Will the costs of “loss & damage” be shared by polluting nations?

From an Article by Bob Berwyn and Zoha Tunio, Inside Climate News, Nov. 19, 2022

SHARM El-SHEIKH, Egypt—A new COP27 agreement that establishes a funding mechanism to compensate developing countries for losses and damages caused by global warming may be the biggest breakthrough in global climate policy since the 2015 Paris Agreement. If it sticks?

The deal was reached as two weeks of nail-biting negotiations here went into overtime with little to show for all the talk. Many negotiators arrived at the conference halls Saturday morning with their suitcases packed for the trip home while facing the prospect of being called out for failing to make progress on one of the key promises of the United Nation’s effort to address increasingly severe climate change impacts like floods, droughts and deadly heat waves.

Along with finding ways to stop the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to slow global warming, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was established in 1992 to address the fundamental inequalities of climate change impacts. Developed countries in the Global North are responsible for about 79 percent of cumulative greenhouse gas emissions, but less developed countries in the Global South have taken the biggest hit from climate change and don’t have the financial and technical resources to recover from them.

That disparity is at the heart of global climate justice and the 1992 United Nations climate framework committed all the parties to take “into account their common but differentiated responsibilities,” with developed countries committing to assist developing countries “that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting costs of adaptation to those adverse effects … by providing new and additional financial resources.”

The 2015 Paris Agreement added more detail by recognizing “the importance of averting, minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change, including extreme weather events and slow onset events” like sea level rise.

“The issue of climate justice has been at the heart of the climate negotiations from its inception over three decades ago,” said Lavanya Rajamani, an international law expert who advised African nations at COP27. “Yet it is only now that its crucial importance in addressing climate change is being realized. The U.N. climate regime needs to place as much emphasis on adaptation, loss and damage and support as it has on target-setting for mitigation, in fairness to vulnerable nations, and in light of the increasing incidence of devastating impacts as mitigation efforts fall short.”

On Saturday at COP27, 30 years after those first promises were made, developed countries finally agreed to “establish new funding arrangements for assisting developing countries in responding to loss and damage, including a focus on addressing loss and damage by providing and assisting in mobilizing new and additional resources.”

The 11th hour deal was sealed Saturday afternoon when the United States reversed its earlier opposition and agreed to the creation of a specific loss and damage fund, surprising climate activists who just hours earlier had been excoriating the U.S. for its decades of obstruction.

This response to the long-standing demand by developing countries was overdue, said Harjeet Singh, who leads global political strategy for Climate Action Network International, an umbrella organization representing 190 civil society groups in 130 countries.

Intensifying global warming impacts require a systemic response, not just piecemeal post-disaster relief efforts, he said. “Humanitarian aid is welcome, but was never sufficient to help people recover from these impacts,” he said, “We wanted the U.N. climate change system to come in and actually create a mechanism that can help people at scale.”

Under the framework U.N. climate treaty, “Countries with the greatest historical responsibility for emissions, and the greatest capacity to act, have committed to bear the costs of climate change,” said Brian O’Callaghan, lead researcher with Oxford University’s economic recovery project. “Rich countries should act with speed or otherwise increase their future liability.”

The complex negotiations on loss and damage featured shifting alliances among various groups of countries that, at different times in the process, put competing proposals on the table. Ahead of COP27, United States climate envoy John Kerry was careful not to commit to a specific loss and damage mechanism, promising only that the U.S. was open to talking about the issue in the coming years.

Singh said that before COP27 started, the United States appeared to be opposed to the creation of a specific loss and damage fund, preferring to talk about potentially restructuring existing climate finance mechanisms to address those climate impacts that go beyond countries’ capacities to adapt.

The collective push from developing countries and resistance from a large part of the developed world led some attendees to fear a repeat of COP15 in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009, where a similar rift between the wealthy nations most responsible for climate change and poorer ones that are enduring its worst impacts led to an impasse.

At the end of the two-week talks in Copenhagen, world leaders dropped many of their goals for the negotiations and significantly lowered their targets. The parties agreed to recognize the scientific evidence for keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius, but made no tangible commitments to reduce emissions in order to achieve that goal.

But this year, civil society groups applied relentless pressure during the talks, and Singh credited activists with keeping negotiators and the public focused on the topic of loss and damage. At the same time, developing countries maintained a unified front in the talks, “which actually made a huge difference in getting this over the line,” he said. Ultimately, it was the United States taking the step and backing the loss and damage funding mechanism that made the difference, he added.

The fact that the agreement came during a climate summit on a continent enduring some of the world’s most severe climate impacts gave it particular relevance. During the two-week conference, 14 flood alerts were issued for Africa, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

“After 30 years a loss and damage fund is coming home and it’s coming home on African soil,” said Mohamed Adow, director of energy and climate change for Power Shift Africa on Saturday afternoon during a press conference by Climate Action Network International.

As written, the loss and damage agreement includes views from all countries, but discussions about “some of the thorny issues around who will pay and where it (the funding mechanism) is going to be located have been moved to next year,” Singh said. “In fact, that’s exactly what we as civil society … were also demanding, because the most important thing to be done here was to establish the fund. You cannot do everything in two weeks.”

Yet to be determined is how the fund will be administered, who will pay into it, and which countries will receive money. He said there is still a long road ahead before it actually starts helping people hurt by climate impacts, “but the important thing is we now can send a message of hope to people who are suffering right now.”

