World negotiates response to new climate reality it’s not prepared to face
Here’s this week’s news in a nutshell. There is growing evidence that the planet’s climate is deteriorating. All of the world’s nations—except one—accept that fact and are committed to limiting the damage. Mitigation and adaptation efforts are dangerously inadequate, but that could change when the global climate talks continue next week in Bonn.
The biggest headline generator of the week, by far, was Syria’s decision—announced Tuesday—to ratify the Paris Agreement, leaving only one country in the world opposed to the global consensus on fighting climate change. “It’s the United States against the world,” said one headline. “U.S. becomes lone global outsider,” said another. “Mr. Trump, alone with his lies in a warming world,” said another among the hundreds published across the world. “With Syria on board, the entire world—save one country—is resolutely committed to advancing climate action. This should make the Trump administration reflect on their ill-advised announcement about withdrawing from the Paris Agreement,” said Paula Caballero, global director of the World Resources Institute’s climate program.
Of course, the U.S. is still part of the Paris Agreement, but only because President Donald Trump’s announced withdrawal cannot legally take effect until November 2020—a fact some delegates in Bonn were not too happy about because it allows the lame-duck U.S. to stay at the negotiating table until then. On Tuesday, members of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), a Kenya-based coalition of civil society organizations committed to Africa’s sustainable development, asked national negotiators attending the annual U.N. summit to bar the U.S. from the proceedings. “Trump’s agenda is to dismantle the Paris Agreement,” Mithika Mwenda, PACJA’s secretary general, told reporters. The conference should not “give Trump the platform to rock the boat from within,” he said.
Tensions rose around another matter before the opening gavel dropped. Fiji, which is presiding over the talks, joined Morocco in calling for countries’ “enhanced ambition” in curbing climate change, especially in light of the recent string of super-sized disasters underscoring the urgency of doing so. “This should be a dialogue, not a negotiation,” said Xie Zhenhua, China’s lead climate envoy, slapping down the suggestion. The Like Minded Group of Developing Countries, which includes India, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, agreed. “Countries can voluntarily decide to increase their contributions at any time but cannot be coerced to do so,” the coalition said in a statement.
While the official purpose of this year’s summit was to advance a “rule book” for implementing the Paris Agreement, focus shifted on opening day to the unmet promises of the world’s wealthiest countries. In 2010, they vowed by 2020 to make dramatic reductions in their carbon emissions and to provide $100 billion annually to help poorer, developing countries lower their emissions and cope with the impacts of climate change. In an intervention on Monday, Ravi Shankar Prasad, India’s lead delegate, suggested lack of clarity about whether these promises would be met threatened to undermine trust in the entire process.
By midweek, the drumbeat had grown louder for the developed world to reinvigorate enthusiasm for the Paris Agreement by detailing how they would slash emissions and pay out hundreds of billions of dollars in climate assistance. “We came here needing to hit the accelerator, not the brakes,” Brazil’s chief negotiator Antonio Marcondes told Reuters.
Fears the U.S. delegation would be disruptive apparently proved unfounded. “We have lost the leadership the U.S. used to provide,” said one national delegate. “They have the best negotiating team and they… usually put forward strong arguments, but in talks this year, they have been quiet. You can feel they are a little lost. It must be so hard for them now. I sympathize.”
Meanwhile, California Governor Jerry Brown donned the mantle of U.S. climate leadership, representing the world’s sixth largest economy and the increasing number of states, cities, academic institutions and corporations banding together to deliver America’s Obama-era pledge under the Paris Agreement. “We are truly facing a challenge unprecedented in human history,” Brown said in a speech to the European Parliament en route to Bonn. “We have to completely transform to a zero-carbon world. We have to do it faster than most people are probably thinking about. 2050 is too late.” Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, welcomed Brown’s ascendancy. “The approach of Mr. Trump is not necessarily as helpful as it might be. But we are delighted to have Governor Brown here because it shows there is a strong commitment from the U.S.,” Tajani said.
