Category Archives: Ending the Era of Extreme Energy

by | 2013-11-21 · 09:20

Climate Update #4: Tension high in Warsaw talks as G77+China walk out vs climate inaction

 By Tetet Nera-Lauron, 21 November, 2013. Source: IBON International

Tensions and tempers run high with only two days left at the 19th Conference of Parties (COP 19) and tremendous pressure for the annual climate summit to deliver substantive outcomes.

Members of the G77+China, a group of 133 developing countries have walked out of the negotiations on ‘loss and damage’ at dawn today, amidst growing frustration at the intransigence of the EU, Australia, Canada, US and other developed countries on the issue of who should pay compensation for the effects of extreme climate events. The developed countries insist that this issue be addressed only after 2015.

An international mechanism on loss and damage will help countries address the impacts of extreme events—such as super typhoon Haiyan, which struck the Philippines almost two weeks ago—the enormity of which would make it difficult for them to adapt to.

Representatives from the G77+China bloc said that they have been very flexible in order to reach an acceptable outcome, and up until the wee hours of the morning, there was some progress in the negotiations. Australia then made a motion to put all the agreements in brackets, again putting everything on hold. At this point, the G77+China decided that it was time for the ministers attending the 19th Conference of Parties (COP 19) to make a political decision.

Mr. Marcin Korolec, Poland’s Environment Minister and COP 19 President, immediately sought an audience with key actors in the G77+China group, to help diffuse tensions and seek a productive way forward to the negotiations. Negotiations on loss and damage have resumed tonight, and is expected to make some progress after the impasse.

The high level segment of the internationalclimate talks has also gone full swing with two ministerial dialogues on the COP/CMP and on climate finance.

The Philippines’ Climate Change Minister Lucille Sering made an impassioned speech at the COP/CMP plenary session, stressing that almost two decades after the UN Climate Change talks began, there is still lack of progress in developing global actions against climate change.
“Every time we attend this conference, I am beginning to feel like we are negotiating on who is to live and who is to die. Would it be right for me to conclude that we failed miserably?” she said.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, speaking at the Ministerial Dialogue on Climate Finance, stressed on the need for ‘bolder’ targets to scale up climate finance and to ‘break down all barriers’ to achieve the large scale transformation necessary to keep below 2 degrees Celsius global temperature rise.

The Green Climate Fund, the operating entity of the UN Climate Convention, remains an empty shell, with very conservative pledges made by developed countries, but without actual commitments given towards its capitalization and operationalization.

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by | 2013-11-20 · 14:15

Poor countries walk out of UN climate talks as compensation row rumbles on

By John Vidal, 20 November, 2013. Source: The Guardian

UN climate change conference in Warsaw: delegates from the G77 and China in talks before staging a walkout. Photo: Francis Dejon/IISD

UN climate change conference in Warsaw: delegates from the G77 and China in talks before staging a walkout. Photo: Francis Dejon/IISD

Representatives of most of the world’s poor countries have walked out of increasingly fractious climate negotiations after the EU, Australia, the US and other developed countries insisted that the question of who should pay compensation for extreme climate events be discussed only after 2015.

The orchestrated move by the G77 and China bloc of 132 countries came during talks about “loss and damage” – how countries should respond to climate impacts that are difficult or impossible to adapt to, such as typhoon Haiyan.

Saleemul Huq, the scientist whose work on loss and damage helped put the issue of recompense on the conference agenda, said: “Discussions were going well in a spirit of co-operation, but at the end of the session on loss and damage Australia put everything agreed into brackets, so the whole debate went to waste.”

Australia was accused of not taking the negotiations seriously. “They wore T-shirts and gorged on snacks throughout the negotiation. That gives some indication of the manner they are behaving in,” said a spokeswoman for Climate Action Network. Continue reading →

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by | · 09:25

IBON International: Update #3 from Warsaw climate negotiations

By Tetet Nera-Lauron, 20 November 2013. Source: IBON International

cop19UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon urged the ministers gathered at the 19th Conference of Parties (COP 19) to take ‘tougher action’ to reach a global deal to address climate change in 2015. While recognizing that the world’s leaders faced a steep climb ahead to arrive at an arrangement for an international climate deal, he cautioned that ‘people now face and fear the wrath of a warming planet’, in obvious reference to super typhoon Haiyan that ravaged the Philippines more than a week ago. He challenged governments to ‘set the bar higher’ in committing to climate action.

Ban-Ki Moon also called on governments, especially from the developed countries, to step up aid to help poor nations slow their rising greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the impacts of global warming. He alluded to the issue of climate finance, currently the subject of intense debates with disappointing results, and said that ‘I sincerely hope the developed world should keep their promise so all the nations of the planet Earth can move together.’

Negotiators from many developing countries indicated that this year’s summit will be the ‘finance COP’, meaning they expect to resolve long-standing issues and disagreements on the amount of resources that will be actually committed to enable particularly vulnerable countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. A High Level Ministerial meeting is being convened for that purpose, but this will remain a token gesture of dialogue if no concrete flow of resources (to countries affected by climate change) will materialize. This is the most likely outcome of the meeting, especially in the wake of Australia pulling out of its earlier pledge for climate financing, and with the United States ruling out any new pledges in the light of its own fiscal problems.

