What The Paris Conference On Climate Change Can Do For Planet Earth

Los Angeles Times Op-Ed - Bill Mckibben*

Demonstrators make their way down Sixth Avenue in New York during the People's Climate March on Sept. 21, 2014. (Jason DeCrow / Associated Press)

Starting Monday, diplomats and scientists, activists and heads of state at the 2015 U.N. climate change conference in Paris will scramble to reach the first truly global agreement on the greatest problem the planet has ever faced. It will make for compelling headlines, but it's not the real story. Because that already happened.
Think back to Copenhagen in 2009 and the last of the great U.N. climate gatherings. There too the world watched expectantly, only to see negotiations break down. No firm targets, timetables or enforcement mechanisms for cutting carbon emissions were put into place. Copenhagen failed because no real pressure was put on the world's leaders to make a deal. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — and other national leaders — could come home empty-handed and pay almost no political price. It was easier to disappoint a nascent climate movement than it was to stand up to the fossil fuel industry.

The Paris climate conference represents a possible turning point in the fight between the fossil fuel industry and the rest of us.

In the six years since, the power equation has changed, and that's the real story of the Paris conference.
The shift was clear in New York last fall, when 300,000 to 400,000 people marched through the streets demanding action on global warming, the largest demonstration in this country in years. Two days later, Obama told the United Nations: "Our citizens keep marching. We cannot pretend we do not hear them. We have to answer the call."
And a few weeks after that, the United States and China announced a joint pledge to meet specific emissions goals, a first for China and an increased commitment from the U.S. That agreement from the world's largest greenhouse gas emitters has helped push other nations into the fold in Paris.
There have been other victories as well: Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline, New York state's ban on fracking, Shell's retreat from Arctic drilling. In Australia, plans for the world's largest coal mines have been blocked. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Western world's most outspoken advocates for increased carbon extraction, lost their jobs in recent elections. Exxon Mobil, the world's most powerful fossil fuel company, is in the dock for climate deceit that was exposed by the Los Angeles Times, Columbia University's Energy & Environmental Reporting Project and Inside Climate News.
A resurgent environmental movement isn't the only thing that's changed since Copenhagen. Engineers, scientists and technologists have played their part. The price of a solar panel had dropped 80% since 2009. Wind power is now so efficient that countries such as Denmark can supply their power needs from the breeze on many days and send a surplus into the European grid. In the developing world, it's possible to skip the coal age in favor of clean energy. China will use less coal this year than last, and it's building renewable energy infrastructure at a breakneck pace.
If the coal, gas and oil industries no longer enjoy a chokehold on the outcome of climate talks, their power hasn't disappeared. There will be no formal treaty in Paris; everyone knows there aren't enough votes in the Senate to ratify an international treaty based on a rational climate policy. But neither will Paris be a failure: The pledges that governments plan to finalize there should suffice to hold warming to 3 or 3.5 degrees Celsius over the course of the century. Right now, the planet is heading for a 5-degree increase, so that's an improvement.
Still, even 3 degrees means Earth is on a path to destruction. There is wide agreement that any temperature increase greater than 2 degrees Celsius threatens civilization; we passed the 1-degree mark this fall and already the Arctic is melting, the West is confronting epic drought and the ocean is 30% more acidic.
All of this means that Paris should be both a scoreboard and a springboard. It will show how far we've come, and it could launch more progress. Two issues in the negotiations will signal how much more. First, how much aid will go to the poorest nations to help them leapfrog the fossil fuel age and deal with the effects of global warming that are now unavoidable. It will take real money — ongoing, steady support — to substitute alternative energy sources for coal in the developing world. Republicans aren't helping here: 11 days ago , they voted down even $500 million in funding from the United States, one of many explicit efforts to torpedo the negotiations.
The second clue is whether the conference will set a clear goal for not just reducing but ending the use of fossil fuels. Will it establish an efficient way to ratchet up emission pledges, as science and technology evolve? Having wasted the last quarter-century, the world can't afford to keep gearing up for once-a-decade grand gatherings; it needs to move smoothly forward into a 100% renewable energy future.
The Paris climate conference represents a possible turning point in the fight between the fossil fuel industry and the rest of us, but the great murky unknown remains: How much of a margin do physics and chemistry allow a warming Earth? The recent news that October was the hottest month ever recorded on our planet, and that the atmosphere's CO2 level has topped 400 parts per million, sobers any optimism.
Whatever happens in the next two weeks, it almost certainly won't be sufficient. Physics and chemistry don't negotiate. After Paris, we will have to maintain the pressure on our leaders, and hope for a bit of luck.

*Bill McKibben is the founder of the global climate campaign 350.org and a professor of environmental studies at Middlebury College.

Scientists Say Paris Climate Pledges Aren’t Enough To Save The Planet’s Ice

Washington Post - Chris Mooney

The Large Ice Fall of Glacier 1 is seen at the base of the 7,556 m (24,790 ft) Mount Gongga, known in Tibetan as Minya Konka on November 12, 2015 in Hailuogou, Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan province, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

It has been heralded as an unprecedented achievement. This year the vast majority of the world’s nations have issued pledges, or “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs), promising a range of emissions cuts as a foundation for an agreement at the Paris climate conference that opens Monday.
But there’s a problem. These commitments, on their own, only have the potential to forge a path that would limit warming to 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels at best, according to the U.N. And other assessments have been even more pessimistic than that, producing higher estimates like 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.
That’s well above the 2 degrees C that has been dubbed the final marker of a climatic “safe” zone. And now, a group of scientists who study the “cryosphere” — all the ice and snow in the Earth’s system, at the poles but also in frozen permafrost and mountain glaciers — have unleashed a stark assessment of just how inadequate these currently pledged emissions cuts are (barring a major enhancement of ambitions in Paris). Indeed, they say that if the INDCs are the end of the story, often irreversible changes will usher in that, unfolding over vast time periods, will dramatically raise seas and pour dangerous additional amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.

[The Great Thaw: As temperatures rise, the melting of glaciers is accelerating]

“Reacting with ‘too little, too late’ may lock in the gradual but unavoidable transformation of our Earth, its ecosystems and human communities, in a terrible legacy that may last a thousand years or more,” says the document, issued by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) and reviewed by a number of leading ice scientists focusing on Greenland, Antarctica, permafrost, Arctic sea ice, and more.
At the core of the report is the fundamental observation that while overall global average temperatures may have only risen about 1 degree Celsius so far, that rise has already been magnified greatly in the Arctic region, the Antarctic peninsula, and also in many high altitude areas where there is a large volume of vulnerable ice.
As a result, the experts say, many of these regions are now close to (or even in some cases past) major thresholds that, once crossed, we can’t reverse without the arrival of a new ice age. In many cases, in just the past few years the situation has become considerably more dire for key elements of the cryosphere — especially for the ice sheet of West Antarctica, where many scientists think a threshold leading to irreversible loss may have already been crossed.

