The Lima talk show winds up

Tim Groser is one of New Zealand's top criminals. 

After COP-15 in 2009 he lashed out at the Pacific nations for 'getting in the way' of the rich nations agreeing to do nothing

Meanwhile, the Guardian is hailing the 'agreement'

Minister Groser defends UN climate deal

Environmental groups have criticised the climate deal reached at a marathon conference in Peru as an ineffectual compromise, but New Zealand Climate Change Minister Tim Groser said there had been positive developments.

Radio NZ,

15 December, 2014

Smoke from factory chimneys in Beijing, China. The draft agreement appeased emerging economies, led by China and India. - Photo: AFP

About 190 nations agreed the building blocks of a new-style global deal due in 2015 to combat climate change.

The draft text promises poorer countries more funds to tackle the effects of rising temperatures, while richer countries are assured a new framework to monitor all pledges to cut emissions.

The compromise deal defers many critical decisions until talks next year in Paris.

Some environmental groups said the agreement, reached two days into overtime after a fortnight of talks came close to collapsing, was far too weak.

But Mr Groser told Morning Report there was at least an agreement to take to more crucial talks in Paris, and there had been movement by China which accepted it should work to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Listen to Tim Groser on Morning Report ( 8 min 15 esc )

Friends of the Earth campaigner Asad Rehman said it was unacceptable that many criticial decisions were put off until next year.

"What we saw was rich industrialised countries pretty much bullying poorer countries into accepting an outcome which will be quite catastrophic for many of their citizens.

"Whilst there is a political agreement, the planet and the people don't really care about a statement in itself - what's really needed is concrete actions."

Samantha Smith of the WWF conservation group said the successive drafts at the Lima talks "went from weak to weaker to weakest."

The draft agreement appeased emerging economies, led by China and India, concerned that previous drafts imposed too heavy a burden on emerging economies compared to the rich.

"We've got what we wanted," said Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javedekar, who said the text preserved a notion enshrined in a 1992 climate convention that the rich have to lead the way in making cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

It also satisfied rich nations led by the United States who say it is time for fast-growing emerging economies to rein in fast-rising emissions. China is now the biggest greenhouse gas emitter ahead of the United States, the EU and India.

Activists demonstrate on the sidelines of the UN climate change conferences in Lima

Fielding: “You would have us do nothing?”

Godbar: “Nothing you can do would make any difference”

EM Forster, Passage to India

Lima climate change talks reach global warming agreement

Deal would for first time commit all countries – including developing nations – to cutting emissions

 COP20 president and the Peruvian minister of environment, Manuel Pulgar, claps after approving the proposed compromise document. Photograph: CRIS BOURONCLE/AFP/Getty Images

The Guardian

14 December, 2014

International negotiators at the Lima climate change talks have agreed on a plan to fight global warming that would for the first time commit all countries to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions.

The plan, agreed at United Nations talks on Sunday, was hailed as an important first step towards a climate change deal due to be finalised in Paris next year. The proposals call on countries to reveal how they will cut carbon pollution, ideally by March next year.

“As a text it’s not perfect, but it includes the positions of the parties,” said Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, the Peruvian environment minister, who presided over the talks.

However, negotiators acknowledged they had put off the most difficult decisions for later.

And with 2014 on course to be the hottest year on record, campaigners warned the plan was far too weak to limit warming to the internationally agreed limit of 2C above pre-industrial levels, or to protect poor countries from climate change.

“It’s definitely watered down from what we expected,” said Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

They also warned negotiators had left too many contentious issues unresolved before the deadline for reaching a deal in Paris. “The countdown clock to Paris is now ticking. Countries had the chance to give themselves a head start on the road to Paris but instead have missed the gun and now need to play catch up,” said Mohammed Adow, Christian Aid’s senior climate change advisor.

But after a difficult negotiation – which over-ran by two days– officials said they were satisfied with the outcome.

“It was contentious along the way but it fundamentally accomplished what we wanted it to,” Todd Stern, the US State Department’s climate change envoy, said.