Q.E.D.

In Egypt from Nov. 7th to Nov. 18th.

From The Climate Reality Project of Al Gore, et al., October 31, 2022

What an October it was! Earlier this month, we hosted 24 Hours of Reality: Spotlight on Solutions and Hope, a global day celebrating action and solutions that we can use in our fight against the climate crisis. Below you can check out some powerful stories from the day, and learn how you can get involved to build the future we all want.

Now, we’re looking ahead to COP 27, the formal annual meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). At COP 27, attendees will push for urgent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience, adaption to climate impacts, and financing climate action in developing nations. And it can’t come at a more critical time – a new report from UNFCCC says we’re failing to meet our climate pledges.

Climate Reality staff and some of our Climate Reality Leaders will be on the ground this year to bring you behind the scenes information from the conference. Follow along at #C2COP27 on social media from November 6-18!

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SEE ALSO: Cornell students to work at UN’s COP27 conference in Egypt, Blaine Friedlander, Cornell Chronicle, October 31, 2022

At the United Nations’ upcoming Conference of the Parties – better known as COP27, the annual convention to ensure countries meet global climate targets set by the Paris Agreement – 11 Cornell students will help delegations from specialized agencies and small countries gain a stronger voice.

The undergraduate and graduate students, all taking Cornell’s Global Climate Change Science and Policy course in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS), will travel to the United Nations Climate Change Conference at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Nov. 6-18.

See the full article for more details.

Patricia Espinosa as UN climate chief says decisions now will determine our future

From an Article by Abigail Adams, People Magazine Online, June 06, 2022

Now is not the time to lose focus on climate change, United Nations climate chief Patricia Espinosa says.

During an address Monday at the opening ceremony of the U.N.’s Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, the 63-year-old Mexican diplomat urged world leaders to remain focused on addressing the ongoing climate crisis despite other challenges facing populations across the globe — inducing “conflict, energy, food, and economic crises” as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.

But according to Espinosa, who will complete her second term as head of the U.N. climate office at the end of 2022, there is no time to waste with addressing climate change. “I appeal to all of you, especially in these difficult and challenging times, not to lose hope, not to lose focus, but to use our united efforts against climate change as the ultimate act of unity between nations,” she said at the event. “We must never give in to despair,” the diplomat added. “We must continue to move forward. Look at what we have accomplished in the last six years. Look at what we’ve accomplished in the last 30.”

But Espinosa also pressed world leaders to take action, and fast. Earlier in her speech, the climate chief said decisions on how to address the ongoing climate crisis are needed “now,” and that “very difficult decisions” must be made to do so. “We must understand that climate change is moving exponentially. We can no longer afford to make just incremental progress,” she said. “We must move these negotiations along more quickly. The world expects it.”

The Earth is currently about 1.1°C warmer than it was during the 19th century, according to the U.N.’s website. At this pace, the U.N. believes countries are “not on track to meet the Paris Agreement target” of preventing the global temperature from exceeding 1.5°C, which “is considered the upper limit to avoid the worst fallout from climate change.”

Over the next 10 days, Espinosa and “diplomats from around the world will try to lay the foundations” for the 27th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 27) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which will take place in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt this November, according to the Associated Press.

At the opening press conference held later in the day, Espinosa said she believes the 10-day meeting “marks the start of a new face in the intergovernmental climate change process [and] the process of implementation.”

But “one thing is very clear” about the climate crisis, Espinosa noted: “We don’t have time” to waste. “We have a blueprint and we have a framework and we have the rules to ensure that it is transparent,” she said while addressing the media. “So I think it’s time to get on with the job.”

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See Also: Marine Life Could Experience ‘Mass Extinction’ if Humans Don’t Take ‘Rapid Action’ Against Climate Crisis

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See Also: Chevron CEO Warns Not to Count on New US Oil Refinery Even With Surging Gas Prices, Kevin Crowley & Alex Steel, Bloomberg News, June 3, 2022

(Bloomberg) — There may never be a new refinery built in the US despite surging gasoline prices, as policymakers move away from fossil fuels, according to Chevron Corp. “We haven’t had a refinery built in the United States since the 1970s, my personal view is there will never be another new refinery built in the United States,” Chief Executive Officer Mike Wirth said.

Refining margins have exploded to historically high levels in recent weeks amid lower supplies from Russia and China and surging demand for gasoline and diesel around the world. “You’re looking at committing capital 10 years out, that will need decades to offer a return for shareholders, in a policy environment where governments around the world are saying: we don’t want these products,” Wirth said. “We’re receiving mixed signals in these policy discussions.”

Increasing plastic pollution is at a dangerous level in our oceans

From an Article by Tiffany Duong, EcoWatch & Oceans, January 22, 2021

This month, a new era began in the fight against plastic pollution.

In 2019, 187 nations within the United Nations amended the 1989 Basel Convention, which governs trade in hazardous materials, to include plastic waste. The historic treaty created a legally binding framework to make global trade in plastic waste more transparent and better regulated, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) said in a press release.

The amendment to the Basel Convention, which went into effect on Jan. 1, 2021, will result in a cleaner ocean within five years and allow developing nations like Vietnam and Malaysia to refuse low-quality and difficult-to-recycle waste before it ever gets shipped, a UN transboundary waste chief told The Guardian.