Heimdal Glacier in southern Greenland is seen in a NASA image captured by Langley Research Center’s Falcon 20 aircraft October 13, 2015 and released November 24, 2015. NASA’s Operation IceBridge North is an airborne survey of polar ice aimed at learning how much snow and ice disappeared over the summer, according to a NASA news release. REUTERS/NASA/John Sonntag/Handout via Reuters

So if warming really occurs at the level implied by the INDCs — without dramatic additional steps to cut emissions — the report suggests we can look forward to the following: almost total loss of mountain glaciers around the world; major ice loss from West Antarctica and Greenland; a sea ice-free Arctic in the summer; and a major new source of greenhouse gases wafting out of thawing Arctic permafrost. The latter would be particularly damaging because at a time when human-caused emission levels are still far too high, it would require even steeper cuts to fossil fuel use and deforestation than currently contemplated.
Let’s take some of these problem areas in sequence, starting with the planet’s great ice sheets. West Antarctica may already be destabilized at current levels of warming, but the problems don’t stop there. There’s also Greenland, with its 20 feet worth of potential sea level rise in the form of ice. “The best estimate for the viability threshold of the Greenland ice sheet is around 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial,” said Jonathan Bamber, a glaciologist at the University of Bristol in Britain, on a press call to discuss the ICCI report. “If we go above that, the whole ice sheet becomes a relict of the last interglacial, it is no longer viable.”
The concern is not that this would happen all at once or even in this century, but rather, that it would become locked in to occurring. So the researchers are worried that with the current climate ambitions, we could be committing to many meters of long-term sea level rise. And that’s just the beginning of the consequences of melting a lot of planetary ice.
The report also forecasts that with the levels of warming implied by the INDCs, mountain glaciers around the world — which are often a key source of freshwater to communities — will face a severe threat. “We’re on track at the moment to have most of our mountain glaciers cross the threshold beyond which they’re doomed,” said Graham Cogley, a research with Trent University, on the press call.
And then, well, there’s permafrost — frozen soil spread across vast parts of the northern hemisphere Arctic. In a very troubling finding, the report states that even if global average temperatures are held to just 1.5 degrees Celsius — not a target that’s currently on the table — 30 percent of permafrost today could be thawed at least up through the top several meters of soil. And that would translate, by 2100, into about 50 gigatons of carbon emissions — or more than 180 gigatons of carbon dioxide.

In this Aug. 10, 2009, photo, a hill of permafrost “slumping” from global warming near the remote, boggy fringe of North America, 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) from the North Pole, where researchers are learning more about methane seeps in the 25,000 lakes of this vast Mackenzie River Delta, in the Northwest Territories, Canada. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

Such numbers would severely restrict current emissions budgets that are at the center of current policymaking and, indeed, of assessments of the INDCs. “These carbon losses from thawing permafrost currently are not accounted for in our global climate models, and they need to be accounted for if we are going to hit our emissions targets,” said Susan Natali, a permafrost expert with the Woods Hole Research Center, who reviewed the permafrost section of the report.
To top it all off, the report also forecasts a continual decline of Arctic sea ice that, thanks to feedback processes, will further warm the region encompassing Greenland and many key mountain glaciers — and the large store of the world’s permafrost. For the northern hemisphere, in effect, the loss of Arctic sea ice further weakens the cryosphere across the board.
The upshot is that we could be on the verge, in just a matter of decades, of causing changes that will be irreversible at the scale of thousands of years.
“Cryosphere climate change is not like air or water pollution, where the impacts remain local and when addressed, allow ecosystems largely to recover,” the report states. “Cryosphere climate change, driven by the physical laws of water’s response to the freezing point, is different.”

The Guardian View On The Climate Change Summit: There Is No Planet B

The Guardian - Editorial

The world’s hopes for a sustainable future depend on what happens in Paris over the next two weeks

Environmentalist activists in Berlin on the eve of the climate change summit in Paris. Photograph: Stefan Boness/Ipon/SIPA

The current front-runner for best slogan for the Paris climate change summit has to be “there is no planet B”; as for images, it is hard to imagine one more potent than the thousands of pairs of shoes laid in tidy lines in the Place de la République that symbolise the march climate activists had scheduled for Sunday then banned for fear of a repeat of the terrorist attack of a fortnight ago. However equivocal some of the political leadership sometimes appears, the popular movement for greening the economy is in good heart.
This is the 21st UN conference of the parties on climate change, better known as COP, and there are signs of a new maturity that might be the best omen for the future. It is easy to forget that this is an unprecedented attempt at global cooperation, one which has not only moved from event to process, but from protest to movement. For Paris is not only about world leaders trying to find an agreement acceptable to nearly 200 countries for whom the consequences of global warming will be existentially different. It is now also about the place of non-state players, from the indigenous peoples of South America to the world’s most sophisticated cities, and from the individual decisions that each of us makes to the clean energy initiative being launched on Monday by one of the world’s richest men, Bill Gates. One sign of this maturity is the demand from Laurent Fabius, the French foreign affairs minister in charge of this COP, that a deal on a final text should be agreed by next weekend. That would mean the last week of the conference was spent discussing how to put the final communiqué into action.
But there remain highly contentious decisions still to be taken, key wording left in square brackets in the 20-page negotiating text: including the date when carbon emissions peak, the amount of money available to help vulnerable countries adjust to the impact of changing climate, and the assistance available for developing countries that are still heavily reliant on fossil fuels.
The EU has agreed a joint target backed by nationally agreed pledges. Otherwise, engaging countries individually in drawing up their own plans for the speed and scale at which they will cut carbon emissions allows political realities of the kind that have beset both President Obama and successive Australian governments to be accommodated. Critics argue that it risks legitimising foot-dragging, and that is another of the great challenges for the coming fortnight: agreeing a process for monitoring, evaluating and verifying the targets that countries are signing up to – and then putting in a place a system of review that will lead to the targets being ratcheted up until they are tight enough to limit warming to 2 degrees. That is this week’s jackpot, but there will be no individual winner – nor any wide-ranging legally-binding agreement. This is a prize for all, or for none.
The danger of the UN-backed annual negotiations is that they can make tackling climate change look like a problem for other people. It is true that it requires global coordination. But that has to grow from national and local interest. It is here that non-state players, among them religions, have a crucial role in helping us to understand that self-interest demands solidarity.
There is a dangerous tendency that has long been plain in Australia and the US and is becoming explicit now in Britain, to present climate change as a story of loss and sacrifice rather than one of potential gain. The decisions the Conservative government at Westminster has taken since winning the election in May have underscored the idea that cutting carbon emissions is a costly vanity rather than an industrial opportunity. George Osborne reinforced that message in last week’s autumn statement, which it emerged soon afterwards included the withdrawal of all support for carbon capture and storage, essential if fossil fuels like shale gas are to be used safely. (No wonder that according to the weekend Financial Times, businesses like Ikea and Tesco have co-written an angry letter protesting at the damaging confusion in the government’s energy policy.)
Yet to say each of us has a contribution to make is not to underestimate the importance of what happens in the next two weeks. Now is the time to lay the cornerstone for a global strategy to cut and ultimately end carbon emissions. On what happens in a series of temporary structures in the suburbs of one of the world’s oldest and greatest cities depend the hopes for a sustainable future for the planet.

