04/12/2018

Children Demand Climate Change Action Through Protests And Lawsuits

Christian Science Monitor - Lin Taylor | Reuters

Though children are too young to vote, they're finding ways to take action in other ways: In Australia, thousands of students skipped class Nov. 30 to protest the government's climate policies, and in the US and Canada, groups of young people are suing their governments.
Thousands of students gather in Sydney during a rally demanding the government act on climate change. The coordinated rallies were held in close to 30 cities and towns on Nov. 30, 2018. Dan Himbrechts/AAP Image/AP
Skipping school, marching on the streets, and suing governments, children who are too young to vote are demanding more action on climate change, as world leaders gather at a major UN summit in Poland this week.
"We will be the main victims of climate change. It will be our generation who suffer the consequences," said Sydney student Aisheeya Huq, 16, who skipped school on Nov. 30 to protest, along with tens of thousands of children across Australia.
The nationwide strikes were inspired by 15-year-old Stockholm student Greta Thunberg, who misses school every Friday to demonstrate outside Sweden's parliament. She plans to do so until the country reaches its ambitious goals to curb carbon emissions.
"It's amazing that kids are protesting and they are making their voices heard. This is our last chance, we can't mess this up," Ms. Thunberg told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Youth-led climate organizations and actions are springing up around the globe. Their desire for change stems from personal experience of and worry about climate change, as well as a desire to hold their governments to account, their members say.
Half the world's population is now under 30 years old, and are increasingly vocal on political and social issues, with climate change the biggest concern for youths from 180 countries, according to a 2017 World Economic Forum survey.

Ambitious climate pledges
The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement pledged countries to shift the world economy away from fossil fuels and limit the rise in global temperatures to avert more extreme weather, rising sea levels, and the loss of plant and animal species.
The United States has since said it will withdraw from the deal.
Global leaders will meet in Poland from Dec. 2 to Dec. 14 to produce a "rule book" on how to reach these targets and implement the 2015 Paris deal agreed by nearly 200 nations.
Australia, one of the largest carbon emitters per capita, has vowed to lower emissions by 26 percent from 2005 levels by 2030, a figure that new prime minister Scott Morrison said his administration would not revise.
Rebuking the school walkouts, Mr. Morrison said in parliament on Dec. 3 that there should be "more learning in schools and less activism" on climate change.
Global temperatures are on course for a rise of 3 degrees to 5 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees to 9 degrees Fahrenheit) this century, far overshooting a global target of limiting the increase to 2 Celsius or less, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization said Nov. 29.
Scientists say meeting a 1.5 Celsius target would keep the global sea level rise 3.9 inches lower by 2100 than a 2 Celsius target, which could give people living on the world's coasts and islands time to adapt to climate change.

Lawsuits launched by young people
The climate projections have prompted some young people to sue their governments.
"Not taking action on something that you recognize is dangerous is a violation of our rights, because we have the right to live," said 17-year-old student Bernadette Veilleux-Trinh, part of a group that is suing the Canadian government.
Official data regularly shows that Canada has little chance of meeting its climate change goals of reducing emissions by 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.
ENvironnement JEUnesse, the organization that launched the class action on behalf of under-35s in Quebec province on Dec. 3 said the Canadian government must do more.
"I really feel like this is an emergency for all of us. Words are really not enough when it comes to climate change," said Catherine Gauthier, head of the Montreal-based youth climate advocacy group.
Across the border in the United States, the second largest contributor of carbon emissions after China, 21 children and young adults are also taking the government to court.
The group, with ages between 8 and 19 when the lawsuit was filed in 2015, accused federal officials and oil industry executives of violating their due process rights by knowing for decades that carbon pollution poisons the environment but doing nothing about it.
“These are people who are put in office to work for the general public, but they keep taking actions that are directly linked to worsening climate change,” said Oregonian Avery McRae, 13, who is one of the plaintiffs.
President Trump, who vowed to withdraw from the Paris deal, has argued the accord would hurt his nation's economy and provide little tangible environmental benefit.
Mr. Trump and some cabinet members have repeatedly cast doubt on climate change science, despite a recent government report projecting that climate change will cost the US economy hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the century.
“I am worried about my future. The future is what I’m fighting for. This is a global movement, and we need everyone on board,” Ms. McRae said.