“It is my optimistic view that, in five years, we will see results,” Rolph Payet, the executive director of the Basel Convention, told The Guardian. “People on the frontline are going to be telling us whether there is a decrease of plastic in the ocean. I don’t see that happening in the next two to three years, but on the horizon of five years. This amendment is just the beginning.”

“Pollution from plastic waste, acknowledged as a major environmental problem of global concern, has reached epidemic proportions with an estimated 100 million tons of plastic now found in the oceans, 80-90 percent of which comes from land-based sources,” the UNEP release noted, explaining a primary rationale behind the amendment’s passage.

Once in the oceans, plastic continues to cause harm. It degrades into microplastics, which end up in our seafood and ultimately us. A recent study also found that plastic pollution increases ocean acidification.

The amendment now requires “prior notice and consent” in writing from importing and transit countries before shipping plastic waste for recycling, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)explained. Exporting countries must detail whether a shipment is mixed or contaminated. If permission isn’t granted to receive the goods, they must remain in their country of origin.

The new international rule aims to level the playing field between wealthy nations that dump contaminated plastic waste and poorer ones that have traditionally received it. According to The Guardian, before the new rule, shipments containing contaminated, non-recyclable and low-quality plastics were often sold to developing nations for recycling. After China refused to continue accepting contaminated waste in 2018, the onus fell on other developing nations to accept it, a 2020 Greenpeace report found. Once received, the waste was often illegally burned or dumped in landfills and waterways because it was unusable and unrecyclable.

Heng Kiah Chun, a Greenpeace Malaysia campaigner, called the impact from illegally dumping plastic waste from more than 19 countries worldwide “an indelible mark” left throughout Southeast Asia, the report added.

According to the EPA, the Basel Convention made an exception for pre-sorted, clean, uncontaminated and recycling-bound plastic scrap: it will not be subject to informed consent requirements. The idea is to encourage exports of commercially viable plastics for recycling rather than the unrestricted dumping of plastic trash that previously occurred.

In Dec. 2020, the European Union passed additional regulationsthat are even stricter than the Basel Convention amendment, including a ban on sending unsorted plastic waste, which is harder to recycle, to poorer countries.

Despite leading the world in plastic waste, the U.S. did not agree to the amendment in 2019. However, the amendment still applies to the U.S. anytime it tries to trade plastic waste with another of the 187 participating countries, CNN reported.

Rather than framing the plastic problem as an issue between developed and developing nations, some critics would rather see commercial producers take responsibility. Others, noting that recycling models, especially in the U.S., aren’t working, are encouraging a cultural shift away from using plastics, stemming the problem of plastic pollution at the source.

Nevertheless, the convention is a “crucial first step towards stopping the use of developing countries as a dumping ground for the world’s plastic waste, especially those coming from rich nations,” Von Hernandez, Break Free From Plastic global coordinator, told CNN.

“Countries at the receiving end of mixed and unsorted plastic waste from foreign sources now have the right to refuse these problematic shipments, in turn compelling source countries to ensure exports of clean, recyclable plastics only,” Hernandez added. “Recycling will not be enough, however. Ultimately, production of plastics has to be significantly curtailed to effectively resolve the plastic pollution crisis.”

UNITED NATIONS Sustainable Development Goal #7

From an Article by Mary Anne Hitt, Sierra Magazine, January – February, 2021

My friends,

It takes my breath away to write these words, but we did it. Rooted in our deep love for this planet and one another, we stepped back from the cliff of irreversible climate change. Families around the globe, including mine and yours, no longer face the specter of fleeing their homes because of ever-worsening climate-driven disasters. The fossil fuel industry no longer controls the levers of power to corrupt democracy. And we’re building a world where everyone has clean air and clean water and access to nature.

As we rolled up our sleeves to prevent a climate emergency, our solutions prioritized investments in those communities most harmed by fossil fuels and pollution and those long excluded from economic opportunity. We needed to build so mu6ch clean energy infrastructure to avoid a climate apocalypse, and we didn’t just build it; we built it with family-sustaining jobs and with an eye toward restitution and reparations. Thanks to you, our kids will be raising their sons and daughters in vibrant, resilient communities full of opportunity. This is how we arrived here:

>>>> BEHOLD THE CLEAN ENERGY FUTURE …

First, we powered the country with 100 percent clean energy. An electric grid powered by clean energy was the foundation for turning the corner on climate, and the dirty power plants that were the worst contributors to environmental injustice were the first to go.

Building on a decade of grassroots advocacy, President Biden introduced and Congress finally passed a national 100 percent clean energy standard that put us well on our way to phasing out coal and gas by 2035 while ensuring that vulnerable communities experienced the benefits of the transition.

Big states such as California and New York then set even more aggressive goals, making it clear that a clean energy transition of speed and scale was possible. And since decisions about how we produce electricity are largely made by states, we continued our 50-state energy-transformation push for a decade.

To support communities with economic ties to fossil fuels, Congress included a robust economic transition for fossil fuel workers and community-led economic development. Congress also passed innovative measures like a moratorium on utility shutoffs for households and support for energy-saving home improvements for families spending a high percentage of their income on electricity bills (known as a high energy burden).

Renewable energy kept getting cheaper, and that allowed the Department of Energy to accelerate local clean energy solutions like microgrids—which are reliable during climate-driven extreme-weather events—in vulnerable and underserved places like the Navajo Nation and Puerto Rico.

