Climate Crisis: The Rich Will Take Back More Than They Loaned To The Poor
By Countercurrents.org
28 November 2012
Countercurrents.org
Climate crisis exposes a lot of facts of the present world order: (1) The rich countries are refusing new emission cuts. (2) The wealthy countries have not only failed to provide cash to help poor countries adapt to climate crisis, but much of the money they gave so far has come out in the form of loans that will need to be repaid. The poor have to pay interest. (3) The number of coal fired power plants is going to increase globally. (4) Permafrost is thawing that will further increase global warming.
An AP report by Michael Caseyap from Doha said:
The first signs of tensions emerged at the Doha climate talks on November 27, 2012 as delegates from island and African nations chided rich countries for refusing to offer up new emissions cuts over the next eight years which could help stem global warming.
The debate mostly swirled around the Kyoto Protocol. Countries are hoping to negotiate an extension to the pact that runs until at least 2020 but several nations like Japan and Canada have said they won't be party to a new one.
Marlene Moses, chairwoman of a coalition of island countries, said she was "gravely disappointed" with rich nations, saying they have failed to act or offer up any new emissions cuts for the near term. The US, which is not a signatory of Kyoto, has said it would not increase earlier commitments to cut emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
"In our view, these actions are an abdication of responsibility to the most vulnerable among us," Moses said.
The Japanese delegation defended its decision not to sign onto a Kyoto extension, insisting it would be better to focus on coming to an agreement by 2015 that would require all countries to do their part to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C, compared to pre-industrial times.
The position of Japan and other developed countries has the potential to reignite the battles between rich and poor nations that have doomed past efforts to reach a deal. So far that hasn't happened, but countries like Brazil are warning that it will be difficult for poor nations to do their part if they continue watching industrialized nations shy away from legally-binding pacts like Kyoto.
"This is a very serious thing," said Andre Correa do Lago, who heads the Brazil delegation and is the director general for Environment and Special Affairs in the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
"If rich countries which have the financial means, have technology, have a stable population, already have a large middle class, if these countries think they cannot reduce and work to fight climate change, how can they ever think that developing countries can do it," do Lago said.
"That is why the Kyoto Protocol has to be kept alive. It's the bar. If we take it out, we have what people call the Wild West. Everybody will do what they want to do. With everyone doing what they want to do, you are not going get the reductions necessary."
It’s loan with interest
On wealthy countries’ climate “contribution” to the poor countries, John Vidal reported [guardian.co.uk, “Climate change adaptation cash for poor countries fails to materialize”, Nov. 26, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2012/nov/26/climate-change-adaptation-poor-countries ]:
Wealthy countries have not only failed to provide cash to help poor people adapt to climate change, but much of what they have agreed to give so far has come out of existing aid budgets or in the form of loans that will need to be repaid, new research by two international agencies shows.
The EU and nine countries including the US, Canada and Australia agreed at the Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 to make a downpayment of $30bn by the end of this year on the eventual $100bn that must be raised by 2020.
But separate analysis by Oxfam and the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), shows only $23.6bn, or 78%, has been committed and much of that is not "new and additional" to existing aid, as was agreed.
"Just 43% has been given as grants; most of it was in loans that developing countries have to repay at varying levels of interest. In addition only 21% of funds have been earmarked to support adaptation programs to help communities protect themselves from the effects of climate change," said Oxfam in its The Climate Fiscal Cliff report.
In a separate report, IIED argues rich countries have collectively failed to meet their pledges. The funds, it says, are not transparent; only Japan and Norway have contributed their fair share of money; very little has gone to help countries adapt; funds are not being channeled through the UN as agreed; pledges made have been not been delivered to the poor; and the most vulnerable have not been helped first.
"There is a real danger that climate finance will be scaled down in 2013, at a time when it needs to be scaled up," said Oxfam climate change policy adviser Tim Gore.
On of Oxfam’s suggestions on ways of raising the funding outside aid budgets is a scheme to reduce shipping emissions or new taxes on financial transactions to generate revenue for the green climate fund.
Gore said: "If leaders come to Doha with no new money, the green climate fund risks being left as an empty shell for the third year in a row."
China’s contradictory position
From Beijing Jonathan Kaiman reported [The Guardian, “China's emissions expected to rise until 2030, despite ambitious green policies”, Nov. 26, 2012,http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/26/china-emissions-rise-green-policies]:
China's position on its rising greenhouse gas emissions may seem contradictory. While the country flaunts ambitious green-tech investments and energy consumption targets, its officials continue to prioritize GDP growth over many environmental concerns.
China "is resolute in reducing emissions", wrote the state newswire Xinhua last week, yet "it's unfair and unreasonable to hold China to absolute cuts in emissions at the present stage".
Analysts say that beneath the apparent contradiction lies a consensus that barring any significant changes in policy, China's emissions will rise until around 2030 – when the country's urbanization peaks, and its population growth slows – and then begins to fall. Proposed policy changes could speed up the process.
China is the world's largest emitter of GHG, responsible for about a quarter of all emissions. The country accounted for over 70% of the world's energy consumption growth in 2011, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy. Its emissions have risen accordingly.
China's chief negotiator to the Doha climate change conference, Xie Zhenhua, told Xinhua that the country's greenhouse gas emissions – which rose 171% between 2000 and 2011, and by just under 10% last year alone – would continue to rise until its per capita GDP had reached $20,000 to $25,000. It currently stands at $5,000.
Deborah Seligsohn, a principal adviser for the World Resources Institute's climate and energy program in Beijing, said Xie's announcement suggested China's current trajectory was unlikely to change any time soon.