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Climate Change: 'World At Crossroads' Warning As Key Talks Begin

BBC - Matt McGrath


Climate change: How 1.5C could change the world

Four senior figures behind efforts to limit climate change have warned that the planet "is at a crossroads" as key talks opened a day early in Poland.
In a rare move, four former presidents of the United Nations-sponsored talks called for decisive action.
The meeting in Katowice is the most critical on climate change since the 2015 Paris agreement.
Experts say that drastic cuts in emissions will be needed if the world is to reach targets agreed in Paris.
Negotiators at the COP24 conference convened a day early because they are under pressure to make progress.
Meanwhile, the World Bank has announced $200bn in funding over five years to support countries taking action against climate change.


Climate activist: 'It's high time that Poland phased out coal'

What's so different about this meeting?
This Conference of the Parties (COP) is the first to be held since the landmark Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C came out in October.
The IPCC stated that to keep to the 1.5C goal, governments would have to slash emissions of greenhouse gases by 45% by 2030.
But a recent study showed that CO2 emissions are on the rise again after stalling for four years.
In an unprecedented move, four former UN climate talks presidents issued a statement on Sunday, calling for urgent action.
They say "decisive action in the next two years will be crucial".
"What ministers and other leaders say and do in Katowice at COP24 will help determine efforts for years to come and either bring the world closer to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement - including protecting those most vulnerable to climate change - or push action further down the road.
"Any delay will only make it harder and more expensive to respond to climate change."
The statement was issued by Frank Bainimarama of Fiji, Salaheddine Mezouar of Morocco, Laurent Fabius of France and Manuel Pulgar Vidal of Peru.
Meanwhile, the gap between what countries say they are doing and what needs to be done has never been wider.
"The IPCC report made crystal clear that every bit of warming matters, especially for the least developed countries," said Gebru Jember Endalew, who chairs the group of poorest nations in the negotiations.
"It also gave some hope by confirming that limiting global warming to 1.5C is still possible. Here in Katowice, we must work constructively together to ensure that goal can become a reality."
In fact, so urgent is the task that some negotiators started their meetings on Sunday, a day before the official start.

Why is Sir David Attenborough attending?
The celebrated broadcaster and naturalist will be sitting in what's termed the "people's seat" at these talks.


'Continuation of civilisation is in your hands,' Attenborough tells world leaders

The idea is for the occupant to represent the millions of people around the world who are being affected by climate change.
At the opening ceremony, politicians will hear Sir David give a speech made up of climate change comments submitted by the public.

Will global leaders be attending?
Yes, some 29 heads of state and government are due to give statements at the opening of the meeting.
The number is way down on the stellar cast that turned up in Paris in 2015, which perhaps indicates that many are seeing this as more a technical stage on the road to tackling climate change than a big bang moment.
But for the likes of China and the EU, the meeting is critical. They will want to show that international co-operation can still work even in the age of President Trump.

How years compare with the 20th Century average
2018
Source: NOAA

 So will cutting carbon be the main focus of the meeting?
Rather than spending all their time working on how to increase ambitions to cut carbon, conference delegates are likely to focus on trying to finalise the technical rules of how the Paris agreement will work.

A collage of children's drawing about climate change laid out on a glacier in Switzerland. FABRICE COFFRINI
While the agreement was ratified in record time by more than 180 countries in 2016, it doesn't become operational until 2020.
Before then, delegates must sort out common rules on measuring, reporting and verifying (checking to avoid the misreporting of) greenhouse gas emissions, and on how climate finance is going to be provided.
"The rulebook is the thing that will absorb most of the negotiators' capacity at this year's COP," said Camilla Born, from the climate change think tank, E3G.
"It's no surprise, as agreeing the Paris rules is both technically and politically a complicated task - but it is worth it!"
Right now, that rule book runs to several hundred pages with thousands of brackets, indicating areas of dispute.


But what about limiting emissions?
Under the Paris agreement, each country decides for itself the actions it will take when it comes to cutting carbon. Some observers believe that the changed mood and the urgency of the science will prompt action.
"We are hoping that at COP24, countries will make declarations of how they will raise their ambitions by 2020. This is a very important moment," said Fernanda Carvalho with campaign group WWF.
"Two years is a short time span for that to happen. Countries need to act fast."