We finally harnessed the power of offshore wind along the Atlantic coast and solar across the Southeast and Southwest, while scaling up new energy-storage technologies to make clean energy available when it’s needed most. Altogether, we made a quantum leap in the scale and scope of the energy transition, produced millions of jobs, and sparked the creation of thousands of new businesses.

>>>>> Part B is scheduled for tomorrow on FrackCheckWV.net.

This Article appeared in the January/February edition of SIERRA with the headline “A Love Letter From the Clean Energy Future.”

Small scale production of egg plants in Bangladesh

By Blaine Friedlander, Cornell Chronicle, October 12, 2020

The world’s small-scale farmers now can see a path to solving global hunger over the next decade, with solutions – such as adopting climate-resilient crops through improving extension services – all culled rapidly via artificial intelligence from more than 500,000 scientific research articles.

The results are synthesized in 10 new research papers – authored by 77 scientists, researchers and librarians in 23 countries – as part of Ceres2030: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger. The project is headquartered at Cornell, with partners from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

The papers were published concurrently on Oct. 12 in four journals – Nature Plants, Nature Sustainability, Nature Machine Intelligence and Nature Food – and assembled in a comprehensive package online: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger.

Ceres2030 employed machine learning, librarian savvy and research synthesis methods to quickly scan a trove of thousands of scientific journals for ideas and websites from more than 60 agencies that can help eradicate world hunger.

Principal Investigator Jaron Porciello of Cornell University

“Moreover,” Porciello said, “we are synthesizing this scientific information to make it useful for an audience – like policymakers – that needs science to make decisions.”

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal No. 2, known as SDG2, calls for ridding the world of hunger by 2030. Currently, more than 690 million people – about 8.9% of the world’s population – are food-insecure, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that global statistic could easily rise by 10 million people a year from now, and by nearly 60 million people in five years.

If recent trends continue, the number of people around the world affected by hunger would surpass 840 million by 2030, according to the FAO.

Ideas from the array of papers published in the respective Nature publications can be implemented instantly. Around the world, for example, small-scale farmers are rooted in their agricultural ways, often holding on to traditional farming methods that may impair their own food security and livelihoods.

In an evidence-synthesis study about small-scale producers in low-and middle-income countries in Nature Plants, Cornell researchers found that a key to adopting drought-tolerant crops was people – extension experts teaching farmers ways to move forward.

Researchers and librarians reviewed more than 200 journal articles that revealed how extension and education helped small-scale farmers adopt climate resilient crops to achieve steady production, even in the face of climate change, said Maricelis Acevedo, senior research associate in the Department of Global Development.

“How do we make sure that technologies that we develop based on science can have a positive impact on a farmer’s livelihood?” Acevedo said. “We can do all the science, but if we don’t communicate effectively with farmers, they won’t get the right information.”

Acevedo worked on the study with Cornell colleagues Hale Tufan, senior extension associate in global development; Kate Ghezzi-Kopel, evidence synthesis librarian at Mann Library; and Porciello.

Reviewing scientific literature can reveal knowledge gaps. In the evidence-synthesis paper about feed interventions and the livelihoods of small-scale livestock keepers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, in Nature Plants, nearly 23,000 papers were identified by human expertise and artificial intelligence. Only 73 of them were included in the final analysis, and just six reported evidence of adopting new livestock feed methods.

The authors, including Debbie Cherney, professor of animal science, and Erin Eldermire, head of Cornell’s Flower-Sprecher Veterinary Library, at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, found that while many papers examined the technical aspects of a livestock feed supply, they rarely accounted for nutrition.

Cornell researchers’ work on accelerating evidence-informed decision-making for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals using machine learning in Nature Machine Intelligence, describes how Porciello group developed Persephone, the machine-learning model they used for the gargantuan task of reviewing research. Joining Porciello on the paper were graduate student Maidul Islam ‘21; Stefan Einarson, director of information technology in the Department of Global Development; and Haym Hirsh, professor of computer science.

In a review of the contributions of farmers’ organizations to smallholder agriculture, in Nature Food, Ghezzi-Kopel and other authors said formal farmer groups not only provided needed structure to market produce, but encouraged natural resource management, improved food security and helped the environment.

Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature, will present the entire package of Ceres2030 papers to Gerd Müller, Germany’s Federal Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development, at the online event, “A World Without Hunger is Possible – What Must Be Done,” Oct. 13 at 4 a.m. EDT. The program will include remarks by billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The prospects for the reaching the United Nations’ anti-hunger goal is promising, Porciello said. “We’re trying something new that hasn’t been done before,” she said. “We know the tools weren’t there, the methods weren’t there and the teams weren’t in place. Now, we’ve created some staircases to make science and world reality connect a little bit more. This approach could be replicated to build a scientific evidence base for many of the world’s most complex policy problems”

Acevedo, Porciello and Tufan are faculty fellows at the Cornell Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

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The 17 United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) to transform our world:

GOAL 1: No Poverty, GOAL 2: Zero Hunger, GOAL 3: Good Health and Well-being, GOAL 4: Quality Education, GOAL 5: Gender Equality, GOAL 6: Clean Water and Sanitation, GOAL 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, GOAL 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth, GOAL 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, GOAL 10: Reduced Inequality, GOAL 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, GOAL 12: Responsible Consumption and Production, GOAL 13: Climate Action, GOAL 14: Life Below Water, GOAL 15: Life on Land GOAL 16: Peace & Justice Strong Institutions, GOAL 17: Partnerships to achieve Goals

Sea level rise is an issue at the Norfolk Naval Station, the world’s largest

From an Article by Sarah Vogelsong, Virginia Mercury, November 5, 2019

If the stalwart presence of the U.S. military in Virginia makes you feel safer in an uncertain world plagued by sea level rise and climate change, a recent report by the U.S. Army War College would like to disabuse you of that sense of security.

