COP21 -- Paris (December 2015)

United Nations Conference on Climate Change — Paris 2015

Dear Friends of the Earth:                     Date — December 12, 2015

Today is a historic day: as tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Paris, politicians finalized a major new global climate agreement. (See also:  www.350.org)

The deal in Paris includes an agreement to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius, with an aim of 1.5 degrees, and achieve climate ‘neutrality’ that will require phasing out fossil fuels soon after mid-century. That’s not what we hoped for, but it’s still a deal that sends a signal that it’s time to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and for investors to cut their ties with coal, oil and gas by divesting.

This deal represents important progress — but progress alone is not our goal. Our goal is a just and livable planet.

If followed to the letter, the agreement leaves far too many people exposed to the violence of rising seas, stronger storms and deeper drought. It leaves too many loopholes to avoid serious action — despite the heroic efforts from leaders of vulnerable nations and communities who fought for a deal in line with science.

But the coal, oil and gas corporations of the world should take little comfort. That 2 degree pledge would require keeping 80% of the world’s remaining fossil fuels underground, a 1.5 degree target even more — and countries are required to come back to the table every 5 years to increase their ambition in reaching those goals.

Paris isn’t the end of the story, but a conclusion of a particular chapter. Now, it’s up to us to strengthen these promises, make sure they are kept, and then accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and towards 100% renewable energy.

As world leaders in Paris were finalizing the text of the deal, thousands of people returned to the streets of Paris to demonstrate their commitment to continue the fight:

They were joined by hundreds of solidarity actions around the world, all echoing the same message: it’s up to us to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Standing together, flowers in hand, we formed red lines in the street — because lines have to be drawn in this fight for justice, and it’s up to all of us to stand on the side of those on the front lines of this crisis.

More lines are being drawn everywhere against the true villain of the last two weeks: the fossil fuel industry, which has done everything possible to weaken even this late, late deal.

Without pressure from ordinary people, world leaders would have gladly ignored this problem entirely. It’s pressure from people that will close the gap between what was signed today and the action we need.

This begins the next chapter. Please watch this space for the announcement of something big in the coming days!

If you are reading this, you’ve been part of the work that got us all to this point, and for that, we say thank you. 2015 was a historic year for us — because we worked together to build a more powerful and hopeful climate movement.

With gratitude, and as always, hope,

Signed: May Boeve (and the whole 350.org team)

www.FrackCheckWV.net

Demonstrators are "stepping up" to climate change in Paris

How Psychology Can Save the World from Climate Change

From an Article by Tania Lombrozo, National Public Radio, November 29, 2015

Representatives from nearly 200 countries are meeting in France to discuss climate change — and for good reason.

To quote President Obama’s State of the Union Address from earlier this year: “No challenge  —  no challenge  —  poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.”

Yet public sentiment lacks the sense of urgency these remarks ought to instill. A 2014 poll by the Pew Research Center, for example, found that only 29 percent of respondents rated dealing with global warming as a top priority for the president and Congress; well below the percentage that endorsed strengthening the economy (80 percent), improving the job situation (74 percent), or defending the country from terrorism (73 percent) as top priorities.

A new paper published in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science helps explain why. The paper’s authors — Sander van der Linden, Edward Maibach, and Anthony Leiserowitz — review psychological research to identify key aspects of climate change and climate change communication that contribute to the mismatch between the urgency and severity of climate change, on the one hand, and widespread public disengagement, on the other. They highlight five features of human psychology that make climate change communication especially challenging, and they pair these with recommendations for how to make science communication and policy more effective.

In brief, here are their five insights and recommendations:

>>> First, people are generally more responsive to personal experience than to abstract analysis. This can be a problem because climate change is typically described in very abstract, statistical terms — we see the numbers and figures, but we rarely recognize the effects of climate change it in our own, everyday experience. The authors suggest that “information about climate change risks needs to be translated into relatable and concrete personal experiences.” Fortunately, this might not be that hard: Climate change is already occurring in ways that do affect our own, everyday experience.