Why is the UN process slow-moving?
There is much frustration with the snail-like pace, especially among some campaigners who feel that the scale of the threat posed by rising temperatures hasn't been fully grasped by politicians.
Greta Thunberg, who has refused to go to school in Sweden in protest over climate change, will be attending COP24. HANNA FRANZEN
"Governments across the world have completely failed to protect their citizens," said a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, the social movement that pushes for radical change on climate issues.
"Instead, they have pursued quick profit and big business. We need this to change. At COP24, we want to ensure that the focus is not just on getting the technical Paris rulebook as robust as possible, but also that governments do not lose sight of the bigger picture. We are not doing enough."
Others involved in the UN process say that real progress is being made in tackling one of the most complex problems ever faced by the world.
"You have to recognise that things that negotiators and others have worked so hard to put in place are making a real difference," said Achim Steiner, who heads the United Nations Development Programme.
"We have a $300bn renewable energy economy at work today - it's not peanuts, it's an energy revolution that has unfolded on the back of, yes, a sometimes sticky climate negotiation process."

How much of a role will money play in making progress in Poland?
Many developing countries see progress on issues around finance to be critical to moving forward. They have been promised $100bn every year from 2020 as part of the Paris agreement.
Some are sceptical about what they see as foot-dragging and obfuscation by richer countries when it comes to handing over the cash. Negotiators say that moving forward on finance is the lynchpin of progress in this meeting.
"A key finding of the recent IPCC report, and one that has often been overlooked, is that without a dramatic increase in the provision of climate finance, the possibility of limiting warming to 2C (to say nothing of the safer 1.5C goal), will irretrievably slip away," said Amjad Abdulla, chief negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States.

Are there concerns the meeting is in a country reliant on coal?
Yes - among government negotiators and observers alike. The fact that the conference is taking place in a strong coal region, in a city that is home to the biggest coal company in the EU, is troubling to many.
Poland is highly dependent on coal, getting close to 80% of its electricity from the fossil fuel - and the widespread use of lower quality coal to heat homes, especially in the colder months, leads to smog and respiratory illnesses.
However, the Polish government says that it is sticking with the fuel, and has announced that it is planning to invest next year in the construction of a new coal mine in Silesia.
This bullish approach has drawn condemnation from some.
"We hope that the Polish government will seize this opportunity to embrace and promote a just transition that guarantees that the energy system is transformed while leaving no one behind," said Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Centre for International Environmental Law.
"Unfortunately, this week's announcement by the [meeting's] Polish presidency that it will include coal companies as sponsors of the COP sends a very worrisome signal before the conference even begins."

Will President Trump and the US feature at all?
Although the US has withdrawn from the Paris agreement, it cannot leave until 2020, so its negotiators have been taking part in meetings and have not obstructed the process. America is expected to participate in COP24.
However, given the President's well known love of coal, it has been reported that the White House will once again organise a side event promoting fossil fuels. A similar event at the last COP provoked outrage from many delegates.

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Climate Change: CO2 Emissions Rising For First Time In Four Years

BBC - Matt McGrath

Carbon emissions have not yet peaked in many countries the report says. Getty Images
Global efforts to tackle climate change are way off track says the UN, as it details the first rise in CO2 emissions in four years.
The emissions gap report says that economic growth is responsible for a rise in 2017 while national efforts to cut carbon have faltered.
To meet the goals of the Paris climate pact, the study says it's crucial that global emissions peak by 2020.
But the analysis says that this is now not likely even by 2030.
The report comes days before a major UN climate conference starting in Poland from 2-14 December.

 What is the emissions gap?
For the last nine years, UN Environment have produced an assessment of the latest scientific studies on current and future emissions of greenhouse gases.
It highlights the difference between the level of greenhouse gas emissions that the world can sustain to keep temperatures within safe limits, with the levels that are likely based on the promises and actions taken by countries.
This year's report records the largest gap yet between where we are and where we need to be.