According to “Implications of Climate Change for the U.S. Army,” the Department of Defense is “precariously unprepared for the national security implications” of climate change, while the U.S. Army has fostered an “environmentally oblivious” culture.

“In short, the Army is an environmental disaster,” the authors write.

Overall, the report, which was released this August but in the past week has garnered national and international attention, largely focuses on how climate change will heighten the likelihood of global instability. Warmer temperatures and rising seas will not only displace millions of people but endanger water supplies and power grids while fostering new geopolitical tensions, the authors warn.

Not all the risks are overseas. Domestically, military installations are threatened by both power grid vulnerabilities and sea-level rise.

“Department of Defense installations are 99 percent reliant on the U.S. power grid for electrical power generation due to the decommissioning of autonomous power generation capability for budgetary cost saving measures over the last two decades,” the report notes. But as climate change gives rise to more severe storms and weather events like drought and sustained precipitation, these shifts “introduce the possibility of taxing an already fragile system.”

Among the power concerns cited are the vulnerability of the nation’s nuclear power stations, all of which are located near waterways because of the technology’s reliance on water for cooling. This September, the New Republic highlighted the Surry Nuclear Power Station as an “extreme” example of vulnerability, reporting:

“the greatest risk of flood-related catastrophe at the facility would be surge combined with flooding from the nearby James River. A particularly severe flood could result in a maximum water level of 38.8 feet — more than 10 feet higher than the maximum Surry is built to withstand. It’s a highly unlikely combination of events, but a flood of this scale could wreak havoc on electrical systems and require Surry’s operators to try to cool the core in a dangerously flooded facility.”

Sea level rise continues to be the greatest threat to Virginia’s massive military infrastructure. Virginia is heavily reliant on the military: it receives more defense spending than any other state, and that spending makes up a greater portion of its gross domestic product than in any other state. But Virginia is also highly vulnerable to climate change, particularly in Hampton Roads, where the world’s largest naval base is found and the nation’s second-fastest rate of sea level rise is occurring. Earlier this summer, assessments by the four military branches identified six Virginia installations as among the nation’s most threatened military bases.

The Evidence for Climate Change

There is overwhelming consensus among scientists that the Earth’s climate is warming, and that this warming is largely driven by human action. Although regions have always experienced natural temperature fluctuations, long-term temperature records show an “unequivocal” warming trend since the 1950s. Other measurable changes such as accelerated melting of glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise and increasingly extreme weather provide further clear evidence that warming is occurring. According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which draws on research by thousands of scientists worldwide, this warming is “extremely likely” (defined as greater than 95% probability) to have been caused by human actions, particularly the release of “unprecedented” levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the mid-20th century. The U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment released by the Trump administration in November 2018 similarly found that “observational evidence does not support any credible natural explanations for this amount of warming.”

Sources: IPCC, Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report; NASA, “Climate Change: How Do We Know?”; U.S. Fourth National Climate Assessment.

“I should not be here.” “How dare you.”

From an Article by Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writer, September 23, 2019

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Scolded for doing little, leader after leader promised the United Nations on Monday to do more to prevent a warming world from reaching even more dangerous levels.

As they made their pledges at the Climate Action Summit, though, they and others conceded it was not enough. And even before they spoke, teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg shamed them over and over for their inaction: “How dare you?”

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres concluded the summit by listing 77 countries that committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, 70 nations pledging to do more to fight climate change, with 100 business leaders promising to join the green economy and one-third of the global banking sector signing up to green goals.

“Action by action, the tide is turning,” he said. “But we have a long way to go.”

Businesses and charities also got in on the act, at times even going bigger than major nations. Microsoft founder Bill Gates announced Monday that his foundation, along with The World Bank and some European governments, would provide $790 million in financial help to 300 million of the world’s small farmers adapt to climate change. The Gates foundation pledged $310 million of that.

“The world can still prevent the absolute worst effects of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing new technologies and sources of energy,” Gates said. “But the effects of rising temperatures are already under way.”

As the day went on Monday and the promises kept coming, the United States seemed out in the cold.

Before world leaders made their promises in three-minute speeches, the 16-year-old Thunberg gave an emotional appeal in which she scolded the leaders with her repeated phrase, “How dare you.”

“This is all wrong. I shouldn’t be up here,” said Thunberg, who began a lone protest outside the Swedish parliament more than a year ago that culminated in Friday’s global climate strikes. “I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean. Yet you have come to us young people for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.”

“We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and yet all you can talk about is money,” Thunberg said. “You are failing us.” Later, she and 15 other youth activists filed a formal complaint with an arm of the U.N. that protects children, saying that governments’ lack of action on warming is violating their basic rights.

