The Road to Glasgow - Cracks Emerge



What were you expecting, some global Kumbaya moment?

Ten days and counting to the opening of the COP 26 climate summit and details about efforts to subvert the drive to thwart climate ruin are already being leaked.


A huge leak of documents seen by BBC News shows how countries are trying to change a crucial scientific report on how to tackle climate change.

The leak reveals Saudi Arabia, Japan and Australia are among countries asking the UN to play down the need to move rapidly away from fossil fuels.

It also shows some wealthy nations are questioning paying more to poorer states to move to greener technologies.

The leak reveals countries pushing back on UN recommendations for action and comes just days before they will be asked at the summit to make significant commitments to slow down climate change and keep global warming to 1.5 degrees.

The leaked documents consist of more than 32,000 submissions made by governments, companies and other interested parties to the team of scientists compiling a UN report designed to bring together the best scientific evidence on how to tackle climate change.

The last IPCC report shows the panel has been unswayed by these submissions but that's not the problem. What is worrisome is how these holdout governments and companies may work to undermine consensus in Glasgow.  With time running out, delaying actions could have enormous consequences especially among the poorest and most vulnerable nations.


Comments

  1. TrailblazerOctober 21, 2021 at 4:37 PM

    I wonder where Canada stands, unofficially that is?
    There is , again, going to be a lot of grandstanding and as we know, Trudeau is a master of such.
    Sadly he who blinks last will prosper, financially , from holding out on action to save the planet.

    TB

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Disaffected LibOctober 21, 2021 at 5:03 PM

    Instead of 50 per cent by 2030, the benchmark, Trudeau is planning on cuts of 30 percent while still holding out the empty promise of carbon zero by 2050, a pledge that will fall on the shoulders of some future prime minister. Then again this prime minister has never taken his solemn promises too seriously.

    ReplyDelete
  3. TrailblazerOctober 21, 2021 at 6:20 PM

    He promised the Missus to go to Tofino and he came through!
    O'h you of little faith. .LOL
    Thankfully there are large quantities of good Scotch whisky to get me through all of this.


    TB

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Up in Smoke. 300 Sq. Mi. of Amazon Rainforest Lost Every Day.

Image
  The Amazon rainforest is disappearing at what should be an alarming rate. 312 sq. mi. or 808 sq. kms. every day. Over the past 30 years humans have destroyed a patch of the Amazon equal in area to the states of Texas and New Mexico . The Amazon – historically a great carbon absorber, since trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen – now releases more carbon than it stores, which adds to, rather helps to reduce, our global climate crisis. Deforestation rates decreased slightly from 2004 to 2012. But since then, they’re back on the rise, especially in the past couple of years, since Jair Bolsonaro became president of Brazil. In 2018, as Bolsonaro campaigned as a patriotic man of the people, scientists predicted that once the Amazon lost more than 25% of its tree cover, it would become a drier ecosystem, all because deforestation changes weather patterns (due to how trees respire), which in turn reduces rainfall. Furthermore, as the forest becomes fragmented, areas surrounded by
Read more

The Cognoscenti Syndrome

  There is a group of people I think of as the Cognoscenti, people who are well educated, very informed and of rapidly diminishing relevance. Their ranks include writers such as Chris Hedges and Glen Greenwald. These are people who have honed an almost Puritanical value system, readily finding fault in any direction. They are scathing in their attacks on Republicans and Democrats alike to the point where they become nihilists. They don't endorse. They prescribe. This is where they fail. They're unable to advocate for anything that might resonate with the public whose interests they argue are being trammeled. Donald Trump was bad but Joe Biden is scarcely better. This is where their elitism comes in.  74 million may have voted for Trump but, hey, they didn't know any better. The mob that stormed the Capitol. They were just victims of the system venting their frustrations. All the racism, bigotry, xenophobia, misogyny, white nationalism - inevitable side effects of their oppr
Read more

"Creeping Normalcy" in the Plague Age

Image
  Britain is experiencing a new wave of Covid cases, 40,000 per day .  Yet it hasn't caused much reaction from the public. It sounds like the legendary stiff upper lip, the "Keep Calm and Carry On" resolve. Health officials think it's something much more troubling. “We’re in a phase where we still have large numbers of people dying from this disease,” said Linda Bauld, professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh. “But it has gone into the background. We’ve become used to something that has not gone away. I think there’s been a desensitisation to the mortality.” On Thursday, the UK reported more than 45,000 new coronavirus cases – the most since mid-July – and more than 800 deaths were reported in the past seven days. Hospitalisations are rising, with one-fifth of ICU beds occupied by Covid patients, and the latest figures showed an estimated 200,000 pupils absent from school. The UK is faring far worse than its European neighbours, with a rate of death
Read more