COP-21 Climate Deal In Paris Spells End Of The Fossil Era

London Daily Telegraph -  Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Much of the fossil industry will go into slow run-off while the new plutocrats will be masters of post-carbon technology

The authorities in Paris have banned any protest marches due to security concerns following the terrorist attacks, so campaigners have left their shoes out instead. Photo: REUTERS/Eric Gaillard

A far-reaching deal on climate change in Paris over coming days promises to unleash a $30 trillion blitz of investment on new technology and renewable energy by 2040, creating vast riches for those in the vanguard and potentially lifting the global economy out of its slow-growth trap.
Economists at Barclays estimate that greenhouse gas pledges made by the US, the EU, China, India, and others for the COP-21 climate summit amount to an epic change in the allocation of capital and resources, with financial winners and losers to match.
They said the fossil fuel industry of coal, gas, and oil could forfeit $34 trillion in revenues over the next quarter century – a quarter of their income – if the Paris accord is followed by a series of tougher reviews every five years to force down the trajectory of CO2 emissions, as proposed by the United Nations and French officials hosting the talks.

By then crude consumption would fall to 72m barrels a day - half OPEC projections - and demand would be in precipitous decline. Most fossil companies would face run-off unless they could reinvent themselves as 21st Century post-carbon leaders, as Shell, Total, and Statoil are already doing.
The agreed UN goal is to cap the rise in global temperatures to 2 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels by 2100, deemed the safe limit if we are to pass on a world that is more or less recognisable.
Climate negotiators say there will have to be drastic "decarbonisation" to bring this in sight, with negative net emissions by 2070 or soon after. This means that CO2 will have to be plucked from the air and buried, or absorbed by reforestation.
Such a scenario would imply the near extinction of the coal industry unless there is a big push for carbon capture and storage. It also implies a near total switch to electric cars, rendering the internal combustion engine obsolete.

Effect of current Paris pledges
The Bank of England and the G20's Financial Stability Board aim to bring about a "soft landing" that protects investors and gives the fossil industry time to adapt by forcing it to confront the issue head on.
Barclays said $21.5 trillion of investment in energy efficiency will be needed by 2040 under the current pledges, which cover 155 countries and 94pc of the global economy. It expects a further $8.5 trillion of spending on solar, wind, hydro, energy storage, and nuclear power.
Those best-placed to profit in Europe are: Denmark's wind group Vestas; Schneider and ABB for motors and transmission; Legrand for low voltage equipment; Alstom and Siemens for rail efficiency; Philips, and Osram for LEDs and lighting.

But this is a minimalist scenario. While the Paris commitments suggest a watershed moment, they do not go far enough to meet the targets set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC). The planet has already used up two-thirds of the allowable "carbon budget" of 2,900 gigatonnes (GT), and will have used up three quarters of the remaining 1,000 GT by 2030.
Barclays advised clients to prepare for a more radical outcome, entailing almost $45 trillion of spending on different forms of decarbonisation.
"The fact that COP-21 in itself is clearly not going to put the world on a 2 degree track does not mean that fossil-fuel companies can simply carry on with business-as-usual. We think they should be stress-testing their business models against a significant tightening of global climate policy over the next two decades," it said.
The main enforcement tool would be a rise in carbon prices to an estimated $140 a tonne by 2040 - either in the form of a tax or an emissions trading scheme. The pincer coming from the other side would an assault on direct fossil fuel subsidies, estimated at $550bn a year by the International Energy Agency.

Michael Jacobs from the Global Commission on Energy and Climate said the Paris accord is an instrument of economic signalling. "It is telling markets and investors that there is a massive opportunity before them," he said.
It is not yet certain that there will be a binding agreement. There could still be a dispute over the promised $100bn a year of mitigation funding for developing countries, though this issue is more symbolic than real when set against the trillions at stake. "It's peanuts," said Christiana Figueres, the UN's climate chief.
The mood in Paris is radically different from the Copenhagen summit in 2009, poisoned by a 'North-South' split over who is responsible, and who should pay to clean up the greenhouse legacy.

"What has really changed everything is that the cost of renewables has come down so far: what looked impossible six years ago in Copenhagen is now possible," said Mark Lewis, the chief author of the Barclays report. Renewables made up half of all new power added worldwide last year.
"The average cost of global solar was $400 a megawatt/hour worldwide in 2010. It fell to $130 in 2014, and now it has fallen below $60 in the best locations. Almost nobody could have imagined this six years ago," he said.
Mr Lewis said the next big breakthrough - perhaps within five years - will be in cheap energy storage, conquering the curse of intermittency and accelerating an unstoppable snowball effect driven by market forces. The IEA expects solar and wind capacity to rise eightfold under a 2 degree trajectory.