Why are emissions rising again?
Between 2014 and 2016, global emissions of CO2 from industry and the production of energy were essentially stable while the global economy grew modestly - but in 2017 these emissions went up by 1.2% pushed along by higher GDP.
While renewable energy sources are booming in countries like India, carbon emissions haven't yet peaked. Getty Images
While the rise might seem small, it needs to be seen in context of efforts to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5C, as recently outlined in a key IPCC report.
According to the UN, to keep the world below that target, global greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 would have to be 55% lower than today.
"There is still a tremendous gap between words and deeds, between the targets agreed by governments worldwide to stabilise our climate and the measures to achieve these goals," said Dr Gunnar Luderer, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the authors of the study.
The scientists say that to tackle the gap, nations must raise their ambition five fold to meet the 1.5C goal.
Right now, the world is heading for a temperature rise of 3.2C by the end of this century the report says.

No peaking?


One key aspect of the study is about the peaking of global greenhouse emissions.
The report says that peaking of emissions in 2020 is "crucial for achieving the temperature targets in the Paris agreement," but the scale of the current efforts is insufficient.
The study says that by 2030, around 57 countries representing about 60% of global emissions will have peaked. Nowhere near where the world needs to be.

Does the report point the finger at countries that are doing badly?
In some ways yes. The study says that countries including Argentina, Australia, Canada, the EU (including the UK), South Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the US, are falling short of achieving their nationally determined contributions for 2030.
The burning and clearing of forests in Asia contributes hugely to emissions. Getty Images
Three countries, Brazil, China and Japan are currently on track, while three others, India, Russia and Turkey are set to beat their targets.
The authors believe that some of these achievements may be down to setting relatively low targets for their national plans.

Is there any positive news in the report?
Undoubtedly, yes.
The UN is placing great hopes in what it terms "non-state actors", meaning local, city and regional governments, businesses and higher education institutions can have major impacts on the future gap.
They estimate that, right now, more than 7,000 cities from 133 countries and 6,000 companies with at least $36 trillion in revenue have pledged to take climate action.
But the authors believe this is just scratching the surface. With over 500,000 publicly traded companies worldwide, there are many more that can take steps that cumulatively would have a significant impact on the gap.
The study says that there is the potential to cut emissions from this sector by 19 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalent per year by 2030 - that's enough to keep the world on a 2 degree path.

The future is fiscal?
The report also suggests that government tax plans could be hugely important in tackling emissions.
It says that carbon taxes or carbon trading systems cover only 15% of the global carbon output, which could rise to 20% if China implements its planned market. But the report says that half of the emissions from fossil fuels are not taxed at all and only 10% are priced at a level consistent with keeping warming to 2C.
Subsidies for fossil fuels like coal will have to be phased out to meet climate targets. Getty Images
"When governments embrace fiscal policy measures to subsidise low-emission alternatives and tax fossil fuels, they can stimulate the right investments in the energy sector and significantly reduce carbon emissions," said Jian Liu, UN Environment's chief scientist.
"If all fossil fuel subsidies were phased out, global carbon emissions could be reduced by up to 10% by 2030. Setting the right carbon price is also essential. At $70 per tonne of CO2, emission reductions of up to 40% are possible in some countries."

What happens now?
This report is aimed at informing delegates to next week's key climate conference in Katowice, Poland. Negotiators will be trying to finish the rules on how to implement the rule book of the Paris agreement - but the report's authors hope it can push countries to greater levels of ambition.
"Germany and Europe could demonstrate leadership in this area by pledging complete greenhouse gas neutrality by 2050 and a clear strengthening of the emission reduction targets for 2030," said Dr Gunnar Luderer.

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Climate Change: Where We Are In Seven Charts And What You Can Do To Help

BBC - Nassos Stylianou | Clara Guibourg | Daniel Dunford | Lucy Rodgers
Getty Images
Representatives from nearly 200 countries are gathering in Poland for talks on climate change - aimed at breathing new life into the Paris Agreement.
The UN has warned the 2015 Paris accord's goal of limiting global warming to "well below 2C above pre-industrial levels" is in danger because major economies, including the US and the EU, are falling short of their pledges.
But scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) - the leading international body on global warming - last month argued the 2C Paris pledge didn't go far enough. The global average temperature rise actually needed to be kept below 1.5C, they said.
So how warm has the world got and what can we do about it?