Meanwhile, Venezuela convened a meeting for civil society organizations and its head of delegation Mrs. Claudia Salerno gave a briefing on Venezuela’s organization of a Social Pre-COP in Caracas in October 2014.  They envision the Social Pre-COP to be a process that will involve diverse actors from civil society and governments from all over the world, and which will result in an outcome that, while carrying the issues, analysis, and aspirations of social movements and grassroots organizations, will also be able to feed into the formal UN climate negotiations. This initiative by Venezuela, i.e. bridging the disconnect between the voices of people from the ground and the language of the negotiations, is a bold move that has never been done before. Mrs. Salerno said that now is the ‘time for craziness, because we have tried so many things in the official process (of climate negotiations) and it didn’t work, so we are going to try to do something else. We don’t have anything to lose, but we need to try everything we can for the world to have ambitious aims.’

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by | 2013-11-19 · 09:39

IBON International COP19 Climate Update 2

By Tetet Nera-Lauron, 19 November, 2013. Source: IBON International

Activists drop a banner of the Polish Economy Ministry in Warsaw on Monday, Nov 18th, the opening day of the World Coal and Climate Summit. Photo: AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski

Activists drop a banner off the Polish Economy Ministry in Warsaw on Monday, Nov 18th, the opening day of the World Coal and Climate Summit. Photo: AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski

‘Coal power can be part of the solution to tackling global warming. If there’s a will, there’s a way.’

This was the message of UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres at today’s opening of the 2-day World Coal and Climate Summit. While stating that her presence at the Summit is ‘neither a tacit approval of coal use, nor a call for the immediate disappearance of coal’, Figueres enjoined the coal industry to ‘change rapidly and dramatically for everyone’s sake.’

The 5th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the body tasked to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change, stated that the world will overshoot the internationally agreed goal to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius if energy demands are met in the same way as it had been in the past. The UNFCCC Chief outlined the parameters of this ‘paradigm shift’ for the coal industry: (a) close all existing subcritical plants; (b) implement safe carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) on all new plants; and (c) leave most existing reserves in the ground. Continue reading →

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by | 2013-11-09 · 09:00

This week’s Earth Watch on Indigenous Resistance to the Tar Sands

Global Justice Ecology Project teams up weekly with Pacifica’s Sojourner Truth show hosted by Margaret Prescod to cover important news about the environment.  Every Tuesday we produce an “Earth Minute” and each Thursday an “Earth Watch” interview segment with an activist from the front lines of the battle to protect mother Earth.

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by | 2013-10-28 · 11:23

BREAKING: University of Florida threatens to arrest anti-GMO presenters and bans them from campus

Note: Members of Global Justice Ecology Project and the Campaign to STOP GE Trees are touring the southeastern US to raise awareness about the risks of genetically engineered trees.  See when they are coming to your town here: http://bit.ly/getrees-roadshow

-The GJEP Team

October 28, 2013

ufpoliceGainesville, FL–The University of Florida, a leading institution researching genetically engineered (GE) trees, threatened to arrest activists from the Campaign to STOP GE Trees when they arrived on campus Saturday to prepare for a presentation to highlight critical perspectives on tree biotechnology that was scheduled for tonight. The police informed the group that their presentation had been cancelled, and warned them that they were banned from University of Florida (UF) property for three years.

“Evicting us from campus was a blatant act of censorship by the University of Florida, likely linked to the millions they are receiving for GE trees research,” said Keith Brunner, from the international Campaign to STOP Genetically Engineered Trees.

In 2011, the University of Florida School of Forest Resources and Conservation along with GE tree company ArborGen won a three-year, $6.3 million grant from the US Department of Energy to develop GE loblolly pines for liquid biofuel production. There is rising opposition to GE trees due to concerns over genetic contamination, increased flammability, deforestation and other ecological impacts of industrial tree plantations.

The UF presentation was part of a multi-week speaking tour titled “The Growing Threat: Genetically Engineered Trees and the Future of Forests.”  The tour will travel through several southern states (NC, GA, FL, SC) to educate the public about the social and environmental threats posed by the proposed commercial release of billions of genetically engineered freeze tolerant eucalyptus trees in seven southern states from South Carolina to Florida to Texas.
Continue reading →

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Ending the Era of Extreme Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Forests, GE Trees, Genetic Engineering, Green Economy, Political Repression

by | 2013-10-08 · 09:00

KPFK Earth Minute: Idle No More movement hosts major day of action for Indigenous rights

kpfk_logoGlobal Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Pacifica Los Angeles for a weekly Earth Minute each Tuesday and a weekly Earth Watch interview each Thursday.

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by | 2013-10-04 · 12:00

KPFK Earth Watch: Geo-engineering pushed as “Plan B” for climate crisis, included in int’l climate science assessment

ETC Group’s Jim Thomas discusses the risks of “planet hacking,” or geoengineering, and its inclusion in the latest international climate science assessment after heavy pressure by resource-rich countries like Russia.

kpfk_logoGlobal Justice Ecology Project teams up with the Sojourner Truth show on KPFK Pacifica Los Angeles for a weekly Earth Minute each Tuesday and a weekly Earth Watch interview each Thursday.

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