Climate context
The first nine months of 2017 were 1.1°C above temperatures in the pre-industrial era, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced Monday. While 2016 will likely retain the title for hottest year ever recorded—thanks to a potent El Niño—2017 is expected to take second place, leaving 2015 in third—or perhaps vice versa. “The past three years have all been in the top three years in terms of temperature records. This is part of a long term warming trend,” WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas said. “We have witnessed extraordinary weather, including temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius in Asia, record-breaking hurricanes in rapid succession in the Caribbean and Atlantic reaching as far as Ireland, devastating monsoon flooding affecting many millions of people and a relentless drought in East Africa. Many of these events—and detailed scientific studies will determine exactly how many—bear the tell-tale sign of climate change caused by increased greenhouse gas concentrations [in Earth’s atmosphere] from human activities.”
A much larger portion of Greenland’s ice sheet—perhaps more than half—may be exposed to warming ocean waters than previously thought, according to research highlighted Monday by E&E News. The findings, published last week in Geophysical Research Letters, also found Greenland may hold more ice than previously thought, perhaps enough to raise the world’s sea levels by more than 24 feet if the entire ice sheet melted.
On Wednesday, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) released its latest Adaptation Gap Report. The report basically says the planet is now headed for a 3°C temperature rise above pre-industrial times, shooting past the 2°C limit the world committed to under the Paris Agreement. These are temperatures Earth has not seen in 4 million years, and most countries are not preparing adequately for their return, the UNEP concluded.
At the same time, the world is not monitoring potential climate threats properly, according to a paper by 26 scientists led by the University of Colorado and published Thursday in the journal Earth’s Future. “The current decline of our Earth-observing systems is likely to continue into the foreseeable future,” said Liz Moyer, a climate scientist at the University of Chicago who was not part of the research team. “Unless action is taken—such as suggested in this paper—our ability to plan for and respond to some of the most important aspects of climate, including extreme events and water availability, will be significantly limited.”
Surprises
Inuit elders noticed a surprising phenomenon in the Arctic related to climate change, VICE News reported on Tuesday. They noted that the moon and stars were not were they should be in the sky and that the sun was rising in an abnormal location, all of which they attributed to a shift in Earth’s tilt. Scientists, however, attribute the dislocations to illusions created by the refraction of light in a warming atmosphere. “In the case of seeing something in a different location [in the sky], from a scientific perspective, we’re very clear that this is because the boundary layer of the climate is warming,” said David Barber, director of the Centre for Earth Observation Science at the University of Manitoba. “Inuit are meticulous observers of their environment, and they always have been. …So when the natural world begins to change, they really see it.”
China’s acting ambassador to Pakistan gave a surprising response to journalists questioning the decision by his country—now ostensibly the world’s guiding light on climate change—to build coal-fired power plants in Pakistan. Zhao Lijian said accusations that the plants were not environmentally friendly were “just rumors and have no reality, as the Chinese technology is ecological.” He went on to say, “China, [the] United States of America, India and… European countries are also using coal to generate power. If it had any negative impact on [the] environment, they would not have used it.”
In a surprise that could prove game-chancing if it is widely replicated, Deutsche Bank announced Wednesday that its asset management division is now using specialized maps to anticipate where disasters spurred by climate change might threaten investments. Deutsche Asset Management is using maps made by a California company that specifically pinpoint the exposure of more than a million assets around the world to extreme weather, flooding, drought and wildfires. Deutsche Bank claims this is the first time such maps have been used for this purpose. “We were feeling that all of the assets and energy going into carbon footprinting were not addressing the immediate risks to us,” said Michael Lewis, head of sustainable finance research for the bank’s asset division. “With all the floods and hurricanes we’ve seen this year, this is really about becoming much more knowledgeable and aware of the exposures we face.”
Fact defying
The Trump administration logged a week of fact-defying actions in Washington, DC, while the president and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, ignored the subject that was occupying the entire world in Bonn, instead signing natural gas deals valued at around $100 billion while Trump was in Beijing.
