Tag Archives: united-nations

Paris Agreement targets need to be 5 times stronger to actually work

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Paris Agreement targets need to be 5 times stronger to actually work

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What indigenous leaders from Brazil thought of Jair Bolsonaro’s U.N. address

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What indigenous leaders from Brazil thought of Jair Bolsonaro’s U.N. address

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Small countries made big commitments at the U.N. climate summit

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Small countries made big commitments at the U.N. climate summit

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Meet the other Greta Thunbergs at the first-ever U.N. Youth Climate Summit

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Meet the other Greta Thunbergs at the first-ever U.N. Youth Climate Summit

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Scientists urge the U.N. to make environmental destruction a war crime

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Scientists urge the U.N. to make environmental destruction a war crime

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Undaunted by Trump, climate activists and leaders are meeting to plan their next move

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

A month after President Donald Trump pledged to pull the United States from the landmark 2015 Paris climate change pact meant to curb global carbon emissions, California Governor Jerry Brown seized the leadership role and announced that San Francisco would host the Global Climate Action Summit (GCAS). With the tag line “Taking Ambition to the Next Level,” the summit has become an amalgam of the Trump resistance, a climate pep rally, a marker between crucial United Nations deadlines, and a swan song for California’s four-term governor. Above all, it’s a reminder of how far the world is from avoiding the worst effects of climate change, and how critical the next few years are for determining future global health and stability.

In some ways, the event is a response to the call by the 2015 Paris negotiations for a more active role by subnational actors — jargon for businesses, cities, states, or anything that is not a national government — in addressing climate change. Accounting for more than 70 percent of carbon emissions globally, the role of cities and states has only grown more important as Trump continues his assault on progress in attaining climate goals. But even before Trump, mayors and governors began to playa more visible role internationally as they participated on the sidelines of the United Nations’ formal negotiations process. Back in 2015, Brown was arguing at the U.N. conference that cities, states, and the private sector could take on more saying, “We don’t have to wait for the federal government to say jump.”

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The timing of the San Francisco summit is also significant, occurring during the midpoint between the Paris meeting and the next major deadline in 2020. That’s when the 200 participating countries not only have to ensure they are on track to meet the modest pledges they made in Paris, but that they are exceeding them, because targets established in the Paris pact don’t approach the level of emissions cuts necessary to keep global warming below a destructive 2 degrees C. If all the pledges were added together and adhered to, the global goal would still not be achieved. Nor do the pledges expected at the summit get us much closer. But the idea is that a symbolic event like GCAS can help accelerate global momentum at international, national, and subnational levels.

As former U.S. climate envoy and Brookings Institute senior fellow Todd Stern puts it, the summit is “meant to galvanize and inspire” and also “show ourselves and the world that America is still in the game despite the abdication by the current national regime. To help build the engine of public and political will it will take to protect our future.”

A pep rally for climate action may not sound like much, but the world is at a point where every extra push counts. An estimate by a recent New Climate Economy report shows $26 trillion in economic benefits through 2030 only if the global economy actually is on the path to decarbonize. According to the report, the investments over the next 10 to 15 years “are a unique ‘use it or lose it’ moment in economic history.” In other words, the window is closing for investment in the right priorities. Increasingly, that is in transportation, which has overtaken the power sector as the biggest source of domestic emissions.

There are more than 300 affiliate events taking place this week that’ll echo Stern’s message, along with thousands representing big and small regions, cities, companies, and NGOs around the world. Countries like China and Germany have a presence, showcasing the international alliances California has forged in the Trump era. For the U.S., it’s also a reunion of many of the figures leading the “We Are Still In” movement, a campaign of political leaders, faith institutions, and businesses that have pledged their commitment to delivering on the Paris accord.

Together, the global commitments that roughly 7,000 cities and 6,000 companies have made since Paris do pack a punch. The entities making pledges on clean energy, forests, oceans, and infrastructure represent $36 trillion, far larger than the U.S. economy. In the U.S., actions by the subnational sector helped the country meet nearly half the commitment it made in Paris. An analysis this summer from economic think tank the Rhodium Group found that existing policies in the U.S. mean we are headed toward a reduction ranging from 12 to 20 percent of emissions by 2025, still falling short of its stated 26-28 percent goal. That still leaves some room for uncertainty, given the capacity of forests to absorb carbon and energy costs and the unclear future of many federal climate policies.

