During a visit to Henderson Nevada, President Obama explained basic climate science for the people who had gathered to listen to him at the town hall.
“First of all, we just got five feet of snow in Washington and so everybody is like — a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, see, look at that, there’s all this snow on the ground, this doesn’t mean anything. I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn’t mean that every place is getting warmer; it means the planet as a whole is getting warmer. But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver, which is supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees, and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow.
The idea is, is that as the planet as a whole gets warmer, you start seeing changing weather patterns, and that creates more violent storm systems, more unpredictable weather. So any single place might end up being warmer; another place might end up being a little bit cooler; there might end up being more precipitation in the air, more monsoons, more hurricanes, more tornadoes, more drought in some places, floods in other places.”
Karl Marx came up with the term “metabolic rift” to explain the crack or rift that capitalism has created between social and natural systems, humans and nature. This rift, he claimed, led to the exploitation of the environment and ecological crisis. Marx argued that we humans are all part of nature and he was also the first one who saw social societies as an organism with a metabolism similar to that of humans. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts from 1844, Marx wrote that:
“Man lives from nature, i.e., nature is his body, and he must maintain a continuing dialogue with it if he is not to die. To say that man’s physical and mental life is linked to nature simply means that nature is linked to itself, for man is a part of nature.”
The general idea is that disruptions, or interruptions, in natural cycles and processes creates an metabolic rift between nature and social systems which leads to a buildup of waste and in the end to the degradation of our environment.
For over 15 years delegates and politicians from around the world have discussed, debated and negotiated the questions of dealing with manmade climate change in various COP (Conference of the Parties) summits. So why haven’t they made any real progress yet?
That is a big question that covers a whole range of topics and issues that I won’t go into. Instead I will try to focus on the actual politics and tactics used at the COP summits. I will try to see if uneven development and inequality plays any part in how the actual negotiations plays out, how the delegates attending perceive climate justice and fairness, and if all this combined somehow sabotages the efforts to secure a climate deal.
“What can decent people do to save the Planet from the Australian, EU and US climate criminals?”
The bottom line in the Copenhagen Climate Summit should be (a) equal per capita greenhouse gas emissions for everyone and (b) an additional but equitable penalty for First World countries for their disproportionately huge historical contribution to atmospheric carbon pollution. Anything less is pure and simple climate racism and climate injustice leading to climate genocide. Unfortunately climate criminal First World countries believe that they are much more deserving than others, and are lead by Copenhagen sabotaging, US surrogate, climate criminal Australia which wants a 2020 per capita GHG pollution for itself that would be over 60 times that of Bangladesh.
Informed by “all men are created equal and have an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, Climate Justice demands that “annual per capita GHG emissions” should at the very least be the same for “all men” – at the very least, because European countries have been responsible for about 73% of 1750-2006 historical carbon pollution of the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century (see Dr James Hansen’s 2008 Open Letter to PM Kevin Rudd of Australia).
As winter weather hits us again, many people confuse the current weather (cold) with the long-term direction of the climate (warmer).
Just because it is cold outside right now doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t real. Global warming has to do with the climate, with the long-term trend of the world’s average temperature. The short-term weather has to do with what is happening this week or next in the part of the world where we currently reside. The two are not identical, and colder weather does not contradict the fact that our climate is warming up.
Another reason the two related but not identical issues are confusing is that global climate change is not uniform across the globe. Just because it is colder where you live doesn’t mean it isn’t warmer, relatively, elsewhere. In fact, global warming is taking place much more at the northern latitudes than in the continental U.S.
This is the reason why, even though the U.S. is experiencing more severe winter weather, the Arctic summer ice is covering less and less of the Arctic water, opening the fabled Northern Passage. It is still very cold at the North Pole, but it is relatively warmer. Average temperatures have already increased in the northern latitudes by almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit, much more than at temperate latitudes.
Here are some of the biggest and most interesting news today related to the ongoing COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen:
A draft text for a potential final agreement in Copenhagen was leaked today to the Guardian. The “Danish text” has made the developing countries “furious” as the draft agreement would give even more powers to the rich nations, weakening UN’s future role as well as abandon the Kyoto protocol. Some say this shows the true agenda in Copenhagen, others believe the draft is unofficial and may have changed a lot since its first creation.