The five-page text agreed on Sunday – now officially known as the Lima Call for Climate Action – represents the embryonic phase of the deal due to be delivered in Paris.

As sketched out in Lima, all countries, rising economies as well as rich countries would pledge action on climate change.

Wealthy countries would help developing countries fight climate change, by investing in clean energy technology or offering climate aid.

Countries already threatened by climate change – such as small island states which face being swallowed up by rising seas – were promised a “loss and damage” programme of financial aid.

The all-inclusive nature of the emissions cuts constitutes a break with one of the defining principles of the last 20 years of climate talks – that wealthy countries should carry the burden of cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

“I think for the first time ever the world can contemplate a global deal applicable to all and Lima has helped that process,” the UK’s energy and climate change secretary, Ed Davey, said.

  

If all goes well, China, whose emissions have overtaken the US, will as part of the agreement formally pledge to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as will India, Brazil and other rising economies.

But much remains uncertain about the prospects of a strong deal emerging from Paris – not least because of the problems that arose during the negotiations in Lima.

The Lima negotiations had opened on 1 December amid a spirit of optimism following an agreement last month between the US and China to cut carbon pollution.

But it soon became apparent that the US-China deal on its own would have no effect on bridging the perennial dividing line of climate negotiations – the responsibility for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

The talks over-ran by two days because of clashes over which countries should carry the burden of fighting climate change.

There were also disputes over climate finance. Wealthy countries were accused of failing to live up to their earlier promises of mobilising billions to help developing countries fight climate change.

But after a day of brinkmanship on Saturday – with Stern warning of a “major breakdown” - the deal was one.

“We got what we wanted,” Prakash Javadekar, India’s environment minister, said.

But much now remains to be done if the broad outlines agreed at Lima are to materialise in a full-fledged climate deal.

The US, China, and the European Union have already come forward with pledges for cutting greenhouse gas emissions after 2020.

Under the plan, countries are due to come forward by March 2015 with their proposed emissions reductions targets.

The United Nations would then weigh up those pledges and determine whether the collective action was enough to limit warming to 2C.

But much remains vague or poorly defined. The countries put off decisions about the legal structure of the agreement, and deferred decisions about ensuring a flow of finance to developing countries.

The biggest issue left unresolved for Paris is the burden for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The draft text retains language of “common but differentiated responsibilities” that has over the years given developing countries a pass on cutting emissions. That language remains in the text although with a rider “in light of different national circumstances”. Stern acknowledged to reporters the issue was likely to come up again at Paris.

And the text adopted on Sunday no longer makes it mandatory for countries to provide detailed information about their prospect reductions targets.

Campaigners said that would make it increasingly difficult to be sure the deal would manage to keep warming within the 2 degree threshold.

Guy McPherson on the Lima UN Climate Conference

From Global Research

GRNH: The UN Climate Conference, “False Solutions” and the Climate Conundrum

Interview with Professor Guy McPherson

Followers of climate science will recall COP15 as the climate-change meetings thrown under the bus by the Obama administration. A summary of that long-forgotten briefing begins with this statement:

‘THE LONG-TERM SEA LEVEL THAT CORRESPONDS TO CURRENT CO2 CONCENTRATION IS ABOUT 23 METERS ABOVE TODAY’S LEVELS, AND THE TEMPERATURES WILL BE 6 DEGREES C OR MORE HIGHER. THESE ESTIMATES ARE BASED ON REAL LONG TERM CLIMATE RECORDS, NOT ON MODELS.’

“In other words, Obama and others in his administration knew near-term extinction of humans was already guaranteed.” 

-Guy McPherson, from the 2013 book Going Dark

On the occasion of the UN Climate Conference in Lima, Peru, this week’s Global Research News Hour examines the latest research into the causes of Earth’s current Climate predicament.

 Guy McPherson is emeritus Professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of Arizona, He is the author of about a dozen books including Going Dark and his most recent,Extinction Dialogs: How to Live with Death in Mind.’ co-authored by Carolyn Baker. Guy is the author of the Nature Bats Last blog at www.guymcpherson.com. 