Outside experts say they heard a lot of talk Monday but not the promised action needed to keep warming to a few tenths of a degree. They say it won’t produce the dramatic changes the world requires.

“Sometimes I feel that Greta is still out in front of the Swedish parliament out on her own,” said Stanford University’s Rob Jackson, who chairs the Global Carbon Project, which targets carbon emissions across the world.

Bill Hare, who follows national emissions and promises for Climate Action Tracker, called what was said “deeply disappointing” and not adding up to much.

“The ball they are moving forward is a ball of promises,” said economist John Reilly, co-director of MIT’s Joint Center for Global Change. “Where the ‘ball’ of actual accomplishments is, is another question.”

Of all the countries that came up short, World Resources Institute Vice President Helen Mountford said one stood out: the United States for “not coming to the table and engaging.”

“What we’ve seen so far is not the kind of climate leadership we need from the major economies,” Mountford said. She did say, however, that businesses, as well as small- and medium-sized countries had “exciting initiatives.”

Nations such as Finland and Germany promised to ban coal within a decade. Several also mentioned goals of climate neutrality — when a country is not adding more heat-trapping carbon to the air than is being removed by plants and perhaps technology — by 2050.

U.S. President Donald Trump dropped by the summit, listened to German Chancellor Angela Merkel make detailed pledges — including going coal-free — and left without saying anything.

The United States did not ask to speak at the summit, U.N. officials said. And Guterres had told countries they couldn’t be on the agenda without making bold new proposals.

Even though there was no speech by Trump — who has denied climate change, called it a Chinese hoax and repealed U.S. carbon-reduction policies — he was talked about.

In a jibe at Trump’s plans to withdraw the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said countries “must honor our commitments and follow through on the Paris Agreement.”

“The withdrawal of certain parties will not shake the collective goal of the world community,” Wang said to applause. Also Monday, Russia announced that it had ratified the Paris pact, which it had signed already.

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the U.N.’s special climate envoy, thanked Trump for stopping by, adding that it might prove useful “when you formulate climate policy,” drawing laughter and applause on the General Assembly floor.

Thunberg told the U.N. that even the strictest emission cuts being talked about only gives the world a 50% chance of limiting future warming to another 0.4 degrees Celsius (0.72 degrees Fahrenheit) from now, which is a global goal. Those odds, she said, are not good enough. “We will not let you get away with this,” Thunberg said. “Right now is where we draw the line.”

As this all played out, scientists announced that Arctic sea ice reached its annual summer low and this year the ice shrank so much it tied for the second lowest mark in 40 years of monitoring.

Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, said she represents “the most climate-vulnerable people on Earth.” Her tiny country has increased its emissions-cut proposals in a way that would limit warming to that tight goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. “We are now calling on others to join us,” Heine said.

Several leaders talked about getting off coal, but Climate Action Tracker’s Hare said it wasn’t enough and Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley said if the world can make driverless cars, it can tackle climate change. “There simply can be no more coal power plants after 2020 if we are serious about our future,” she said.

Speaking for small nations that are already being eaten away by sea level rise and blasted by stronger storms, Mottley said, “We refuse to be relegated to the footnotes of history and be collateral damage.”

“The nations of the world are not fighting a losing battle, but the nations of the world are losing this battle today,” Mottley said. “It’s within our battle to win it. The only question is: Will it be too late for the small nations of the world?”

Guterres opened the summit Monday by saying: “Earth is issuing a chilling cry: Stop.” He told the more than 60 world leaders scheduled to speak that it’s not a time to negotiate but to act to make the world carbon neutral by 2050. “Time is running out,” he said. “But it is not too late.”

>>> Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://www.apnews.com/Climate

United Nations reports on risks to living species

By The Editorial Board, New York Times, May 11, 2019
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Our planet has suffered five mass extinctions, the last of which occurred about 66 million years ago, when a giant asteroid believed to have landed near the Yucatán Peninsula set off a chain reaction that wiped out the dinosaurs and roughly three-quarters of the other species on earth. A few years ago, in a book called “The Sixth Extinction,” the writer Elizabeth Kolbert warned of a devastating sequel, with plant and animal species on land and sea already disappearing at a ferocious clip, their habitats destroyed or diminished by human activities.

This time, she made clear, the asteroid is us — and we will pay heavily for our folly.

Humanity’s culpability in what many scientists believe to be a planetary emergency has now been reaffirmed by a detailed and depressing report compiled by hundreds of international experts and based on thousands of scientific studies. A summary was released last Monday in Paris, and the full 1,500-page report will be available later in the year. Its findings are grim. “Biodiversity” — a word encompassing all living flora and fauna — “is declining faster than at any time in human history,” it says, estimating that “around 1 million species already face extinction, many within decades,” unless the world takes transformative action to save natural systems. The at-risk population includes a half-million land-based species and one-third of marine mammals and corals.

Most of the causes of this carnage seem familiar: logging, poaching, overfishing by large industrial fleets, pollution, invasive species, the spread of roads and cities to accommodate an exploding global population, now seven billion and rising. If there is one alpha culprit, it is the clearing of forests and wetlands for farms to feed all those people (and, perversely, to help them get to work: The destruction of Indonesia’s valuable rain forests, and their replacement with palm oil plantations, has been driven in part by Europe’s boundless appetite for biodiesel fuels.)