Yet Beijing is taking steps to boost the country's renewable energy industries and decrease its reliance on coal. "Solar and wind energy are increasing a lot more quickly than anybody thought 10 years ago," she said. The authorities have also set a national coal production cap for 2015, albeit a high one, suggesting that coal may remain China's primary energy source for decades.
Li Yan, the head of Greenpeace East Asia's climate and energy campaign, said China's move away from coal had been hampered by messy internal politics. "There is some discrepancy between the central government's political will and local governments' desire for high GDP growth," she said.
Li said China was now focused on decoupling its GDP growth from its emissions levels. Officials claim the country's carbon intensity has dropped 19% since 2005, and plan on knocking it down another 17% by 2015.
Yet China's environmental authorities are notoriously opaque, making the true extent of its carbon emissions – and its progress in mitigating them – difficult to assess. In June, scientists from China, Britain and the US reviewed data from China's National Bureau of Statistics and found that the country's total emissions from 1997 to 2010 may be 20% (1.4bn tonnes) higher than reported.
"China will be expected to take even bolder actions in 2015," said Li, including levying direct taxes on carbon emissions. "To be able to make sure they can make that commitment, they need to make sure that data-gathering is reliable."
Coal fired power plants will increase
The World Resources Institute found that the global number of coal-fired power plants could increase significantly. [11/20/2012, “Nearly 1,200 Coal-Fired Power Plants Proposed Globally, Report Finds”,http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/20/world-coal-fired-power-plants_n_2166699.html?utm_hp_ref=climate-change]
"Global Coal Risk Assessment: Data Analysis and Market Research," released on November 20, estimated there are currently 1,199 proposed coal plants in 59 countries. China and India together account for 76 percent of these plants. The US landed seventh, with 36 proposed coal-fired power plants.
WRI's Ailun Yang noted, "If all of these projects are built, it would add new coal power capacity that is almost four times the current capacity of all coal-fired plants in the United States."
According to WRI, "Coal-fired power plants are the largest contributor to the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change."
The WRI analysis, conducted in July 2012, comes as environmentalists warn that an estimated 80 percent of the world's proven oil, coal and natural gas reserves must remain in the ground, unburned, to avoid the release of enough carbon dioxide to warm the planet above the internationally agreed upon limit of two degrees Celsius.
Threatened permafrost land
Permafrost lands, covering almost a quarter of the northern hemisphere across Siberia and Alaska, that contain vast stores of carbon are beginning to thaw, bringing with it the threat of a big increase in global warming by 2100, a UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report said on November 27, 2012. The report was released at Doha climate talks.
Warming permafrost could release the equivalent of between 43 and 135 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2100. That would be up to 39 percent of annual emissions from human sources.
A thaw of the vast areas of permanently frozen ground in Russia, Canada, China and the US also threatens local homes, roads, railways and oil pipelines, said the report.
The study said that a thaw could also undermine infrastructure, from bridges to power lines, and harm animal and plant life in the north, a region of forests and tundra.
An accelerating melt would free vast amounts of carbon dioxide and methane which has been trapped in organic matter in the subsoil, often for thousands of years, the report said.
Permafrost now contains 1,700 billion tonnes of carbon, or twice the amount now in the atmosphere, it said.
A melt of the permafrost meant that UN projections for rising temperatures this century might be too low.
A thaw would create a vicious circle, since the release of more greenhouse gases would trap more heat in the air and in turn accelerate the melting.
"Permafrost is one of the keys to the planet's future," Achim Steiner, head of UNEP, said in a statement. "Its potential impact on the climate, ecosystems and infrastructure has been neglected for too long."
The report pointed to the 1994 failure of a pipeline to the Vozei oilfield in northern Russia, which led to a spill of 160,000 tonnes of oil, the world's largest terrestrial oil spill.
In the past, land with permafrost experienced thawing on the surface during summertime, but now scientists are witnessing thaws that reach up to 10 feet deep due to warmer temperatures. The softened earth releases gases from decaying plants that have been stuck below frozen ground for millennia.
Sandy, probably not a coincidence
AP reported from Doha [“UN climate scientist: Sandy no coincidence”, Nov 27, 2012, (Updated: Nov 28, 2012),http://www.newson6.com/story/20191981/un-thawing-permafrost-to-cause-increased-warming]:
Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the vice chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said on November 27, 2012: Though it's tricky to link a single weather event to climate change, Hurricane Sandy was "probably not a coincidence" but an example of the extreme weather events that are likely to strike the US more often as the world gets warmer.
The UN climate panel's No. 2 scientist predicted that as stronger and more frequent heat waves and storms become part of life, people will stop asking whether global warming played a role.
"The new question should probably progressively become: Is it possible that climate warming has not influenced this particular event?" Van Ypersele (vahn EE-purr-say-luh) told The AP in an interview on the sidelines of UN climate talks.
Van Ypersele said the slow pace of the talks was "frustrating" and that negotiators seem more concerned with protecting national interests than studying the science that prompted the negotiations.
Van Ypersele said the scientific backing for man-made climate change is now so strong that it can be compared to the consensus behind the principles of gravity.
"It's a very, very broad consensus. There are a few individuals who don't believe it, but we are talking about science and not beliefs," Van Ypersele told AP.
Climate change skeptics say IPCC scientists have in the past overestimated the effect of the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere and underplayed natural cycles of warming and cooling. Others have claimed the authors, who aren't paid for their work, exaggerated the effects that climate change will have on the environment and on human life.
After years of disagreement, climate scientists and hurricane experts have concluded that as the climate warms, there will be fewer total hurricanes. But those storms that do develop will be stronger and wetter.
It is not correct to say Sandy was caused by global warming, but "the damage caused by Sandy was worse because of sea level rise," said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer. He said the sea level in New York City is a foot higher than a century ago because of man-made climate change.
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