Maybe he liked the city? Either way, President Barack Obama announced today that he will attend the climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December. The climate summit is held between 7-18 December and is the last chance we have to take action against “the greatest threat the world has ever faced”.
“U.S. President Barack Obama will go to Copenhagen for a U.N. climate change meeting on December 9, hoping to add momentum to an international process despite slow progress on a domestic bill to cut carbon emissions”, Reuters reports.
“Obama planned to make a visit at the beginning of the climate negotiations in Denmark, an administration official told Reuters on Wednesday, before picking up the Nobel Peace Prize at a ceremony in neighboring Oslo.”
With him to the climate summit Obama has a pledge to cut emissions in the USA with 17% from 2005 levels by 2020, 30% by 2025, 42% by 2030 and 83% by 2050. But these numbers are much lower than those proposed by the EU and other industrialised countries such as Norway.
Much sheer speculation has been written about the upcoming Copenhagen climate negotiations, and we will see much more over the next few weeks. What is this conference about, and what are the real issues at stake for the future of the world?
The conference in Copenhagen was set to negotiate a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Accords, set to expire in 2012, a treaty that the Senate and the Bush administration refused to ratify or cooperate with. While China has recently passed the US as the largest emitter of global warming gases, the US is still far, far ahead of all other countries in per capita emissions, making US efforts a crucial aspect of whatever efforts the world makes.
The Kyoto Accords set aspirational guidelines for countries to shoot for as they worked to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. A large majority of the world’s countries ratified the Accords, and some made serious efforts to meet them, but few countries managed to do so. The European Union set up a carbon trading scheme, and several European countries have made large-scale investments in alternative renewable energy. Other countries only approached their targets due to decreased economic activity, primarily Russia.
When discussing climate change, the old saying needs to be amended to “What do you want first, the somewhat good news, or the astoundingly awful bad news?”
The bad news is piling up fast:
* The ice sheets in the Artic, Antarctic and Greenland are melting twice as fast as earlier projections from just a year or two ago, which will lead to the sea level rising about a foot every 20 or 25 years – meaning a 3-foot rise by the end of the century, enough to wipe out some island nations, flood much of Bangladesh and other low-lying coastal countries, threaten many coastal cities around the world, and increase erosion on coasts.
* Glaciers are melting faster as well – meaning that before the end of this century, glaciers in the Himalayas may disappear, and these glaciers provide water for over a billion people, an environmental, agricultural and human catastrophe. This extra melting will first cause more floods in India and China, and then cause extreme water stress for humans and for agriculture.
* Previous estimates of the massive amounts of carbon dioxide and methane locked up in the permafrost were too small, increasing the likelihood of an unstoppable tipping point if too much of the permafrost melts and releases these greenhouse gases, potentially overwhelming any human efforts to slow and control carbon emissions.
Top climate scientists in the top scientific journal Nature recently stated that we have exceeded crucial planetary boundaries beyond which we are at high risk of unacceptable environmental change. These and other top climate scientists and biologists are stating clearly that the atmospheric CO2 concentration must be urgently returned to 300-350 ppm for planetary safety. Unfortunately, World governments are ignoring the science and are committed to increasing CO2, evidently not understanding that there can be no negotiation with the laws of Physics and Chemistry.
An Australian husband and wife with homeopathic beliefs were recently jailed for the manslaughter of their horribly neglected child. Accountability must also apply to all people who are ignoring scientific advice and international law and are complicit in the carnage of US wars (9-11 million excess deaths in US wars, 1990-2009, including 4 million infants) and in the worsening climate genocide (that will kill 10 billion people, including 6 billion infants). This inescapable legal, business, political and electoral Accountability for war crimes and climate crimes is detailed in a Letter being transmitted to all Federal MPs in climate criminal Australia (a world leader in annual per capita greenhouse gas pollution) and indeed to everyone so that, unlike many Germans in 1945, they cannot say “we didn’t know”.
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Karl Marx came up with the term “metabolic rift” to explain the crack or rift that capitalism has created between social and natural systems, humans and nature. This rift, he claimed, led to the exploitation of the environment and ecological crisis. Marx argued that we humans are all part of nature and he was also the first one who saw social societies as an organism with a metabolism similar to that of humans. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts from 1844, Marx wrote that: 
