From COP-out 21

Kill All The Scientists

"We are being treated to the bizarre spectacle of an entire world of 190 countries held hostage by 60 or 70 millionaire Republicans in the US Senate."

Albert Bates

the Great Change,

26 November, 2014

We are reminded of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's classic formulation of the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance — that are transferable to varying degrees and in different ways to personal change and emotional upset resulting from factors other than death and dying, such as the "solastalgia" distress produced by environmental change of one's home environment.
At the climate conference in Paris, denial has gained an upper hand over bargaining, as Saudi Arabia, speaking for (openly) the Arab States and (indirectly but transparently) for the US, Canada and Australia, as well as other oil producing countries, has blocked the report of the Structured Expert Dialogue from reaching the floor of the plenary for consideration.


Barred were the 70 Wise Men's recommendations, such as discarding any notion that 2 degrees, or even 1.5 degrees, can be considered in any way safe, or that there are somehow remaining parking spaces in the atmosphere that India and China can take their sweet time to fill by building more coal plants and fracking.
At a late night session on Thursday, while several small committees took red-pencils to a number of bracketed items on the negotiated text, striking items like adaptation finance (too “open-ended”) and kickbacks for avoided deforestation, the Saudi's objected to “anything of substance” in the Structured Expert Review being reported to the plenary.



To recap what we described here at the start of the week, the Structured Expert Dialogue was begun in 2013 and completed in 2015, released in draft in Bonn, watered down for presentation at the Summit, and then scheduled for release here this week. Saudi Arabia drew its line in the sand and refused to back down. Procedural recommendations, such as periodic science reviews every five years beginning in 2020, were okay to mention. Just nothing of substance from the report.



After everyone had tried their best to get the Arab Group to back down, and the hour was drawing late, India and China sided with Saudi Arabia and so the deal was done. The COP21 targets will not be based on science. Denial won the day. 


The thing is, denial was already winning here in Paris. The debate over whether there could be a binding treaty signed, as has been promised since before Kyoto almost 20 years ago, is only necessary because the world's historically largest polluter, proud parent of 25% of anthropogenic greenhouse gas now heating the 

, 

atmosphere has a constitution that vests power over treaties in the hands of a Senate of 100 members, millionaires all, a hefty and safe majority of whom are climate deniers put where they are by the Koch brothers and other fossil money sources. And so we are treated to the bizarre spectacle of an entire world of 190 countries held hostage by 60 or 70 millionaire Republicans in the US Senate. Knowing they will never ratify a treaty forces all 190 countries to bend light around their star.



We are called homo sapiens sapiens, the smart, and now even smarter, variety of erect naked ape that diverged from other apes in the Pleistocene 2.5 million years ago. We got that name from Carl Linnaeus in 1758, but it may be overdue for an update. If the Holocene was our cradle, the Anthropocene is our assisted care facility. We have grown so demented perhaps we need to be straight jacketed so we don't hurt ourselves.

When we think of what sets humans apart from other animals, we tend to think of qualities like subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and one's environment. Many philosophers divide consciousness into phenomenal consciousness which is experience itself, and access consciousness, which is the processing of the things in experience.



If the Climate Conference in Paris tells us anything, it is that while we may yet retain our subjectivity, self-awareness, and communicative capabilities, we are steadily degrading our sentience, sapience, and perspective of just how far divorced we have become from the natural world. 

That a small number of heads of countries who stand to personally profit in the extremely short term from kickbacks from fossil fuel industries can thwart an earnest and impassioned attempt by the majority of humanity to arrest climate Armageddon tells us that not only has the UN multilateral consensus process failed, but so have we all.


And so, like the Elves of Middle Earth, we pass into the West, taking our science with us.

Meanwhile the Guardian is running a campaign in its newspaper – to pull the wool over our yes

"French summit is more cordial and efficient than Copenhagen". Do they mean that everyone has agreed to extend and pretend or denial

Paris climate change talks yield first draft amid air of optimism

Country representatives and green groups say French summit is more cordial and efficient than Copenhagen five years ago

the Guardian,

5 December, 2015

Negotiators paving the way for a global climate change agreement in Paris have cleared a major hurdle, producing a draft accord in record time and raising hopes that a full week of minister-led talks can now clinch a deal despite many sticking points.

No part of the deal has been finalised because in the end it is likely to be a tradeoff between developing countries’ demands – particularly for financing to help cope with the impacts of locked-in climate change – and wealthier nations’ insistence that over time all countries properly account for the progress they have made towards emission reduction goals.

And it remains littered with brackets – indicating areas of disagreement. But the document handed to the French on Saturday has refined 50 pages down to just over 20 and, unusually, was agreed on schedule, leaving a full week for ministers to reach agreement.

China’s chief climate negotiator, Su Wei, said: “It has laid a solid foundation for next week … like when we cook a meal you need to have all the seasonings and ingredients and recipes, but next week is the actual cooking.”

Senior negotiators and long-time observers believe there will be a way through the sticking points. “There is good news. This is only a basis for a negotiation … there are several disagreements that we need to talk to each other, to try to solve … but political will is there from all parties,” he said.