Professor McPherson believes that there is virtually nothing humans can do to reverse the damage done by modern industrial civilization and that humans will likely become extinct as a result of runaway Climate change by the middle of the twenty-first century.

Professor McPherson explains his thesis of Near Term Human Extinction, the need to come to terms with the grief that goes along with that realization, the problems with geo-engineering as a remedy, and the problematic behaviour of both political leaders and mainstream environmental organizations in the face of the Climate Predicament.

Listen to the interview HERE

Predictably, Lima talks limp to an end with no results

Tell me what’s new.

Since Kyoto, right through COP-15 in Copenhagen to now, nothing’s changed.

Meantime the article tells the truth of the matter

Kerry Offers 'Fancy Words,' But US Inaction Blasted as Lima Talks Limp To End

Strong rhetoric by US Secretary of State at UN summit in Peru welcomed by some, but experts say agreement still light-years away from what's needed to combat global warming

Common Dreams,

11 December, 2014

As the U.N. Conference of the Parties (COP20) talks enter their last scheduled day in Lima, Peru on Friday, remarks delivered by U.S. Secretary of State late Thursday to climate negotiators from around the world, though welcomed by some, seemed to do very little in terms of moving the talks closer to the kind of agreement experts say are necessary to adequately tackle the crisis of human-caused global warming.

Kerry sounded notes of urgency and shared purpose in his remarks to the delegates as he stated, "Rest assured, if we fail, future generations will not and should not forgive those who ignore this moment, no matter their reasoning. 

Future generations will judge our effort not just as a policy failure, but as a massive, collective moral failure of historic consequence, particularly if we’re just bogged down in abstract debates. They will want to know how we together could possibly have been so blind, so ideological, so dysfunctional, and frankly, so stubborn that we failed to act on knowledge that was confirmed by so many scientists in so many studies over such a long period of time and documented by so much evidence."

Meanwhile, as the Guardian's Suzanne Goldenbergreported, with talks scheduled to conclude Friday, delegates had agreed "on just one paragraph of a deal" and she quoted the Union of Concerned Scientist expert Alden Meyer who said negotiators were "going backward," not forward on a quality agreement.

Though some U.S.-based climate action groups welcomed Kerry's arrival at the talks and his lofty rhetoric on climate, none seemed convinced that the U.S. contributions at the summit or its standing positions on climate action are nearly adequate to the task.

"We appreciate [Sec. Kerry's] comments on the urgency of creating a clean energy economy," saidKyle Ash, Greenpeace's top legislative advisor. "His record as a climate champion, however, contrasts with many of the US positions in the Lima COP negotiations."

350.org's Jamie Henn, also attending the summit in Lima, said Kerry "sure sounded like someone who was gearing up" for strong action on climate change, but argued Kerry's calls for others to act would mean little if the U.S. approves new dirty energy projects like the Keystone XL pipeline; refuses to make stronger emissions cuts; or continues to ramp up oil and gas exploration and fossil fuel export.

"Fancy words are worth nothing if they aren’t backed up with action," Henn said.

 According to Karen Orenstein, senior climate analyst with Friends of the Earth US, the gap between Kerry's rhetoric and U.S. commitments is more like a chasm.

"It is past time to put words into action," Orenstein said. "The emissions cuts the US has put forward put us on a path for a global temperature increase well beyond the already dangerous 2C level. Secretary Kerry said, ‘If you’re a big developed nation and you are not helping to lead, then you’re part of the problem.’ Regrettably, the US is a tremendous part of the problem, and as the hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Lima and New York have demanded, this must change immediately."

Orenstein was referencing the People's Climate March in New York City earlier this year and a large march in Lima outside the talks on Wednesday where civil society organizations, Indigenous groups, and climate justice advocates rallied for a far-reaching draft agreement at this summit which would be finalized at the next round of talks scheduled for Paris in 2015.