1. The world has been getting hotter
The world is now nearly one degree warmer than it was before widespread industrialisation, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
The global average temperature for the first 10 months of 2018 was 0.98C above the levels of 1850-1900, according to five independently maintained global data sets.
How years compare with the 20th Century average
2018
Source: NOAA
The 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, with 2015-2018 making up the top four, the WMO says.
If this trend continues, temperatures may rise by 3-5C by 2100.
One degree may not sound like much, but, according to the IPCC, if countries fail to act, the world will face catastrophic change - sea levels will rise, ocean temperatures and acidity will increase and our ability to grow crops, such as rice, maize and wheat, would be in danger.

2. The year 2018 set all sorts of records
This year saw record high temperatures in many places across the world amid an unusually prolonged period of hot weather.
Large parts of the northern hemisphere saw a succession of heatwaves take hold in Europe, Asia, North America and northern Africa - a result of strong high pressure systems that created a "heat dome".
Over the period shown on the map below (May to July 2018), the yellow dots show where a heat record was broken on a given date, pink indicates places that were the hottest they had ever been in the month shown, and dark red represents a place that was the hottest since records began.

The hottest that this location has ever been...
Tap or click to explore the data
Source: Robert A. Rohde/Berkeley Earth. Map built using Carto

The concern is that such hot and cold weather fronts are being blocked - stuck over regions for long periods - more frequently because of climate change, leading to more extreme weather events.

3. We are not on track to meet climate change targets
If we add up all the promises to cut emissions made by countries that have signed the Paris climate agreement, the world would still warm by more than 3C by the end of this century.

Over the past three years, climate scientists have shifted the definition of what they believe is the "safe" limit of climate change.
For decades, researchers argued the global temperature rise must be kept below 2C by the end of this century to avoid the worst impacts.
Countries signing up to the Paris agreement pledged to keep temperatures "well below 2C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5C".
But scientists now agree that we actually need to keep temperature rises to below 1.5C.

4. The biggest emitters are China and the US
The countries emitting the most greenhouse gases by quite a long way are China and the US. Together they account for more than 40% of the global total, according to 2017 data from the European Commission's Joint Research Centre and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

The US's environmental policy has shifted under the Trump administration, which has pursued a pro-fossil fuels agenda.
After taking office, President Donald Trump announced the US would withdraw from the Paris climate change agreement.
At the time, Mr Trump said he wanted to negotiate a new "fair" deal that would not disadvantage US businesses and workers.

5. Urban areas are particularly under threat
Almost all (95%) of cities facing extreme climate risks are in Africa or Asia, a report by risk analysts Verisk Maplecroft has found.
And it's the faster-growing cities that are most at risk, including megacities like Lagos in Nigeria and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Some 84 of the world's 100 fastest-growing cities face "extreme" risks from rising temperatures and extreme weather brought on by climate change.


6. Arctic sea ice is also in danger
The extent of Arctic sea ice has dropped in recent years. It reached its lowest point on record in 2012.

Sea ice has been reducing for decades, with melting accelerating since the early 2000s, according to the UK Parliament's Environmental Audit Committee.
The Arctic Ocean may be ice free in the summer as soon as the 2050s, unless emissions are reduced, the committee has said.
The WMO found the extent of Arctic sea ice in 2018 was much lower than normal, with the maximum in March the third lowest on record and the September minimum the sixth lowest.

7. We can all do more to help
While governments need to make big changes - individuals can play a role too.
Scientists say we all have to make "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes" to our lifestyles, in order to avoid severely damaging climate change.
The IPCC says we need to: buy less meat, milk, cheese and butter; eat more locally sourced seasonal food - and throw less of it away; drive electric cars but walk or cycle short distances; take trains and buses instead of planes; use videoconferencing instead of business travel; use a washing line instead of a tumble dryer; insulate homes; demand low carbon in every consumer product.
The single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet is to modify your diet to include less meat - according to recent studies.

Scientists say we ought to eat less meat because of the carbon emissions the meat industry produces, as well as other negative environmental impacts.
A recent study published in the journal Science highlighted a massive variation in the environmental impact of producing the same food.
For example, beef cattle raised on deforested land produces 12 times more greenhouse gas emissions than those reared on natural pastures.

 Crucially, the analysis shows that meat with the lowest environmental impact still creates more greenhouse gas emissions than growing vegetables and cereal crops in the least environmentally-friendly way.
But as well as altering our diets, research suggests that farming practices need to change significantly to benefit the environment.

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