The historic inflexion point was a deal by US President Barack Obama and China's Xi Jinping last year to push for radical curbs, entirely changing the character of global climate politics. "The two 800-pound gorillas are working together," says Todd Stern, the chief US climate negotiator.
China has in effect switched sides since Copenhagen, no small matter for a country that now emits as much CO2 as the US and the EU combined. It has embraced green energy with the zeal of the converted, rushing to clean up its toxic cities and head off a middle-class revolt that threatens the legitimacy of the Communist regime.
It will introduce a cap-and-trade system for emissions in 2017. The dirtiest coal plants are being shut down. Some 200 GW of solar capacity are to be installed by the end of the decade. President Xi Jinping has vowed to cap total CO2 emissions by 2030 - if not earlier.
Mr Jacobs said a deal in Paris is highly likely. "You can never rule out a break-down. These meetings always go to the wire. But we have gone past the turning point in the US and China, and both countries have come to the realisation that it is possible to decarbonise without hurting economic growth," he said.
It will not be a legally-binding treaty, but it is expected to have the same effect as each country transposes the targets into its own law. In the US it will be enforced through the legal mechanism of the Clean Air Act, anchored on earlier accords, without need for Senate ratification.
The sums of money are colossal. Macro-economists say this is just what is needed to soak up the global savings glut and rescue the world from its 1930s liquidity trap. There might even be a boom.

Report Shows Seven-Fold Growth In Councils Dumping Fossil Fuels

350.org

Local governments representing $5.5 billion have now committed to go fossil free.

A report launched today by 350.org Australia highlights the growth in local governments divesting from fossil fuels.
According to the report, councils that have committed to divest represent $5.5billion in funds under management.
In addition, there has been a seven-fold growth in the number of councils moving their money out of coal, oil, and gas over the past year. From 2 councils divested at the end of 2014, with 14 local governments committed to going fossil free at the time of writing.
“Local governments of all political persuasions are leading the way when it comes to taking ambitious and much needed action on climate change. The size and number of councils divesting is only increasing. It’s high time our Federal Government read the writing on the wall and followed their lead,” said Isaac Astill, a divestment campaigner with 350.org Australia.
Divestment decisions are being made by diverse and significant local governments. Canberra was the world’s first national capital to join the fossil fuel divestment movement.
Home to the world’s largest coal port, Newcastle City Council has also committed to divest, despite strong political and industry pressure not to.
Last month the City of Melbourne, led by Liberal Party Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, joined the ranks of councils going fossil free.
Speaking about his council’s decision to divest last year, Dr Brad Pettitt, Mayor of the City of Fremantle, said: “It’s the responsibility of our banks, superannuation funds, and governments that have custody of our money to use this money to protect, and not damage, our environment.”
The decisions of local governments to divest from the big four banks due to their fossil fuel lendings is already sending a powerful message to the banks that supporting fossil fuels is bad for business.
“Lismore is on the frontline of the fight against the coal seam gas industry. Moving council money away from financial institutions that support the fossil fuel industry is a practical and sensible way for councils to ensure we are doing everything we can to leave this industry behind,” said Lismore Mayor Jenny Dowell of her city’s decision to divest.
Globally, as momentum for local governments to divest grows, the divestment movement is escalating globally. Approximately 490 institutions have committed to divesting, equating to well over $US2.6 trillion of investment money.
In the past 12 months, major institutions such as The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, one of the world’s largest insurance companies Allianz, and the Norwegian Sovereign Wealth Fund have committed to divest.

Links

• The full report – Local Government Leadership on Fossil Fuel Divestment: A report into the growing movement of councils going fossil free – can be accessed here.
• A full list of divestment commitments can be accessed here.

Australians Join Global Rallies For Climate Change Action Ahead Of Paris Talks

ABC News

Thousands of people marched on the lawns of Canbera's Parliament House. (ABC News: Ruby Cornish)

Thousands of Australians have joined a worldwide wave of marches on the eve of United Nations climate change negotiations in Paris, calling for stronger measures to combat global warming.
Events were held today in Sydney, Canberra, Perth and Hobart, as well as regional and rural towns around Australia, joining about 600 other cities in more than 120 countries around the world.
Protests have already taken place in Brisbane, Melbourne and Darwin.
In Sydney, thousands of people gathered in The Domain before marching to the Opera House.

A dog joined the People's Climate rally in Adelaide. ABC News: Malcolm Sutton

Doctors, firefighters and religious leaders were among the crowd, which called for governments to keep temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius - the limit scientists say would trigger dangerous climate change.
Currently temperatures have risen 1C since the Industrial Revolution.
Among the placards held by attendees was a sign warning: "There is no Planet B".
In Canberra, a crowd of about 5,000 marched from Parliament House, down the ramp and along Commonwealth Avenue before arriving at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in front of Old Parliament House.
The crowd chanted "from coal and gas to wind and sun. This power shift has begun" and "we are unstoppable, another world is possible".
At the tent embassy the group was welcomed by Aboriginal elders who invited the group onto the land.
The ACT Conservation Council's Phoebe Howe said the march was about celebrating successes as well as advocating for more action.
"Often at these climate marches it can feel like we're protesting something that's so hard to change, but the reality is that there is so much climate action already happening right across the world and here in Canberra's a great example of that," she said.
"We're excited to celebrate that and to invite everyone participating today to find ways they can stay involved and keep pushing so that together we can find that global solution."

This person, kitted out with a gas mask at Canberra's People's Climate march, shouted slogans such as: "From coal and gas to wind and sun, this power shift has begun." ABC News: Ian Cutmore

In Hobart about 1,000 people gathered on the lawns of Parliament House to listen to a series of speakers. Despite the location of the rally, the organisers did not include politicians in the line-up.
Many people carried placards and signs calling for a focus on renewable energy and less of a reliance on fossil fuels.
The Greens were present and called for more action from Tasmania's state Liberal Government on clarifying its climate change policy.
Wildlife also featured strongly, with participants dressed as parrots and Tasmanian devils to draw attention to the plight of endangered species.
The crowd fell silent for a minute at the start of the rally, in tribute to the victims of the Paris terror attacks.
In Adelaide, a crowd marched from the Torrens Parade ground in the CBD to Victoria Square.
Organisers say around 6,000 people have attended the rally in Adelaide, making it the largest ever in South Australia on the issue.
The march came as the South Australian Government released a plan to make Adelaide the "world's first carbon neutral city".
During the rally, another much-smaller group of about 30 marched the opposite direction calling for a stop to child abuse and more action on the issue from the SA Government.
In Perth, organisers said more than 7,000 people joined in the national rally with around 350 community groups joining Aboriginal elders and religious leaders to march from Wellington Square into the city.
The recent bushfires in Esperance were a hot topic.
WA president of the United Firefighters Union Kevin Jolly said changing fire seasons means the Government needed to invest more resources.
"The summer period ... from December through to march has been extended. You know we are here in November and in Western Australia and we've already had catastrophic fires," he said.
"There are no sceptics of climate change when you are behind a hose. Firefighters are working hard and longer and the Government needs to recognise that and put in more resources." Who's who at the Paris conference?
Some 150 leaders, including Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, US president Barack Obama, China's

Important players are at the Paris climate conference.