In a policy paper released at the talks, Greenpeace argues that the U.S. approach to its own commitments and negotiating stance are in direct contrast with Kerry's stated desire to forge a strong agreement. The Obama administration has argued that making carbon emission reduction targets and other climate mitigation commitments legally binding is not necessary, but Greenpeace is among those who strongly disagree. Without "binding" targets and enforcement mechanisms, goes the argument, the necessary reductions will simply not be made in time. 

Ash, who authored the report on behalf of the group, explains:

President Obama's team continues to insist that presidential authority is insufficient to sign onto legally binding obligations to reduce climate pollution. At the same time, they claim that making pollution targets binding will reduce ambition. Neither is correct. Rather than portray US presidential legal powers as weak in the face of a politically stunted, soon-to-be climate denier controlled Congress, Secretary Kerry should ask his boss to use every tool he can to fight the climate catastrophe we are facing – including the cessation of the sale of publicly-owned fossil fuels and a significant strengthening of EPA climate policy. The US should increase their 2025 climate pollution reduction target from 28 to 40% and commit to it in an internationally legally binding agreement next year. Our transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050 depends on it.

Familiar sticking points at the talk continue to center around the divide between rich and poor nations.  Whereas the U.S. argues that so-called "developing nations" must make the same kinds of sacrifices that larger and wealthier nations are prepared to make, critics of that view say that because those most-developed nations are also the largest historic greenhouse gas emitters they have a special responsibility to do more—a concept known as "common but differentiated responsibilities."

Advocates of climate justice argue that big polluters, like the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the nations of Europe have should play a more significant role in financing the mitigation and transition efforts of those countries which did much less to create the climate crisis but are much more threatened by the increasing impacts of higher temperatures, rising seas, longer droughts, and more extreme weather.

As the BBC reports:

Some countries are suspicious that the text being developed here in Lima is an attempt to get round the concept of differentiation, which is embedded in 1992's UN framework convention on climate change.

The issue has become critical as the chairs of the talks introduced a new draft text that many felt watered down the original commitment.

A large group of developing nations known as the G77 objected.

"This whole exercise is not meant to rewrite the convention, this is a firm basic position of the G77," said Antonio Marcondes, Brazil's representative at the talks.

"We stand behind the differentiation, we stand behind 'common but differentiated responsibilities', these are issues we hold very strong and these are definite red lines."

Former VP Al Gore Urges Obama to Reject Keystone XL as Kerry, Top U.S. Negotiator Stay Mum

With an impassioned plea for climate action on Thursday, Secretary of State John Kerry is the highest-ranking U.S. official to attend the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference since President Obama took part in the 2009 Copenhagen talks. 

While Kerry spoke for 30 minutes, he never addressed an issue on the minds of many: the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. Kerry must make a final recommendation to Obama about whether the $8 billion pipeline should be approved. 

Amy Goodman speaks to former Vice President Al Gore, who attended Kerry’s speech, about why he wants Obama to reject the Keystone XL. She then tries to raise the issue with Kerry and top U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern, but both refuse to answer.

If we stopped emitting CO2 the gasses would stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years - something very few people bother to point out when they give their optimistic predictions.

What would happen to the climate if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today?

Richard B. Rood - Professor of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences at University of Michigan

Imagine the smokestacks without the billowing clouds of greenhouse gas pollution. JuergenGER

the Conversation,

11 December, 2014

Earth’s climate is changing rapidly. We know this from billions of observations, documented in thousands of journal papers and texts and summarized every few years by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The primary cause of that change is the release of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas.

International climate talks in Lima this week are laying the foundation for next year’s UNclimate summit in Paris. While negotiations about reducing emissions grind on, how much warming are we already locked into? If we stop emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, why would the temperature continue to rise?

Basics of carbon and climate

The carbon dioxide that accumulates in the atmosphere insulates the surface of the Earth. It’s like a warming blanket that holds in heat. This energy increases the Earth’s surface average temperature, heats the oceans and melts polar ice. As consequences, sea level rises and weather changes.