Non-government observers were also cautiously optimistic. Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace said progress was far better than at a similar point in the 2009 Copenhagen talks. “At this point in Copenhagen [in 2009] we were dealing with a 300-page text and a pervasive sense of despair. In Paris we’re down to a slim 21 pages and the atmosphere remains constructive. But that doesn’t guarantee a decent deal. Right now the oil-producing nations and the fossil fuel industry will be plotting how to crash these talks when ministers arrive next week.”

Laurence Tubiana, the French envoy for the talks, said: “We could have been better, we could have been worse. The job is not done, we need to apply all intelligence, energy, willingness to compromise and all efforts to come to agreement. Nothing is decided until everything is decided.”

Liz Gallagher, project manager at the non-profit organisation E3G, said the first week of talks had seen “some movement among negotiation blocs, with the idea of north and south … becoming more nuanced”. India had been “better behaved than we expected them to be”, she said, but Saudi Arabia had been blocking the negotiations on several fronts. The Saudis had, for example, been trying to prevent any reference to the need to hold global warming at 1.5C.

The final draft agreement includes the options of holding temperature increases to 1.5C or “well below two degrees”; evidence, the US envoy, Todd Stern, said on Friday, of the emergence of “a high-ambition coalition”, that “includes many countries” but not all of the 195 countries in the talks.

For the foreign minister of the tiny Marshall Islands, Tony de Brum, that goal is a matter of survival because some islands are already under water. “Put simply, I refuse to go home from Paris without being able to look my grandchildren in the eye and say I have a good deal for you.”

The Saudis have also been blocking the idea that the commitments countries have put on the table in Paris – covering emission reductions between 2020 and 2030 – should be reviewed before that period commences, and potentially increased. The Climate Action Tracker website has calculated those commitments put the world on track for warming of at least 2.7C. Differences on this issue between China and the US were central to the breakdown of the Copenhagen talks six years ago, but in Paris China is taking a softer approach. “We need to enhance the transparency system … it is very important to build trust,” Su said.

There is intense division over how the agreement is worded, in a way that would bind rich countries to specific continued investments, beyond the deal struck in Copenhagen for $100bn (£66bn) a year in public and private money to flow by 2020. (An OECD review said around $60bn was already committed, but poor countries dispute the calculations). And there are also divisions over suggestions big developing countries should join rich countries to make financial contributions to help poor countries reduce their emissions and cope with the impacts of locked-in climate change.

Stern told reporters some countries had “over-read” the issue. He said it was about recognising what was already happening – China pledged US$3.1bn in support to developing countries, when President Xi Jinping met President Obama at the White House this year – rather than introducing any requirement, he said.

A group of 10 Democratic US senators reassured countries at the climate meeting on Saturday they “had Barack Obama’s back” and would defend his agenda in a Republican-controlled Congress. The 10 were the first wave of what is anticipated to be a strong US presence at the Paris meeting, designed to counter Republican attempts to sink Obama’s climate plan. Congress voted last week to repeal the main part of Obama’s plan, especially on rules limiting carbon emissions from power plants. But the Democrats said they would be prepared to defend Obama’s agenda in Congress, and push for stronger climate action.

“What you see here are people who are going to protect what the president is putting on the table here in Paris as a promise from the American people to the world,” Ed Markey, a Democrat senator from Massachusetts, told a press conference. “We are going to back up the president every step of the way.”

Despite the multiple disagreements in Paris, Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of the UN convention on climate change, said the talks were “where we thought they could be”. Officially Saturday is “high level action day” in Paris, the culmination of a process to get emission reduction commitments from bodies other than governments. There have been more than 10,000 such pledges from businesses, local authorities, non government groups and individuals.

Among those attending the event are the former US vice president Al Gore, the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, the actor-cum-politician Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the actor Sean Penn.

'A total fraud'

Climate Scientist James Hansen Warns World is on Wrong Track to Prevent Runaway Global Warming

In 1988, James Hansen first warned about the dangers of climate change when he testified before Congress. At the time he was NASA’s top climate scientist. He would go on to become the nation’s most influential climate scientist. This year he is making his first appearance at a U.N. climate change summit. He has come to Paris to warn world leaders that they are on the wrong track to prevent dangerous global warming.

Activists Stage Paris Sit-In To Protest Role of Corporate Polluters in Climate Talks

Despite restrictions on protests following the November 13 attacks that killed 130 people, activists attempted to stage a mass sit-in at the Grand Palais in Paris today to protest corporate sponsors pushing for so-called "solutions" to climate change that include genetically modified foods, privatized water and biofuels. We get an update from Pascoe Sabido of the Corporate Europe Observatory

The president of Nicuragua says it like it is

We Do Not Want to Be An Accomplice: Nicaragua Rejects Global Consensus On Voluntary Emission Cuts

This is the sum total of coverage on Radio NZ of COP21. There is a negative correlation between coverage and the importance for people's lives. To say I'm disgusted would be a gross underststatement.