Xi Jinping, India's Narendra Modi and Russian president Vladimir Putin, will attend the start of the Paris conference, which is tasked with reaching the first truly universal climate pact.
The goal is to limit average global warming to 2C or less over pre-Industrial Revolution levels by curbing fossil fuel emissions blamed for climate change.
If they fail, scientists warn the world may become increasingly inhospitable to human life, with superstorms, drought and rising sea levels that swamp vast areas of land.
On the eve of the protests, French president Francois Hollande warned of the obstacles ahead for the 195 nations that will be represented at the talks following more than two decades of bickering.
"Man is the worst enemy of man. We can see it with terrorism," said Mr Hollande, after leading ceremonies in Paris to mourn the victims of the deadly November 13 bombing and shooting attacks that sowed terror in the French capital.
"But we can say the same when it comes to climate. Human beings are destroying nature, damaging the environment. It is therefore for human beings to face up to their responsibilities for the good of future generations."
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said he was optimistic of success in the talks, due to end on December 11, but emphasised all sides must be prepared to compromise.
"I am urging the world leaders that they must agree on the middle ground, there is no such perfect agreement in this world," he said.

Paris 2015: Momentum For Climate Change Deal Grows As Obama Joins Xi At UN Talks

Fairfax - Alex Morales, Bloomberg

Paris climate talks: the issues
Climate change is starting to have a personal impact on billions of people and we need to cut back on greenhouse gases and adapt to a warmer world.

More than 140 world leaders including US President Barack Obama and Xi Jinping of China are gathering in Paris for France's biggest diplomatic event since 1948, striving to reach the first truly global deal to curb greenhouse gases.
The two weeks of United Nations-sponsored talks have already gathered pledges to reduce emissions from 177 of the 195 countries involved, signalling broader support for a deal than when envoys last attempted to reach one six years ago. Those discussions in Copenhagen ended in disarray with recriminations between industrialised and developing nations.

World leaders at this month's G20 leaders summit in Turkey. They will be together again in Paris on Monday to discuss climate change. Photo: Aykut Unlupinar

Now, with the cost of alternatives to fossil fuels coming down and scientific concern about global warming mounting, there's stronger political will to act than ever. Delegates open their discussions on Sunday, and leaders are scheduled to speak on Monday to lend political momentum to the process.
"The stars are more aligned right now to reach agreement than I have ever seen them," US Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern told reporters last week. "We are riding on the wave of those 170 targets that have been submitted."
The terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in Paris two weeks ago prompted authorities to cancel demonstrations planned by environmental groups, draining some of the colour from the event that had been expected to draw 60,000 people to the city. Political resolve for a deal remains.
"What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be when the world stands as one," Obama said last week in a press conference with French President Francois Hollande.
Disagreements remain on the legal nature of the deal,??the mechanism that will prod action in the future and on how much support industrial nations should give poorer countries to cut their emissions and cope with the effects of warming. The leaders depart after their speeches, leaving the thorny issues to envoys drawn mostly from environment and energy ministries.
"Climate finance is a deal-killer in Paris," said Jairam Ramesh, the former environment minister of India and a veteran of Copenhagen. Industrialised nations must show how they'll deliver on a promise first made in 2009 to boost annual climate aid to $100 billion by the end of the century, he said.
Adding urgency is a finding by the World Meteorological Organisation that global temperatures probably touched a record in 2015. The pledges - which aren't up for negotiation - leave the world on track for a 2.7 degree Celsius increase since the industrial revolution, according to Climate Action Tracker, a project by four climate research institutions. That's above the 2-degree target set in previous talks, a shift in the climate that would still be quicker than when the last ice age ended. The most vulnerable nations want a 1.5-degree goal to protect them from rising seas.
"We're not home and dry in terms of the the 2 degrees, but developing countries are not seeing the money they need in order to cope with the consequences of that shortcoming," said former UN climate chief Yvo de Boer, who led the Copenhagen talks and now heads the Global Green Growth Institute in Seoul.
Another fight on the agenda in Paris will be on how to ensure countries periodically "ratchet" upward their ambition to reduce pollution, said Laurence Tubiana, who as France's climate change ambassador will help steer the discussions. Envoys must deliver "a broad message on the low-carbon economy being the new normal."
It's not just countries that are mobilising. The UN has gathered pledges to fight climate change from more than 2,000 cities worldwide and more than 2,000 corporations, which will be on display at conferences drawing thousands to venues separate from the heavily-policed UN compound.
"Paris will be a watershed," said Steve Howard, chief sustainability officer of the Swedish furniture retailer Ikea. "It will be a dividing point in time between the fossil-fuel economy and the renewables era."
The enthusiasm for a deal is in contrast with the meeting in Copenhagen in 2009, when just 55 nations met a deadline to submit pledges. This time, envoys coordinated their positions and put many of the elements for the deal in place before arriving in Paris.
The U.S. persuaded its allies and China to back a voluntary approach on emissions cuts rather than a deal setting binding targets. That construction would allow the administration to bypass approval from a hostile Senate, though it's causing friction with island nations and the Europeans, with Hollande saying earlier in the month "we must give any accord a binding character."
"Our survival is based on coming to a good enough deal," Maldives Foreign Minister Dunya Maumoon said by phone. It must ensure "there are still opportunities for countries to come back with more ambitious targets."

Paris Talks Could Improve Climate Pledges

Climate Central - John Upton

Until recently, global climate negotiations resembled wards full of newborn babies. Everybody seemed awfully upset about something, but with little idea what to do about it. Now the kids are growing. And they’ve been handing in their homework. What happens to that homework as countries’ climate policies mature could mean the difference between a humanity that’s afflicted by climate change, or one that’s devastated by it.