The Trump administration’s own special report on climate change, published last Friday, apparently fell on deaf ears in the White House and on the Republican side of Congress. A White House spokesperson said President Trump was only vaguely cognizant of the 477-page National Climate Assessment—mandated by law to be issued every four years—and GOP Representative Lamar Smith of Texas dismissed it as a “political document” by “so-called self-professed climate scientists.”
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief Scott Pruitt told USA TODAY on Tuesday that the report would have no bearing on his plan to weaken the Clean Power Plan to limit carbon emissions from existing power plants. “Does this report have any bearing on that? No it doesn’t. It doesn’t impact the withdrawal and it doesn’t impact the replacement” of the Clean Power Plan, Pruitt said. “The National Climate Assessment has sounded a five-alarm fire bell, and Scott Pruitt pretends he can’t hear it,” David Doniger, ?director of the Climate and Clean Air Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in response. “The assessment shows unequivocally that carbon pollution is causing dangerous climate change and that our future depends on whether we cut that pollution.”
POLITICO reported Monday that Bob Murray, owner of U.S. coal giant Murray Energy and a prominent backer of President Trump, stood to gain the most from Secretary of Energy Rick Perry’s proposal to prop up the nation’s dying coal and nuclear power industries with premium rates for the electricity they generate. Perry’s “narrowly written proposal would mostly affect plants in a stretch of the Midwest and Northeast where… Murray Energy is the predominant supplier,” POLITICO concluded after scrutinizing the plan. Bob Murray “bragged about giving this administration a three-page action plan on environmental regulations and bragged that the first page was already done,” according to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, citing comments Murray made in the Frontline documentary War on the EPA.
Several lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives—including a Texas Republican—urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) this week to set aside Perry’s proposal. An unusual coalition of 20 energy groups and companies from the oil, natural gas, solar and wind industries asked FERC to reject the proposal on grounds that it was “not supportable—or even appropriate—from a legal or policy perspective.” Nevertheless, FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee said Thursday he was working on an interim plan to keep coal and nuclear generators “afloat” while FERC conducts a “longer-term analysis” of Perry’s proposal. A majority of the commissioners would have to approve Chatterjee’s plan, however, and two have raised concerns that Perry’s approach would “blow up” the country’s energy markets.
Last Friday, EPA’s Pruitt announced he was replacing scientists booted off the agency’s advisory bodies because they were receiving EPA research grants with, among others, representatives of oil major Phillips 66, utility giant Southern Company and the North Dakota Petroleum Council. Robert Phalen, an air pollution researcher at the University of California tapped for the science board, has argued the country’s air is too clean for “optimum health.” In a letter sent to Pruitt on Tuesday, 62 House lawmakers expressed “alarm” at the agency’s “arbitrary and unnecessary limitation to disqualify preeminent experts” from advisory bodies. On Thursday, 10 senators sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office requesting an investigation of the matter.
President Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, acknowledged in her Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday that climate change was an important threat, although she said she could not “unequivocally state it’s caused by humans.” The same day, House and Senate negotiators agreed on the final version of a compromise national defense authorization bill that deems climate change “a direct threat to the national security of the United States and is impacting stability in areas of the world both where the United States Armed Forces are operating today, and where strategic implications for future conflict exist.”
Peculiar coverage
China’s official news media offered some peculiar coverage related to the U.N. climate summit in Bonn and U.S. President Donald Trump’s first official visit to Beijing on Wednesday and Thursday. While the two topics reportedly did not mix during discussions between President Xi Jinping and Trump, the state-run press did not shy away from blending the two seminal events.
On Sunday, the Xinhua news agency ran a “spotlight” feature with the headline, “U.S. gov’t report affirms global warming, despite Trump’s anti-climate policies.” The lead paragraph: “A major U.S. government report on Friday affirmed that global warming is real and ‘extremely likely’ caused by human activities—a stark contrast with President Donald Trump’s position on climate change.”