>>> Second, when faced with the enormity of climate change, it’s easy to lose any sense of personal efficacy. But rather than despair, we can capitalize on the fact that we’re social beings who respond to social norms. Motivating individuals to act can be a challenge, but establishing and rewarding community norms can help encourage pro-environmental behavior even when individual behavior seems like a drop in the bucket.

>>> Third, we tend to treat the immediate and personal quite differently from the distant and uncertain. When climate change is presented as distant in space and time, it’s easier to ignore. In making decisions, for example, immediate costs (like the inconvenience of reducing one’s carbon footprint) tend to loom large, while uncertain future costs (like the catastrophic consequences of warming) are underweighted. Climate change communication might be more effective by focusing more on regional impacts of warming that are close in space and time — like the effects we can see now in our own communities.

>>> Fourth, research has shown that people’s attitude to risk can depend on whether they’re thinking about potential losses or potential gains. In particular, people are more willing to tolerate risk when dealing with losses, so some probability of a loss in quality of life downstream is a gamble they’re relatively willing to take. “These psychological insights,” the authors write, “suggest that shifting the policy conversation from the potentially negative future consequences of not acting (losses) on climate change to the positive benefits (gains) of immediate action is likely to increase public support.”

>>> Finally, research suggests that motivating behavior with extrinsic rewards — such as monetary incentives for conserving energy — could be more effective when paired with appeals to people’s intrinsic motivation to improve others’ wellbeing and to care for the environment. Specifically: “Appealing to people’s intrinsic motivational needs can be a more effective and long-lasting driver of pro-environmental behavior.” When intrinsically motivated, pro-environmental behavior is more likely to be maintained after extrinsic incentives are removed, and extrinsic rewards can actually undermine people’s intrinsic motivation to change.

In sum, climate change is often presented as an abstract, uncertain cost, distant in space and time, and requiring external incentives to motivate individual action. Psychological research suggests this is an especially dangerous combination, sure to make people underestimate the risk and unlikely to compel them to action. Instead, policy makers and science communicators might do well to focus on the concrete manifestations of climate change in our own experience, the consequences of warming that are affecting our communities here and now, and the ways our current actions can be tied to gains rather than losses, to social norms and to our own intrinsic motivations.

Effective climate change mitigation will undoubtedly involve insights from the natural sciences and engineering. But changing our own attitudes and behavior requires insights from psychology, as well. It’s time to recognize the critical role for the social sciences in dealing with global warming, an issue that certainly ought to be a top priority for the president and Congress.

World View of Elon Musk

Elon Musk: Put a Price on Carbon to Expedite Transition to Renewables

From an Article by Cole Mellino, EcoWatch.com, December 4, 2015

Speaking to students at the Sorbonne University in Paris, Elon Musk said we need a price on carbon similar to the one abolished in Australia to halve the time it will take to transition to renewable energy—a crucial step in addressing climate change.

We have to “remove the effective subsidy of not pricing the damage done by carbon pollution,” Musk said. “By putting a price on carbon, we are fixing a pricing error in the market,” he said. “Any price will be better than the close to zero we have right now.”

Musk has advocated for a price on carbon to drive investments in renewables for years. He told students that governments need to “set the rules of the game” to help start-ups grow into mid-size companies and eliminating the $3.5 trillion “hidden carbon subsidy” is a good place to start.

“To make it neither a left nor right issue we should make it a revenue-neutral carbon tax—increasing carbon tax and reducing tax in other areas like consumption taxes or VAT [value-added tax] and in order to give companies time to react it should be a phased-in approach,” said Musk.

“If countries agree to a carbon tax and it’s real and it’s not super watered-down and weak, we could see a transition [to clean energy] that has a 15- to 20-year time frame as opposed to a 40- or 50-year time frame,” the Tesla CEO said. “We could probably cut it in half and that would have a huge impact on the … welfare of the world … It really matters whether we do this transition sooner or later.”