Wind energy produces nearly no greenhouse gas pollution. Credit: NREL

The way that countries will move together to act on climate in the coming years may start to become clear during the next two weeks in Paris, which is hosting what could be the most important round of United Nations climate negotiations in history.
Following years of failed efforts to force specific climate pollution reductions on developed countries, most nations completed unprecedented climate assignments this year, which they submitted to the U.N. They drafted climate pledges, which are known as intended nationally determined contributions, or INDCs. These INDCs describe high-level, but mostly underwhelming, targets for reducing or easing the amount of climate pollution that's being released.
“The INDCs have lots of flaws right now,” said David Victor, a University of California at San Diego international relations professor who researches climate diplomacy. “They are a start.”
Next, governments aim to work together to build their climate pledges into a fragmented but cohesive global plan for slowing global warming and, to a lesser extent, for adapting to it.
That work begins Sunday with the start of this year’s major session of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. One of the key issues to be decided is how and when the INDCs will be reviewed. Some are proposing reviews of INDCs every three to five years, making the pledges relatively dynamic, helping them keep pace with energy industry advances. Others favor a more measured approach — perhaps with once-in-a-decade reviews for some or all pledges.
“Review needs, ideally, to look not just at the big picture but the details — what’s working and not,” Victor said. “There are countries and firms willing to do things but not sure, right now, what works and how to link different policy efforts in different jurisdictions over time. So they are trying stuff and learning.”
America’s six-page INDC promises a 26 percent reduction in annual climate pollution from 2005 to 2025, for example. The European Union has pledged to reduce its climate impacts 40 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels. China is pledging to halt its yearly growth in climate-changing emissions 15 years from now at latest. India’s pledge quotes Mahatma Gandhi, discusses “climate justice,” poverty and population growth, and describes how it will promote nuclear and renewable energy.
While the pledges and approaches differ substantially, a collective examination of them makes it clear they won’t be enough to avoid dangerous levels of warming.
Analysis has revealed that the targets in the pledges will set the world up for more warming than the climate negotiators’ goal of a 2°C, or 3.6°F, limit. Industrial activity has already warmed the Earth by 1°C, and island states and other countries most threatened by rising seas want a 1.5°C target adopted in Paris.
“If the current targets are locked in through 2030, then we have a major problem,” said Jake Schmidt, who monitors climate negotiations for the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.
Countries were “conservative” in setting their targets, Schmidt said. “Technology development, implementation ability, and political will etc., will make it easier for them to do more before 2030 than they could envision at this moment.”
Most countries’ climate pledges cover a 10-year period after 2020. Those by the U.S. and Mexico, by contrast, cover 2020 to 2025.

U.S. climate negotiator Todd Stern, left, and his boss, Secretary of State John Kerry, at climate negotiations in Peru last year. Credit: UNFCCC/flickr

“Our view was that a shorter target — a 5-year target, rather than 10 — would actually enhanceambition,” President Obama’s chief climate negotiator, Todd Stern, said during a U.S. State Department press briefing on Tuesday. “In 2020, we will be able to put forward a target for 2030 much stronger than we would be able to do if we were trying to kind of guess on what a 2030 target would look like now.”
The different approaches to INDC cycles are reflective of different ideas for how the pledges could be reviewed and updated in the years ahead. The proposed evaluation approach is being calling a “ratcheting mechanism,” because it could help ratchet up the ambitions that underpin the climate pledges.
In Paris, the U.S. will be pushing for all countries to adopt 5-year INDC and INDC review cycles. India, frustrated that it’s being called upon to curb its substantial overall climate pollution while its per-person impacts remain low, and wary of inquisitions from the West, wants to wait a decade or so before its INDC is subjected to an initial review. During the negotiations, the U.S. will be trying to allay those concerns, which it fears could stunt the development of a climate-friendly humanity.
“Nobody is thinking here of a punitive review — that wouldn’t fly,” Stern said. Instead, he said he supports the concept of “a strong facilitative review that looks at what a country has done and says, ‘That looks good, you’re on track,’ or, ‘That doesn’t look so good. How can you be helped to do better?”’

Related

• The Forgotten U.N. Climate Goal: 1.5°C
• 50 Years After Warning, No Debate in Paris on the Science
• Climate Accord Struck In Lima; Key Decisions Postponed 

UN Climate Change Conference: The Babel Tower Comes To Paris

Forbes - Jean-Pierre Lehmann

Tower of Babel painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1556)

When I began teaching as Visiting Professor in the MBA program at the University of Hong Kong in February 2012 I had entitled the course “Asia in the New Global Order”. At the first class one of the students asked, “Order? What Order?” Good point, I noted, and the course was re-titled “Asia in the New Global Disorder”. It is the title that has been used in Hong Kong since, but also of the courses I have been teaching at NIIT University in Rajasthan, India, and the theme for my Forbes blog.
Asia which extends from the Red Sea to the East China Sea and across the Indian Ocean to the Pacific is the continent where the main narrative of the 21st century will be written. It is a continent many parts of which (especially in East Asia) are experiencing dynamic developments, but, as I argued in a previous blog, it is also a continent in turmoil.
Asia is a continent in turmoil geopolitically, politically, socially, economically, ideologically, culturally, demographically, but also, and emphatically so, environmentally. Selecting randomly recent news items: Singapore and Malaysia have been once again choked by the (euphemistically called) “haze” due to arising from forest fires in Indonesia; prospects of Bangladesh (population 160 million) sinking due to rising global warming induced rising sea levels are real; New Delhi has acquired the dubious distinction of beating Beijing as the world’s most polluted city; while urban China continues to fester, causing, among other things, an exodus to brighter skies of some of the country’s brightest brains at a time when they are most needed to confront the many challenges the country is facing; an article by Simon Kuper in the Financial Times quotes from a report entitled “Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought” that the Syrian civil war was at least in part caused by the extremely severe droughts the country experienced from 2007 to 2010 forcing “1.5 million Syrians to abandon their farms and move to already dysfunctional cities”; etc
Just a quick addendum on the situation in Syria and the Levant generally: while political scientists see no end of armed conflict in the short or medium term, environmentalists note that climate change conditions will, on the basis of currents trends, get significantly worse. The consequences could ineed be awesomely awful – eg in dramatically increased climate change induced refugees.
All this is happening – and much more – at a time when the global governance architecture that prevailed for five decades following the end of World War II, and successfully maintained the peace during the cold war, is breaking down. The system led to significant increases in prosperity in various parts of the world – notably the stellar economic rise from acute poverty to comfortable prosperity of the four East Asian dragons, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, that could never have even been dreamed of had the global rules-based architecture, especially in respect to the trade regime, not been solidly in place.
Paris today (Climate Change) and Nairobi tomorrow (WTO Doha ministerial meeting) will painfully illustrate the truism that since the beginning of the 21st century we have a system of global governance that has been reduced to a sham. The show goes on, but it is devoid of content.
The opening lines of Shakespeare’s poem seem highly apt to describe contemporary global governance: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances”; as indeed the concluding lines give a powerful foreboding of where things will be after Paris CoP21: “Last scene of all, … Is second childishness and mere oblivion, Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”.
It was in 2003 when I was in Cancún attending the WTO ministerial meeting (the first to be held after the launch of the Doha Development Agenda) that I was struck by the imagery of the Tower of Babel. All the ministers were talking, none were listening, hence there was no understanding – hence the meeting collapsed and hence ministers left “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything”.
[The image of the Tower of Babel is all the more relevant to our theme of “Asia in the New Global Disorder”, as Babel was located in Asia, believed by archeologists to have been in Shinar in northwestern Syria, then known as Mesopotamia.]
The same imagery applies – in spades – to the so-called UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC); my Hong Kong student might well ask, “Framework? What framework?” A trivial pursuit question might well be: “in what major city of the world has there not been a climate change summit?” As Paris 2015 will mark the 21st (and the 22nd is already scheduled for Marrakesh in 2016), previous summits (in chronological order) were held in: Berlin, Geneva, Kyoto, Buenos Aires, Bonn, The Hague, Bonn, Marrakesh, New Delhi, Milan, Buenos Aires, Montreal, Nairobi, Bali, Poznan, Copenhagen, Cancún, Durban, Doha, Warsaw, and, last year, Lima.
Readers will recall that the 2009 Copenhagen summit was especially cacophonous, a real venomous bust-up along lines drawn between North and South. The Copenhagen disaster was to be followed by Cancún. At an international conference prior to the event I asked the then Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa Cantellano, since the consequences of Copenhagen had not yet been digested and expectations that Cancún would produce something substantial were zero (or below), why simply not cancel the meeting and thereby save money and especially energy?! She looked at me in shock. The very thought of cancelling a summit, even when it is known that nothing will happen, is blasphemy.
When I argue that these summits (not just UNFCC, but also WTO, G-20, etc) should be stopped and other formulas sought I often have Winston Churchill quoted back at me, “to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war”. But I do not think Churchill had the Tower of Babel in mind!