Add to all this a relatively new threat: Global warming, driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels, is expected to compound the damage. “While climate change has not been the dominant driver of biodiversity loss to date in most parts of the world, it is projected to become as or more important,” said Sir Robert Watson, chairman of the biodiversity panel and former chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose most recent alarming report on global warming has given that issue new currency in American politics. Rising seas and increased extreme weather events propelled in part by climate change — fire, floods, droughts — have already harmed many species. The most obvious victim is the world’s coral reefs, which have suffered grievously from ocean waters that have grown warmer and more acidic as a result of all the carbon dioxide they’ve been asked to absorb.

As The Times’s Brad Plumer recently noted, many ecologists insist that species are worth saving on their own, that it’s simply morally wrong to drive any living creature to extinction. The new report deliberately adds a powerful practical motive to the spiritual one: Biodiversity loss, it says, is an urgent issue for human well-being, providing billions and billions of dollars in what experts call “ecosystem services.” Wetlands clean and purify water. Coral reefs nourish vast fish populations that feed the world. Organic matter in the soil nourishes crops. Bees and other threatened insects pollinate fruits and vegetables. Mangroves protect us from floods made worse by rising seas.

“Most of nature’s contributions are not fully replaceable,” the report says. But humans can stop or at least limit the damage. One critical task is to protect (and if possible to enlarge) the world’s natural forests, which, according to a recent paper by eminent ecologists in Science Advance, are home to fully two-thirds of the world’s species. Intact forests also absorb and store enormous amounts of carbon, so preserving them assists not only the species that live there but also the struggle against climate change. Conversely, cutting trees to make way for farming and other purposes — as Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, is determined to do in the Amazon — is a disaster for both the species and the climate; recent estimates suggest that deforestation accounts for slightly over 10 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, much smaller than the emissions from vehicles and power plants, but significant (and avoidable) nonetheless.

To Professor Watson and many other scientists, there are two important parallel approaches to the interconnected climate and species crises. One is to transform agricultural practices, the other is to enlarge the world’s supply of legally protected landscapes that cannot be touched for any commercial purpose. As to the first, farmers could figure out how to produce more food on fewer acres, and in ways that help the soil retain carbon; consumers could help by making smarter food choices, like eating more locally sourced food, and cutting back on meat and dairy products that require immense amounts of land for livestock.

Second, governments should mandate a significant increase in protected areas, both on land and at sea. Partly as a result of the Convention on Biological Diversity, a treaty agreed upon in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro along with a landmark agreement on climate change, nations have set aside about 15 percent of the world’s land and 7 percent of its oceans by setting up wilderness areas and nature preserves. Because this is only a fraction of the areas needed to protect biodiversity, the authors of the paper in Science Advance recommend a twofold increase in the protected land area and a fourfold increase in marine reserves over the next decade. If rigorously policed (which many parks are not today), that would effectively quarantine about 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans.

This proposal, which its authors call a Global Deal for Nature (echoing the Democrats’ Green New Deal on climate), will be further refined before the next meeting of the parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in 2020 in China. Though it always sends a delegation to these meetings, the United States has never ratified the treaty; President Bill Clinton signed it in 1993, but the Republican Senate failed to ratify it for various reasons, including unfounded fears that the treaty threatened American patent and intellectual property rights.

It is hard to believe that the Trump administration and the current Senate will be any more enthusiastic about preserving biodiversity than the Senate was then. This is an administration, after all, that has proposed to shrink national monuments and reduce protections for the imperiled sage grouse in order to accommodate the oil, gas and coal industries; that is moving to open up the species-rich coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling; that plans to make available now-protected waters along America’s Pacific and Atlantic coasts for the same purpose; that proposes to sacrifice parts of

Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging; that, most tellingly, aims to weaken the Endangered Species Act, approved in 1973 with Richard Nixon’s signature in what seems a distant era when there was fairly deep bipartisan support for environmental values.

Few of the Democratic presidential hopefuls who have spoken about climate change and jumped with varying degrees of enthusiasm on the Green New Deal bandwagon have commented on the biodiversity report, despite biodiversity’s obvious connections to climate. They should read it, and make it part of their post-2020 agenda.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/11/opinion/sunday/extinction-endangered-species-biodiversity.html

Multiple factors are affecting most of the species on Earth

Essay by Thomas E. Lovejoy, Science Advances, May 10, 2019

Thomas Lovejoy, Univ. Professor, Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030

REFERENCE: Science Advances, 06 May 2019: Vol. 5, no. 5, eaax7492; DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aax7492

The first official report of the Inter-governmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), released on May 6th in Paris, provides the first modern authoritative assessment of planetary biodiversity and related contributions of nature to people (CNP)–dubbed ecosystem services. Ecosystem services are those charities of nature, both nebulous and tangible, that serve as the backbone of human well-being: food, fresh water, clean air, wood, fiber, genetic resources, and medicine.

The IPBES is being called the IPCC of Biodiversity, with the IPCC referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the recognized assembly of the United Nations created in 1988 to provide global leaders with regular scientific assessment of the implications and risks of climate change. The IPBES, founded in 2012, came slow on the heels of the IPCC for a variety of reasons but in large part because grappling with, gathering data for, and analyzing the myriad features of global biodiversity and ecosystem services are astoundingly complex endeavors.

