisions to be made," he warned. "It's the problem itself that will be the primary driver — and the consequences of that problem."

Quizzed on the repeated failure of the international community to organize a global deal on greenhouse gases, he said that the politicians involved had to be held to account.

"This is a question that needs to be asked at the ballot box," he said. "This is a question that needs to be asked of leaders at all levels."

Thorgeirsson was in London for the launch of a joint study by Imperial's Grantham Institute for Climate Change and its Energy Futures Laboratory of the estimated cost of halving the world's carbon dioxide emissions by 2050

There was once a time, about 4-5 years ago when I might have derived some home from the following article.

Virginia mayors: Time to respond to climate change – ‘There are more 100-year storms in the last 15 years than we’ve ever seen’

Hemmed by rising seas and fiercer storms, Virginia's mayors and emergency responders voice frustration at a state government that's still denying the problem. A 'Climate at your Doorstep' story

Climate Daily,

16 September, 2013

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. – Weary of debating the causes of climate change, mayors and other elected officials from Virginia's battered coastal regions gathered here last week and agreed that local impacts have become serious enough to present a case for state action.

"We are here to ask for your assistance," said Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim. "It's a threat we can no longer afford to ignore."

So far, assistance from the state level has been paltry and grudging at best. In 2011, a group of coastal scientists and planners, with the backing of mayors like Fraim, were asked to study the problems, but only after tea-party conservatives in the state Legislature insisted that "recurrent flooding" – and not climate change – would be the study's sole focus.

The report, Recurrent Flooding Study for Tidewater Virginia was released in February and did indeed point to increasing local problems from sea-level rise. Among these were the delivery of vital services to the world's largest navy base located in Norfolk, where a tide gauge shows a sea level rise of 14.5 inches over the past century and rising.

The meeting drew a capacity crowd of 250 local emergency planners, regional federal officials, Virginia mayors and a smattering of state representatives. It was intended to provide a turning point for a political response to sea-level rise in Virginia.

State senator John Watkins, an influential Republican from Richmond, agreed with the mayors and planners. He also insisted that debating climate change is counterproductive. "That's what people like Ken Cuccinelli want to do," Watkins said of Virginia's conservative attorney general and GOP gubernatorial candidate. "They want to debate climate change. I refuse to debate that."

"The fact of the matter is, we've got rising waters," Watkins added. "We've got recurrent flooding. There are more 100-year storms in the last 15 years than we've ever seen. Somebody has got to deal with it." Watkins said he would be proposing a state legislative study commission in the next legislative session.

Hopton Village flood-400That same urgent tone grounded the themes of a dozen local government speakers at the meeting, which also focused on legal methods to empower them in a state system where the Legislature has considerable sway.

'Increasingly dangerous landscape'

"Virginia's coastal communities were being left alone and blind to wander across an increasingly dangerous landscape by inaction on the part of federal and state government," said Skip Styles of Wetlands Watch, one of the non-governmental organizations involved in the conference and working on coastal issues.

Some cities have found it difficult to engage residents. "The reality is that we can no longer live where we thought we could live, and build where we thought we could build, and that is just very hard to swallow," said Hampton city mayor Molly Ward.

"The idea that local government can somehow solve this problem on its own is obviously just not true," Ward added.

Dealing with – much less solving – the problem won't be easy. Emergency planners like Jim Redick of Norfolk estimate that the cost of raising and rebuilding roads, water and electrical systems, as well as handling other vital changes in the coming years, will top $1 billion for Norfolk alone. Questions such as zoning, disclosure of flooding potential, insurance rates, levees and barriers, and emergency services present enormous challenges, he said.

Overcoming climate denial

One note was repeatedly sounded over the course of the meeting, held at the campus of the College of William and Mary: The political challenge of overcoming climate denial is hampering local efforts to respond to and plan for changes already underway.

Norfolk-400"I'm often hit with the idea that there's no proof that (climate change) is happening," said Lewis "Lewie" Lawrence, director of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission. "And I say, 'There's plenty of proof,' and I'll pull out the Sewell's Point tide gauge, and they say, 'Oh, they make that stuff up.'"

Maps show old islands in the Chesapeake Bay that today have disappeared beneath a rising sea, Lawrence said. "And people still say, 'Those islands were never there, they're making this up.' "

There are signs that the state could be turning a corner. The once-dominant tea party conservatives now appear to be fading; the states moderates are pushing back against the conservative policies of recent years. Coastal officials and planners hope that they can take advantage of the window and plan a coordinated and rational approach to sea-level rise and storm management.

"We're not retreating," said Dave Hansen, a former Corps of Engineers regional director and now deputy city manager of Virginia Beach. "We're going to elevate."

Added Norfolk's Mayor Fraim: "Someone has to own this issue... The water is coming."