Besides, these negotiations are undertaken not in a spirit of cooperation, but of confrontation: to score points, “defend national interests”, and the usual mercantilist crap we hear ad nauseam.
The facts here (for once!) seem reasonably clear and on the issue of climate change I am a southerner. There has never been a “green industrial revolution”. As the rich countries got rich, they generated infernal pollution. Once they are rich, they become more environmentally conscious. Show me an exception! This is true, for example, of South Korea, which was renowned for its terrible industrial smog. Today (with a GDP per capita of some $35k) the air is clear and fish have returned to swim in the Han River.
If we want the developing countries from Asia (and other continents) to limit emissions and diminish environmental degradation, the north has a historical, moral and human obligation to transfer as much technology and capital as possible to achieve that end which is imperative not only for Asia but indeed for the entire planet. As we stupidly and vacuously squabble at the Tower of Babel, things continue to deteriorate at accelerated speed.
For the sake of all our children and grand-children, South and North, East and West, we need not to negotiate, but to brainstorm on constructive global solutions to this epic global challenge. If Paris could produce this kind of mindset change and resolution, it would be truly wonderful.

Labor Offers Alternative Climate Change Policy

SBS

With Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on his way to the Paris climate change summit, federal Labor has detailed the climate policy it will take to the voters next year.

Opposition leader Bill Shorten: Labor offers alternative climate change policy.

Labor's pledged to cut carbon emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 should they win, and promised to offset Australia's carbon pollution by the middle of the century.
Opposition leader Bill Shorten revealed Labor's climate policy during an address to the Sydney-based policy analysis centre, The Lowy Institute.
Mr Shorten says Labor would aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 45 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030.
He says it's part of a longer-term plan.
"For Australia to achieve net zero pollution by 2050 - stopping global warming means stopping new pollution. If we are to meet the global target of two degrees we must reach a point where we are not adding pollution to the atmosphere. This means that by 2050 every tonne of pollution that we produce will need to be rebalanced by sequestering, offsetting or purchasing. "
Mr Shorten acknowledges it's a tough target.
"This is an ambitious goal - a goal recognised by the Australian Climate Round Table and internationally a goal recognised by global business leaders. I am very confident that the Paris conference will mark a turning point towards the de-carbonisation of the global economy with a new focus on net zero pollution."
Labor's announcement comes just days before Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull arrives in the French capital for major international climate talks.
Labor's target is more in line with what's been recommended by the independent Climate Change Authority.
It is also significantly higher than the 2030 target the Turnbull government will table in Paris.
The coalition's 2030 goal seeks to cut emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels.
Mr Shorten says that's simply not acceptable.
"The Abbott-Turnbull 2030 target puts Australia at the back of the international pack. No amount of saying it reduces on a per capita amount is sufficient. It certainly falls well short of Australia's obligation to help keeping warming below two degrees on pre-industrial levels."
But Treasurer Scott Morrison disagrees with Labor's calculations.
"This is the sort of thing the climate change commission said would cost Australians more than $600 billion over a 15 year period. No wonder he wants to bring back a carbon tax with full fury to pay for those sorts of commitments."
Federal Industry Minister Christopher Pyne went further, telling Channel 9 that Labor's target would hit ordinary Australians - hard.
"Bill Shorten's policy, his thought bubble, 45 per cent reduction, would require them to introduce, or re-introduce, a carbon tax at double the rate of the carbon tax before. He wants to smash household budgets and smash the economy."
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says he's optimistic an agreement will be reached in Paris.

Audio

Coalition's Weird Climate Rhetoric Says One Thing, Its Modelling Says Another

The Guardian - Lenore Taylor

Post-Abbott, the Coalition is still claiming its own policies can cut emissions with almost no cost while wildly exaggerating the cost of alternatives

Labor has flagged a much tougher greenhouse target than that promised by the Coalition – a 45% cut in emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