Global average temperature has increased. Anomalies are relative to the mean temperature of 1961-1990. Finnish Meteorological Institute and Finnish Ministry of the Environment, Author provided

Click to enlarge

Since 1880, after carbon dioxide emissions took off with the Industrial Revolution, the average global temperature has increased about 1.5F (0.85C). Each of the last three decades has been warmer than the preceding decade, as well as warmer than the entire previous century.

The Arctic is warming much faster than the average global temperature; ice in the Arctic Ocean is melting and the permafrost is thawing. Ice sheets in both the Arctic and Antarctic are melting. Ecosystems on both land and in the sea are changing. The observed changes are coherent and consistent with our theoretical understanding of the Earth’s energy balance and simulations from models that are used to understand past variability and to help us think about the future.

A crack in Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY

Click to enlarge

Slam on the climate brakes

What would happen to the climate if we were to stop emitting carbon dioxide today, right now? Would we return to the climate of our elders? The simple answer is no. Once we release the carbon dioxide stored in the fossil fuels we burn, it accumulates in and moves amongst the atmosphere, the oceans, the land, and the plants and animals of the biosphere. The released carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for thousands of years. Only after many millennia will it return to rocks, for example, through the formation of calcium carbonate – limestone – as marine organisms' shells settle to the bottom of the ocean. But on time spans relevant to humans, once released the carbon dioxide is in our environment essentially forever. It does not go away, unless we, ourselves, remove it.

If we stop emitting today, it’s not the end of the story for global warming. There’s a delay in temperature increase as the climate catches up with all the carbon that’s in the atmosphere. After maybe 40 more years, the climate will stabilize at a temperature higher than what was normal for previous generations.

This decades-long lag between cause and effect is due to the long time it takes to heat the the ocean’s huge mass. The energy that is held at the Earth by the increased carbon dioxide does more than heat the air. It melts ice; it heats the ocean. Compared to air, it’s harder to raise the temperature of water – it takes time, decades. However, once the ocean temperature is elevated, it adds to the warming of the Earth’s surface.

So even if carbon emissions stopped completely right now, as the oceans catch up with the atmosphere, the Earth’s temperature would rise about another 1.1F (0.6C). Scientists refer to this as committed warming. Ice, also responding to increasing heat in the ocean, will continue to melt. There’s already convincing evidence that significant glaciers in the West Antarctic ice sheets are lost. Ice, water, and air – the extra heat held on the Earth by carbon dioxide affects them all. That which has melted will stay melted – and more will melt.

Ecosystems are altered by natural and manmade occurrences. As they recover, it will be in a different climate from that in which they evolved. The climate in which they recover will not be stable; it will be continuing to warm. There will be no new normal, only more change.

Glacial ice loss over Greenland and Antarctica from 2003 to 2010.

Best of the worst case scenarios

In any event, it’s not possible to stop emitting carbon dioxide today, right now. Despite significant advances in renewable energy sources, total demand for energy accelerates and carbon dioxide emissions increase. I teach my students that they need to plan for a world 7F (4C) warmer. A 2011 report from the International Energy Agency states that if we don’t get off our current path, then we’re looking at an Earth 11F (6C) warmer. Our current Earth is just over 1F warmer, and the observed changes are already disturbing.

There are many reasons that we need to essentially eliminate our carbon dioxide emissions. The climate is changing rapidly; if that pace is slowed, the affairs of nature and human beings can adapt more readily. The total amount of change, including sea-level rise, can be limited. The further we get away from the climate that we have known, the more unreliable the guidance from our models and the less likely we will be able to prepare. The warmer the planet gets, the more likely reservoirs of carbon dioxide and methane, another greenhouse gas that warms the planet, will be released from storage in the frozen Arctic permafrost – further adding to the problem.

If we stop our emissions today, we won’t go back to the past. This is not reason, however, to continue with unbridled emissions. We are adaptable creatures, with credible knowledge of our climate’s future and how we can frame that future. We’re already stuck with some amount of guaranteed climate change at this point. Rather than trying to recover the past, we need to be thinking about best possible futures.