A scientific assessment of the state of biodiversity and ecosystems services in the context of climate reveals that all are inextricably intertwined, united yet dispersed, invaluable yet monetizable, reflecting nature in its holistic role as the bedrock of human civilization. The 2005 Millennium Ecosystem Assessment served as an early appraisal of the state of life on Earth. The IPBES synthesis is today’s report card, and it tells a short story: Eden is gone. While the planetary garden still exists, it is in deep disrepair, frayed and fragmented almost beyond recognition.

Not unexpectedly, the specific findings are depressing. More species are threatened with extinction than any time in human history. Ever growing human populations and their activities have severely altered 75% of the terrestrial environment, 40% of the marine environment, and 50% of streams and rivers. The health of freshwater biodiversity has been particularly neglected because freshwater is widely understood and managed more as a physical resource vital to survival rather than as the special and delicate habitat that it provides for an extraordinary array of organisms.

The primary drivers of negative trends are also no surprise: In descending order, these adverse impacts include rapid changes in land and sea use, direct exploitation of natural resources, climate change, pollution, and invasive species. Of monumental note is that, collectively, significant destructive forces arise from the actions of impoverished peoples living at the edges of society, working to eke out an existence often with little choice but to have minimal concern for environmental impact.

The role of climate change in biodiversity loss is also severely underestimated because of the lag between rising levels of CO2 concentration and the equivalent accumulation of the radiant heat that leads to warming and biological impact. Ironically, climate change is also, in part, the consequence of biodiversity destruction: The amount of carbon in the atmosphere from degraded and destroyed ecosystems is now equal to what remains in extant ecosystems. The additional CO2 emanating from the combustion of fossil fuels is in fact ancient solar energy that was trapped and converted by ancient ecosystems and is now being released in a geological instant.

While the IPCC reports have documented climate change and sounded warnings, the IPBES report highlights aspects of the degradation of planetary natural systems that equally warrant immediate attention and action. As dire as the findings in the assessment may be, they likely also hold the ingredients of solutions. For example, economists and decision makers are largely unaware of (or chose to ignore) the contributions of natural resources to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of indigenous peoples or the poor; at the same time, many of those people are often equally reluctant to embrace the monetary value of local ecosystem services.

CNP and ecosystem services are essentially two congruent valuation systems, and both are recognized by the IPBES assessment. The danger is that decision makers are often distant from the actual sites of valued biodiversity and ecosystems; as a result, they do not see actual monetized benefits from the sustainable use of natural resources and so peg the value of these resources at, or near, zero.

Adding to the flaws in the calculus of conservation and sustainability is the surprising inattention to the value of new discoveries from biodiversity and ecosystems to life sciences research. For example, researchers recently discovered that a soil fungus in Nova Scotia can functionally disarm antibiotic-resistant bacteria, a discovery that could transform practices in medicine, agriculture, and beyond. About 70% of drugs used for cancer are natural or bioinspired products.

The polymerase chain reaction aided by an enzyme from a Yellowstone hot spring bacterium may have generated close to a trillion dollars of benefit through rapid multiplication of genetic material. The list of treasures uncovered in the elements and processes of the natural world grows daily; at present, however, these kinds of contributions from natural resources to human health and life sciences are neither recognized nor accounted for and so are treated as free and without value.

The IPBES report findings are more than sobering: 35 of 44 assessed targets of the Sustainable Development Goals depend on authentic transformational change to reverse trends of degradation. The assessment concludes that the current course of planetary degradation can be altered only with preemptive and precautionary actions, strengthened laws and related enforcement, dramatic changes in economic and social incentives, increased monitoring of biodiversity and ecosystems, and integrated decision-making across sectors and jurisdictions.

These dramatic changes will need to be supported by leaders, who themselves must promote new ways of understanding the meaning of “quality of life,” ones that value consuming less, wasting less, conserving more, and engaging truly novel approaches to global resource conservation and management. New tools will need to include technologies, creative economic models, and future-facing patterns of social behavior that are respectful of the diversity of needs, cultures, and local resources across the planet. These tools will need to be designed and applied to manage land use, agricultural development, and resource distribution in ways that will feed everyone adequately without further destroying nature.

Happily, the publication of the IPBES assessment coincides with new and hopeful visions emerging from the conservation community that adjust the scale and impact of collective efforts upward dramatically. The Edward O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation’s goal of Half-Earth was one of the first, with the aim of conserving half of the planet’s lands and seas to safeguard the bulk of biodiversity, including humans. The National Geographic Society has a goal to place 30% of the planet in protected areas by 2030. The Global Deal for Nature, recently published in Science Advances (eaaw2869, March 19/19 issue) is essentially coincident with the One Earth vision from the Leonardo DeCaprio Foundation.

The story of the unraveling of the planetary web of life has been told for decades, well before Rachel Carson’s prediction of silent springs. With its publication, the IPBES assessment, however imperfect, is now the most complete and comprehensive synthesis to date on the state of the health of the planet with all its natural resources and potential for contributing to human well-being.

Readers at all levels of government, in the for-profit sector, and in civil society should heed its warnings and act on its vision and recommendations in haste. Together, we now sit at the fail-safe point and must decide what to do; collectively, all sectors must embrace the challenges raised by the assessment, rise to action, and do what we must do to ensure a viable future for our living planet and for humans and the extraordinary variety of life with which it and we are blessed.

>>> This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.