“For developing economies they could leapfrog the fossil fuel situation with power lines, you could have remote villages with solar panels and a battery pack, just like mobile phones, a lot of countries just didn’t do the landlines, they skipped right over landlines,” said Musk.

The billionaire businessman also expressed his concern over fracking. “Fracking has elevated my concern about the carbon problem dramatically … I always thought the scarcity of oil would drive up the price … Unfortunately some smart inventors, I wish they could have invented something else … the net result is the accessible oil and gas reserves are dramatically higher, maybe by a factor of 10, and that is crazy for the climate,” he said.

Though Musk struck a note of optimism when he said, “we are going to exit the fossil fuel era. It is inevitable.” He added that it’s not a matter of if, but when, and world leaders meeting at the COP21 climate talks in Paris right now could expedite the process.

See also:

Bill McKibben: ‘Paris Summit is Missing One of the Great World Leaders on Climate’ Because He’s in Prison

Christiana Figueres is the able leader

Carl Pope: Paris Climate Talks Could Bring as Much Progress as Previous 20 COP’s Combined

From an Article by Carl Pope, EcoWatch.com, July 6, 2014

Neither Paris nor Lyon in France are burning—yet. But sweltering, roasting under 40⁰ centigrade (106⁰ F) skies, they definitely are—and the delegates gathering in Lyon to channel the climate action potential of cities, states and provinces feel the heat. In addition to the weather, the World Summit on Climate and Territories suffers from the usual conference burden of deadening boiler plate and an occasional diplomatic aversion to hard truths—such as an entire document on transportation and climate which managed to avoid a single use of the words “oil” or “petroleum.”

Nonetheless, listening to these proceedings and tracking the outside context, it seems likely to me that COP21 may entrain as much climate progress as the previous 20 COP’s put together—which is the kind of breakthrough the world needs.

The reason is simple. This time climate action has momentum. Christiana Figueres, who will chair the 21st UN Climate Summit in Paris this December, fires up her constituency—and she’s worth quoting:

“Why are cities and states doing so much—not just to save the planet! From the local point of view there are huge benefits—better and more efficient transportation, better waste management, more energy efficient, cleaner air—a new economy creating more jobs and more industry and more growth.

“So individually, that’s why you are going at it. But what are you doing collectively—you are creating a new reality for the world. You are making possible what heretofore was only in the literature—a low carbon, high growth society. And collectively you are getting the global economy ready for the 21st century. Perhaps since it is 2015 you are late. But better late than later.

“Yes there will be many different lanes, to reflect local differences—but it is one highway, and there are, if we do our work well, no off-ramps before we get to a low carbon society.

“This year’s national commitments are the first stop, the baseline—from there we move up. The transition is irreversible, it is unstoppable, and Paris is merely the first stop.”

These delegates are here to make sure their voices—and their contributions—are heard and counted by the national governments which will convene in Paris in December. What is different about the mood this summer, compared to the months before Copenhagen six years ago, is that that summer failure loomed, and people felt trapped. This time the world—a broad diversity of actors—wants in on the action—that’s the gift momentum creates.

Listen to Sharon Burrows, the head of the International Trade Union Federation. Her theme: “Coal is gone in 10-15 years. Oil and gas have maybe another 20-30. But no government is planning for it. We’re not getting ready nearly fast enough.”

>>> See also the 2nd part of this Article here.

>>> Consider the important speech of Naomi Klein — “People & Planet First.”

>>> See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Contrasting futures for the ocean give a stark warning to governments ahead of the Paris climate negotiations

PRESS RELEASE — CNRS, Paris, Thursday 2nd July 2015

Source: Gattuso J.-­‐P., Magnan A., Billé R., Cheung W. W. L., Howes E. L., Joos F., Allemand D., Bopp L., Cooley S., Eakin C. M., Hoegh-­‐Guldberg O., Kelly R. P., Pörtner H.-­‐O., Rogers A. D., Baxter J. M., Laffoley D., Osborn D., Rankovic A., Rochette J., Sumaila U. R., Treyer S. & Turley C., “Contrasting futures for ocean and society from different anthropogenic CO2 emissions scenarios.” Science, July 2, 2015.