Climate talks in Lima

Isn't it reassuring to learn that climate change is following a nice linear path and we have half a century to 'fix' the problem - lol.  2050? Humans should be almost off the scene by then, I should think.

In the meantime voices for climate justice in places where they are paying the price are being silenced.

As Typhoon Hagupit Wreaks Havoc, Leading Filipino Environmental Voice Silenced at U.N. Climate Talks

As we broadcast from the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, the Philippines is being hit by a deadly typhoon for the third year in a row. More than 90 people have been killed and more than one million evacuated from their homes. The Filipino delegation at the U.N. climate talks has drawn attention over the surprising absence of Yeb Saño, the country’s former lead climate negotiator. Saño made international headlines at both of the last two climate summits after he gave emotional speeches on the link between climate change and the deadly typhoons hitting his country. We are joined by Lidy Nacpil of the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice.

Ecuador indigenous leader murdered days before planned Lima protest – ‘His body was beaten, bones were broken’

Desdemona Despair,

7 December, 2014

By Jonathan Watts and Dan Collyns
6 December 2014

LIMA, Peru (The Guardian) – The body of an indigenous leader who was opposed to a major mining project in Ecuador has been found bound and buried, days before he planned to take his campaign to climate talks in Lima.

The killing highlights the violence and harassment facing environmental activists in Ecuador, following the confiscation earlier this week of a bus carrying climate campaigners who planned to denounce president Rafael Correa at the United Nations conference.

The victim, José Isidro Tendetza Antún, a former vice-president of the Shuar Federation of Zamora, had been missing since 28 November, when he was last seen on his way to a meeting of protesters against the Mirador copper and gold mine. After a tip-off on Tuesday, his son Jorge unearthed the body from a grave marked “no name”. The arms and legs were trussed by a blue rope.

Other members of the community said Tendetza had been offered bribes and had his crops burned in an attempt to remove him from the area.

Domingo Ankuash, a Shuar leader, said there were signs Tendetza had been tortured, but the full facts had yet to come to light. He said the family were extremely unhappy with the investigation and what they said was the reluctance of the authorities to conduct a timely autopsy.

“His body was beaten, bones were broken,” said Ankuash. “He had been tortured and he was thrown in the river. The mere fact that they buried him before telling us, the family, is suspicious.”

Tendetza had been a prominent critic of Mirador, an open-cast pit that has been approved in an area of important biodiversity that is also home to the Shuar, Ecuador’s second-biggest indigenous group.

The project is operated by Ecuacorriente – originally a Canadian-owned firm that was brought by a Chinese conglomerate, CCRC-Tongguan Investment, in 2010. According to the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, the project will devastate around 450,000 acres of forest.

“This is a camouflaged crime,” said Ankuash. “In Ecuador, multinational companies are invited by the government and get full state security from the police and the army. The army and police don’t provide protection for the people, they don’t defend the Shuar people. They’ve been bought by the company.

“The authorities are complicit in this crime,” Ankuash claimed. “They will never tell us the truth.” He added: “[Tendetza] was not just anyone. He was a powerful leader against the company. That’s why they knocked down his house and burnt his farm.

“The government will never give us a response, justice belongs to them. They will call us terrorists but that doesn’t mean we are not going to shut up.”

Several other Shuar opponents of Mirador have died as a result of the conflict in recent years, including Bosco Wisum in 2009 and Freddy Taish in 2013, according to Amazon Watch. [more]

Goal to end fossil fuels by 2050 surfaces in Lima UN climate documents

Campaigners in Lima are eyeing an ‘inevitable’ end to the fossil fuel industry by mid-century

 United Nations climate negotiations are taking place in Lima, Peru. Photograph: Enrique Castro-Mendivil/Reuters

the Guardian,

9 December, 2014

It’s a rare thing when you can point to paragraphs in a United Nations climate negotiating text and feel they more or less match what most of the science says should become a reality.

Yet in Lima on Monday, it happened.

Our little revolutionary moment comes in a document with the memorable title “ADP 2-7 agenda item 3 Elements for a draft negotiating text” with its climate-busting section D (paragraph 13.2) outlining several possible long-term goals for a new climate change agreement.