The attendees representing more than 100 countries offer both a hopeful moment of international cooperation and a clear indication of how the world is still failing to do as much as is needed. Nick Nuttall, a spokesperson for the summit, framed it as evidence that cities and regions “are not incrementally improving their climate actions, but pole-vaulting” toward the ambitious action needed in 2020. But United Nations Secretary General António Guterres acknowledged on Monday from New York that the private sector and subnational pledges may be “important strides. But they are not enough. The transition to a cleaner, greener future needs to speed up.”

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Undaunted by Trump, climate activists and leaders are meeting to plan their next move

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World hunger rises after decades of decline.

“Clearly, our environment changes all the time,” the Republican leader said after touring Irma’s devastation. “And whether that’s cycles we’re going through or whether that’s man-made, I wouldn’t be able to tell you which one it is.”

It’s good to see Scott pondering those wacky ideas we’ve all heard floating around: Human-caused climate changemore intense hurricanesrising sea levels, etc. Coming to terms with climate change is a journey we all must pursue at our own pace! It’s not urgent or anything.

So what is Scott feeling sure about? Let’s hear it:

This is a catastrophic storm our state has never seen,” he warned on Saturday before Irma hit Florida.

“We ought to go solve problems. I know we have beach renourishment issues. I know we have flood-mitigation issues,” he said in the wake of Irma.

“I’m worried about another hurricane,” he shared with reporters while touring the Florida Keys this week. We feel ya, Scott.

Big ideas! Perhaps a fellow Florida Republican could illuminate their common thread.

“[I]t’s certainly not irresponsible to highlight how this storm was probably fueled — in part — by conditions that were caused by human-induced climate change,” Florida congressman and Grist 50er Carlos Curbelo said this week.

In fact, it just might be necessary.

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World hunger rises after decades of decline.

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Cities and states may be able to officially join the Paris Agreement after all.

There’s been much high-profile gushing over the spaceship-in-Eden–themed campus that Apple spent six years and $5 billion building in Silicon Valley, but it turns out techno-utopias don’t make great neighbors.

“Apple’s new HQ is a retrograde, literally inward-looking building with contempt for the city where it lives and cities in general,” writes Adam Rogers at Wired, in an indictment of the company’s approach to transportation, housing, and economics in the Bay Area.

The Ring — well, they can’t call it The Circle — is a solar-powered, passively cooled marvel of engineering, sure. But when it opens, it will house 12,000 Apple employees, 90 percent of whom will be making lengthy commutes to Cupertino and back every day. (San Francisco is 45 miles away.)

To accommodate that, Apple Park features a whopping 9,000 parking spots (presumably the other 3,000 employees will use the private shuttle bus instead). Those 9,000 cars will be an added burden on the region’s traffic problems, as Wired reports, not to mention that whole global carbon pollution thing.

You can read Roger’s full piece here, but the takeaway is simple: With so much money, Apple could have made meaningful improvements to the community — building state-of-the-art mass transit, for example — but chose to make a sparkly, exclusionary statement instead.

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Cities and states may be able to officially join the Paris Agreement after all.

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This Week’s Chemical Attack in Syria is Just the Latest "Red Line"

Mother Jones

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On July 23, 2012, a former spokesman for the Syrian foreign ministry acknowledged for the first time that his government had stockpiles of chemical weapons, but asserted that they would “never, never be used against the Syrian people or civilians during this crisis, under any circumstances.” A little more than a year later, approximately 1,400 people on the outskirts of Damascus were killed in a chemical attack carried out by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. It was the largest chemical weapons attack since Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in Halabja, Iraq, 25 years earlier. Now, as the Syrian civil war enters its sixth year, chemical weapon attacks on civilians continue apace.

Yesterday, disturbing photos and videos (warning: they’re graphic) started coming out of the town of Khan Sheikoun in rebel-held Idlib Province: children in spasms, foaming at their mouths, gasping for breath, and lying motionless as parents cry over them and rescue teams attempt to wash chemical agents from their bodies. According to the Syrian American Medical Society and various monitoring groups, barrel bombs were dropped on civilian areas, reportedly killing at least 74 people, including at least 11 children, and injuring hundreds more. The bombs contained toxic chemical agents, likely including sarin—a liquid nerve agent that often causes death by asphyxia.