Any new global climate agreement that does not minimize the impacts on the ocean will be incomplete and inadequate.

The ocean moderates anthropogenic atmospheric warming at the cost of profound alterations of its physics, chemistry, ecology, and ecosystem services. The Oceans 2015 Initiative has published a paper in Science evaluating and comparing the risks of impacts on marine and coastal ecosystems and the goods and services they provide under two potential carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions pathways over this century. Jean-­‐Pierre Gattuso, Senior Scientist at CNRS and lead author of the paper says “the oceans have been minimally considered at previous climate negotiations; our study provides compelling arguments for a radical change at COP21”.

Atmospheric CO2 has increased by more than 40% over the industrial period, which has driven a series of major environmental changes. Yet, the global ocean is a “climate integrator’’ that (1) absorbed 93% of the earth’s additional heat since the 1970s, keeping the atmosphere cooler but increasing ocean temperature and rising sea level; (2) captured 28% of human-­‐caused CO2 emissions since 1750, but acidifying the ocean; and (3) collected virtually all water from melting ice, furthering sea-­‐level rise.

From moderate to very high risks

Ocean changes associated with Copenhagen Accord’s goal of a global atmospheric temperature increase of less than 2°C by 2100 — already carries high risks of impacts for warm-­‐water corals and mid-­‐latitude bivalves. The risk of other impacts will remain moderate if we do not exceed this scenario. Higher emissions pathways, such as the business-­‐as-­‐usual path we are currently following, would greatly aggravate the situation: almost all marine organisms the Oceans 2015 Initiative team considered (e.g., corals, pteropods, finfish, and krill) would face very high risk of impact, such as mass mortalities or species displacement. Likewise, the risk of impact on ecosystem services such as coastal protection (e.g., by oyster beds, coral reefs and mangroves), aquaculture, tourism and capture fisheries would become high or very high by 2100. For example, substantial declines for tropical fisheries are projected as soon as mid 21st century, even under low-­‐emissions pathways. This study also shows that:

“Given the extent of the expected changes, no country is in a safe position, making this issue a worldwide problem that challenges the traditional North/South divide”, said Alexandre Magnan, scientist at IDDRI and coauthor of the paper.options to address ocean impacts (mitigate, protect, repair, adapt) narrow as the ocean warms and acidifies, i.e. as the world moves away from the +2°C path.

For example, one cannot manage coral reef resilience if there is no healthy reefs remaining. Some options are also antagonistic, for example, solar radiation management could limit the increase in temperature but would reduce the incentive to cut CO2 emissions, thereby providing no relief from ocean acidification.

Push to consider ocean issues at COP21: Four key messages are articulated –

(1) The ocean strongly influences the climate system and provides important services to humans.

(2) Impacts on key marine and coastal organisms, ecosystems, and services from anthropogenic CO2 emissions are already detectable across various latitudes, and several will face high risk of impacts well before 2100, even with stringent CO2 emissions scenarios.

(3) Immediate and substantial reduction of CO2 emissions is required more than ever to prevent massive and effectively irreversible impacts on ocean ecosystems and their services.

(4) As CO2 increases, the protection, adaptation and repair options for the ocean become fewer and less effective.

Given the contrasting futures outlined in this paper, the ocean provides further compelling arguments for rapid, rigorous and ambitious CO2 emissions reductions.

The Oceans 2015 Initiative was launched to provide COP21 negotiators with key information on how the future ocean will look like. It is led by CNRS-­‐UPMC and IDDRI and is supported by the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the Ocean Acidification International Coordination Centre of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the BNP Paribas Foundation and the Monégasque Association for Ocean Acidification.