Here’s a taster from the document, as it was at 6.30am in Lima, on 8 December 2014.

Parties’ efforts to take the form of:

a. A long-term zero emissions sustainable development pathway:

Consistent with emissions peaking for developed countries in 2015, with an aim of zero net emissions by 2050; in the context of equitable access to sustainable development

…

Consistent with carbon neutrality/net zero emissions by 2050, or full decarbonization by 2050 and/or negative emissions by 2100;....

In this context “Parties” refers to countries which are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Here in Lima, we are at a “Conference of the Parties” or COP.

The document in question is what’s known as a negotiating text, and in this case it contains a whole grab bag of aspirational long-term goals.

Those I’ve picked out are just a few of the more ambitious ones. I understand these were pushed into the document by countries, including Norway, the Marshall Islands, Sweden and a grouping of countries consisting of Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru and Panama.

It is a very early version of what, over the course of the next 12 months, will morph into a new global deal to be signed in Paris.

While a year seems like a long time, it’s not in the world of UN climate talks.

As one Australian observer pointed out, there are only six weeks of negotiating time on the UN’s schedule between now and Paris.

But if language such as “full decarbonization by 2050” were to become a reality, it basically defines an end point for the fossil fuel energy industry as we know it.

During a media briefing, I asked Ruth Davis, of Greenpeace UK, how likely it was that a decarbonisation goal could survive.

I think we have to say to ourselves that the chances of this stuff staying in the text are down to all of our collective efforts in demanding that this stays in the text. This is not only civil society but also progressive businesses who have to make their voices heard in keeping this in the text.

The chances of this stuff surviving are dependent on the efforts that we collectively make to influence politicians to do the right thing.

What is in this “elements” document isn’t likely to be challenged or negotiated this week – that will be thrashed out next year.

As veteran climate negotiations watcher Alden Meyer, of the Union of Concerned Scientists, explained:

This text won’t be settled here. It is an options text that then needs to be translated into a legal text and it won’t be decided until the last night at Paris. So which long-term goal survives the end of the day we won’t know until a year from now.

But there was incredible political momentum coming out of the climate summit in New York where about 60 national leaders endorsed the need for a long-term goal as part of the Paris agreement and that number is continuing to grow. We have more and more businesses, faith groups and unions speaking out – there is a momentum building around this and I think by Paris next year the chances of a strong goal staying in the agreement are probably much greater than they are right now.

In an early evening briefing, climate scientist Dr Malte Meinshausen explained the 2050 decarbonisation date was derived from statements in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports.

He said that from 2011, the world could afford to emit no more than 1000bn tonnes (Gt) of CO2 to have a good chance of staying below 2C of global warming (some poorer countries and low-lying states say the aim should be 1.5C). Meinshausen said:

At current rates we churn through 33Gt a year – 1000Gt divided by 33 means we have about 30 years left from 2011 onwards. Then the carbon budget will be exhausted.

At some point emissions have to go to zero, no matter what. There is no way around zero CO2 emissions. As long as we continue to emit CO2, the climate will continue to warm.

Not only does the decarbonisation proposal broadly match the kind of efforts climate change scientists say would be needed to avoid dangerous climate change, it also matches the level of ambition climate campaigners have been asking for.

The campaign group AVAAZ has a petition with more than two million signatories that also asks for decarbonisation by 2050.

The campaign director of Avaaz, Iain Keith, told me:

This isn’t a target that’s been dreamt up in Lima. All over the world, millions of people have backed the call for 100% clean energy, with grassroots campaigns rolling out in towns and cities everywhere to get emissions to zero. The world is waking up to the fact that a renewables revolution isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable.

The options on the table for world leaders seem simpler in the context of a long-term goal such as decarbonisation by 2050.

Either the goal survives or the world moves to a riskier and more dangerous future.

Whether or not some countries want to be responsible for facilitating that risk by killing a long-term goal to decarbonise, only time and many more late-night negotiations will tell.