After the attack, the White House pinned the blame on the Obama administration’s “weakness and irresolution.” This morning, President Donald Trump, who previously excused Assad’s crimes by highlighting that his regime was also fighting ISIS, said that the attack “crosses many lines, beyond a red line, many many lines,” possibly signaling a change in attitude toward Syria and Assad. (Just days before the attack, Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, stated that the administration does not consider removing Assad from power a priority, echoing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who said last week that Assad’s future “will be decided by the Syrian people.”)

Yesterday’s attack was the latest in a long string of chemical attacks against Syrian civilians. Here’s a brief timeline of how we got here.

August 20, 2012

President Barack Obama says that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line” and would “change my calculus” for a military response in Syria.

December 23, 2012

The first allegations of chemical weapon use in Syria are reported. Seven people in Homs are allegedly killed by “poisonous gas” used by the Assad regime. Later, a leaked State Department cable stated that there was credible evidence that the government used a chemical weapon known as Agent 15 in the attack.

March 12, 2013

After France and the United Kingdom send letters urging an investigation into three alleged uses of chemical weapons in Syria, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon announces that the UN would investigate. Within a month, opposition activists and observers allege that the Assad regime has carried out two more chemical weapons attacks. Ban states that Syria has impeded in the investigations.

August 21, 2013

More than 1,000 people are killed in a large chemical weapon attack on the outskirts of Damascus. A UN investigation concludes that ground-to-ground rockets delivered the nerve agent sarin, and the evidence suggests the government was behind the assault. The United States later issues a report blaming the Syrian government.

August 31, 2013

President Obama says he will seek congressional authorization for the use of force against Syria: “I’m confident we can hold the Assad regime accountable for their use of chemical weapons, deter this kind of behavior, and degrade their capacity to carry it out.” Congress never votes on it, and the measure is shelved after then-Secretary of State John Kerry remarks that Assad can avoid military strikes if he turns over his chemical weapons stockpile.

September 27, 2013

The United Nations Security Council orders the Syrian government to destroy all of its chemical weapons stockpiles by 2014, threatening to authorize the use of force if it doesn’t comply.

June 23, 2014

The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) announces that all remaining chemical weapons have been shipped out of Syria for disposal. Yet it is widely suspected that not all of Syria’s chemical weapons were removed.

September 10, 2014

A OPCW fact-finding mission concludes that chlorine gas is being used as a weapon in Syria. Chlorine, a choking agent which fills the lungs with liquid, was not among the chemicals that had to be destroyed under the UN agreement. But it is banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention.

August 7, 2015

The UN Security Council authorizes OPCW and UN investigators to determine who was behind chlorine gas attacks on civilians in rebel-held areas.

August 10, 2016

For the third time in two weeks, chlorine gas is reportedly used against civilians in northern Syria, killing at least 4 people and wounding 60 more. Experts warn that the abundance of chemical weapons attacks may normalize war crimes.

August 24, 2016

The OPCW-UN joint investigation report concludes that the Syrian government was responsible for deploying chlorine gas on two separate occasions on civilian areas in rebel-held northern Idlib Province.

April 4, 2017

More than 70 people, including many children, are killed in a suspected sarin attack in Idlib. The Syrian government is believed to be behind the attack. A day after the attack, Khan Sheikoun’s main medical clinic was directly hit by an airstrike.

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This Week’s Chemical Attack in Syria is Just the Latest "Red Line"

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Trump and his key advisors stand to profit from the Dakota Access Pipeline.

On Monday at COP22, leaders of 7,100 cities in 119 countries announced progress on locally-driven emissions reductions is already underway.

Launched as the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, the group will formalize city-focused climate action under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Local leaders committed to slash emissions by 27 percent by 2020 — higher than some national cuts promised in the Paris Agreement. An analysis from the European Commission shows a smaller group of 6,201 cities had already achieved reductions of 23 percent by September.

The coalition already represents 600 million people, or 8 percent of the global population. According to the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, over 66 percent of people will live in cities by 2050, with the most urban growth occurring in developing countries.

Think of the cooperative as a mini-COP agreement of sorts, with cities accountable for establishing, measuring, and achieving climate goals.

“We need the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy to empower cities to take bolder steps in this fight, to challenge other cities to do the same, and to ensure that leaders from around the world recognize the significance of cities,” said Maroš Šefčovič, vice president of the European Commission, in a press release.

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Trump and his key advisors stand to profit from the Dakota Access Pipeline.

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