Yesterday (Monday, November 7, 2016), the 2016 climate summit (22nd Conference of the Parties–or COP22–to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) officially opened in Marrakesh at 10am Morocco time. With 197 Parties, the UNFCCC has near-universal membership of the world’s countries and is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement.
The United States has an election tomorrow. Unfortunately, ~50% of the voting public won’t vote.
Get ready for the first world summit following the Paris Agreement of December 2015 to assess progress on climate change. COP22, the annual conference of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, begins on Monday, November 7, 2016 (the day before the US presidential elections) in Marrakesh, Morocco. You can watch the COP22 proceedings online here.
We’re on the verge of electing the first female president in US history (long after women won the top political positions in the UK, Germany, Norway, Argentina, Israel, India, Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Bangladesh, France, Poland, Turkey, Pakistan, Peru, etc.).
Yet, her final opponent has bragged about sexually assaulting women and has been accused of doing so by a dozen or more women.
The Paris Agreement on climate change — a critical worldwide milestone along the road to containing climate change and implementing resilient low-carbon energy — became international law on Friday, November 4, 2016, after about 20 years of global wrangling. Exactly 30 days ago, it crossed both national and emissions thresholds needed to enter into force.
Poland is infamous among climate hawks within Europe (including within Poland). As I say, unfortunately, it is like the Tea Party wing of the European Union. With approximately 90% of electricity coming from coal, the coal lobby is hugely powerful here — so deeply powerful that extremely smart and thoughtful people are indirectly misinformed by this industry. There’s also a strong anti-science trend here — on climate science as well as some other matters. If climate progress in the EU is blocked, it’s very likely blocked by Poland.
Carbon capture and sequestration continues to get attention from fossil fuel companies and jurisdictions trying to maintain their profits and tax revenues. But it’s worth looking at what it would cost. The scale of the problem is enormous and the cost of capturing CO2 from the air and storing it somewhere is very high — about two times the global GDP.
The Maldives is one of the nations most threatened by sea level rise, but while it has committed to clean technology, they know it won’t save them.
Clearly, the political focus of the year is a certain mind-boggling presidential candidate who hardly touches policy matters — and when he does, tends to push absurd ideas and proposals that would tank our economy, lead to world war, destroy our climate and environment, and piss off our allies. However, as I wrote the other day, Donald Trump’s success in politics wasn’t magic — far from it. Donald Trump’s success in politics was built on the back of decades worth of conspiracy theories and anti-science rhetoric and extremism from the Republican Party. (Come on, people, there’s a reason he won the GOP nomination.)
Toxic slime, bloodsucking villains, and a “code brown” – this isn’t a Halloween horror story. It’s real life, and it’s disgusting.