Remember how Malcolm Turnbull promised to respect the intelligence of the Australian people if he became prime minister?
Some of his ministers seem to have missed that memo, because they are now recycling the same discredited Abbott-era claims about the cost of more ambitious climate change action, while ignoring their own up-to-date economic modelling that says deeper emission cuts would come at far lower additional costs.
After Bill Shorten announced that Labor was likely to adopt a much tougher greenhouse target than that promised by the Coalition – a 45% cut in emissions by 2030 from 2005 levels – treasurer Scott Morrison immediately dusted off the Coalition’s claim that the independent climate change authority had found such a cut would “cost” the economy $600bn. Education minister Christopher Pyne said it was a “mad” policy that would “smash” the economy.
Environment minister Greg Hunt tweeted his old “$600bn carbon Bill” press release.
But the former head of the Climate Change Authority (CCA), Bernie Fraser, has described that $600bn claim as “weird” and “misleading”. And wrong.
And the government has its own, much more recent, modelling from leading economist Warwick McKibbin, which found that the difference in economic growth between the government’s target and Labor’s target would be far, far lower.
The government first started using the $600bn figure when the former prime minister Tony Abbott unveiled the new goal of reducing emissions by between 26% and 28% on 2005 levels by 2030.
One day before that announcement, the Daily Telegraph revisited modelling done in 2013 for the CCA of a 40% to 60% emissions reduction target, in a front-page story headlined “ALP’s $600bn carbon bill”. The paper argued the cost was attributable to Labor because the party has said it would base its long-term targets on up-to-date advice from the CCA. Labor had at that time not announced its preferred 2030 target.
The CCA tried to correct the record straight away. Fraser, the authority’s chairman and a former Reserve Bank governor, immediately issued a statement saying the claim that CCA modelling showed a 40% to 60% target would cost $600bn was “wrong”.
In an interview with Guardian Australia at the time, he explained why.
“Some people who don’t understand modelling draw inferences that really can’t be drawn,” he said. “This is a good illustration of the difficulties modelling can create when misinterpreted to derive misleading meanings.”
“This $600bn figure is not drawn from any logical process and it becomes weirder and weirder the more that you look at it.
“It compares a scenario where Australia has a 44% target by 2030 and the rest of the world is taking very strong action, with a scenario where Australia has no target and does nothing and the rest of the world does very little, almost nothing at all. It is the inferred cost difference between those two scenarios.
“If you wanted a figure with some logical credibility or relevance you would model the cost of the government’s 26% target and a 40% target for 2030 and look at the difference between those two.”
And in fact the recent McKibbin modelling for the government does exactly that.
It showed the government’s 26% target would shave between 0.2% and 0.4% from continued growth in Australian GDP in 2030, and based on similar assumptions, a 45% target would cut between 0.5% and 0.7% from continued economic growth. That means the difference in the economic cost of the Coalition’s 26% cut and Labor’s 45% cut is about 0.3% of GDP in 2030. The Coalition’s $600bn figure, comparing 45% with doing nothing and then adding up the cumulative costs, finds an extra GDP cost in 2030 of more than 2%.
In a way the “weird and misleading” modelling is a perfect microcosm of the weirdness of the Coalition’s climate rhetoric – pretending its own policies can do the job with almost no cost while wildly exaggerating the cost of alternatives.
Let’s go back to what Malcolm Turnbull said on that day of drama when he launched his leadership bid.
“We need a style of leadership that explains those challenges and opportunities, explains the challenges and how to seize the opportunities,” he said.
“A style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence, that explains these complex issues and then sets out the course of action we believe we should take and makes a case for it. We need advocacy, not slogans. We need to respect the intelligence of the Australian people.”
Quite. So why is his party ignoring its own up-to-date modelling with relevant assumptions and continuing with exaggerated cost claims?
At this rate we’ll soon be back to the $100 lamb roast.

Climate Change Already Forcing World's Birds Towards Poles, Says Report

The Guardian - Arthur Neslen

One quarter of 570 bird species studied globally have been affected negatively by climate change, says Birdlife International

Only 54% of the Lilac-breeasted roller's (Coracias caudatus) current distribution is projected to retain suitable climate by 2085. Photograph: Anthony Goldman/Audubon Photography Awards

The world's birds have begun flocking towards the earth's north and south poles and upwards to
higher ground as climate change begins to transform their habitats, a new report has found.
One quarter of 570 bird species studied globally have been affected negatively by climate change, while 13% have responded positively, says the study by Birdlife International.
Tris Allinson , one of the paper's authors, told the Guardian: "People regard climate change as something on the horizon and about to happen but the signals from birds are that significant and profound changes are already occurring, with detrimental effects for a large proportion of the birds studied."
"We are seeing a consistent pattern of birds moving towards the north and south poles in their respective hemispheres, and moving to higher altitudes on mountain slopes," he added.

Keel-billed Toucan (Ramphastos sulfuratus) Photograph: Gerry Ellis/Getty Images

Traditional lowland species, such as Keel-billed toucans (Ramphastos sulfuratus), are now being found at elevations of up to 1,500m in Costa Rica, due to climate change. Grey jays (Perisoreus canadensis) have shifted their range northwards by an average 18.5km in the last 26 years.
One key trend involves 'warm-adapted' species becoming increasingly common in Europe while 'cool-adapted' animals experience dramatic declines.
Populations of much-loved animals such as Atlantic puffins and Adelie penguins have both plummeted by 50% in just a few generations.
"We are also seeing changes in birds' behaviour and in the timing of their migrations, which have knock on effects such as mismatches in their interactions with other species," Allinson said.
Cuckoos, for example, normally time their annual returns from Africa to make use of nests built by local birds, which then rear their young. As temperatures warm, cuckoos have brought forward their trips, but they are still arriving later than local birds are breeding. Cuckoo populations are now declining in several countries.
Birdlife's paper, The Messengers, predicts that most bird species will experience shrinking ranges, disrupted breeding seasons, and many are likely to shift their population distributions too slowly to cope with the onset of climate change.
The threat of extinctions and population declines is set to rise rapidly as a result. A third of Europe's birdlife is already considered endangered.
The majority of North American birds are projected to lose over half their current geographic range by the century's end while birds in parts of east Africa will lose all their suitable habitats.
Deforestation and sea level rise will likely compound the problem, destroying wetland and forests habitats, while malaria-free habitats are poised to increase dramatically.

Red-crowned cranes (Grus japonensis) Photograph: David Courtenay/Audubon Photography Awards

But the report also signals some cause for hope, with successful examples of the restoration of peatlands in eastern Europe and the creation of migratory corridors in the Red Sea region, allowing 1.5m soaring birds safe passage between pylons, electricity cables and wind turbines.
'Stepping stones' between fragmented environments and reforestation could also help ensure the future of the world's aviators, Birdlife says, along with environmental safeguards for bioenergy and conservation laws and planning.
"Nature has a vital role to play in tackling climate change, but it's often ignored," said Edward Perry, another of the report's authors. "Nature-based solutions not only offer an effective and accessible response to climate change: they also deliver a series of benefits to people and biodiversity."