On Monday, Xinhua announced, “U.N. climate talks open in Bonn with call to uphold Paris Agreement path,” dovetailing nicely with President’s Xi’s top-down mandates.The story chose this emotive quote from Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, who was presiding over the meeting: “All over the world, vast numbers of people are suffering, bewildered by the forces against them. Our job as leaders is to respond to the suffering with all means available to us.”
After Air Force One landed in Beijing, the China Daily published an odd story with this nonsequitur for a headline: “Bill Gates’ China trips inspire confidence about outcome of Trump’s visit.” The feature went on to say how “Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ frequent trips to China—much before U.S. President Donald Trump’s first official visit…— have given Tai-Yin Huang… confidence that the two countries will extend their collaboration and cooperation.” Huang, a Penn State physics professor and founder of the East Penn Chinese-American Chamber of Commerce, sang the praises of Gates’ TerraPower for exploring a partnership with the China National Nuclear Corporation to develop small-scale nuclear power technology. “Despite such cooperative projects, there have been some changes in the United States with the Trump administration distancing itself from the global initiative to fight the effects of climate change and global warming,” the story said Huang had noted.
On Thursday, China announced it would delay the launch of its nationwide emissions trading market, which was slated to launch in early 2017, until early 2018. Reuters quoted a “researcher with direct knowledge of the launch” as saying the initial opening may only include the electricity industry. “It is difficult to advance the scheme considering the data problem and disagreement between enterprises and authorities,” said the researcher on condition of anonymity.
Both President Xi and President Trump addressed the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Vietnam today. While Trump emphasized “America first,” Xi touted the virtues of globalization. “Xi noted that China will speed up institutional reform for ecological conservation, pursue green, low-carbon and sustainable development, and implement the strictest possible system for environmental protection,” Xinhua reported.
Not breathing easy
The Guardian ran a thought-provoking story Monday about why India may decide the fate of Earth’s climate. The world’s second most populous country and fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases is projected to supplant China as the world’s fastest growing economy. Furthermore, while other countries among the world’s other top emitters—including China, the United States and the European Union—have seen their emissions flatline, India’s rose 5 percent in 2016.
“Two-thirds of India is yet to be built,” Samir Saran, vice president of New-Delhi think tank the Observer Research Foundation, told the Guardian. “…[P]lease understand [that] 16 percent of mankind is going to seek the American dream. If we can give it to them on a frugal climate budget, we will save the planet. If we don’t, we will either destroy India or destroy the planet.” Ajay Mathur, head of the Energy and Resources Institute, another Delhi think tank, underscored a similar point. “India has a vast amount of energy-using infrastructure yet to be put in place,” he said. “No matter what numbers you look at, we will at least double or double-and-a-half our energy consumption in the decade to 2030.” Climate economist Lord Nicholas Stern reportedly has said holding global warming below 2°C would be “very difficult” without India’s compliance.
These facts became all the more sobering as choking smog descended on India’s capital this week. The miasma was so thick that the Indian Medical Association declared a public health emergency. The city’s chief minister likened the situation to a “gas chamber.” Authorities closed some 4,000 schools, as lack of visibility delayed trains and flights and caused multiple-vehicle pileups. “The situation as it exists today is the worst that I have seen in my 35 years staying in the city of Delhi,” said Arvind Kumar, a lung surgeon. “If you want to protect people, we should be ordering the evacuation of Delhi.” Some doctors equated breathing Delhi’s air with “smoking 50 cigarettes a day.”
Still, some Indian officials and thought leaders pushed back vehemently against a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that showed India’s burning of fossil fuels increased 1,041 percent from 1971 to 2015—surpassing China’s increase. “This is how the West wants us to be portrayed,” Sunita Narain, director general of the Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi, was quoted as saying in the Hindustan Times on Monday. “We had to increase our carbon dioxide emissions over the past few years as a direct result of our population increase and our development needs. …[D]eveloped countries had already done that long back, but to balance our huge energy demand, it was but natural for us to see this process happen.” Narain called demands for India to reduce its emissions in line with economic giants like China and the United States “completely inequitable.”
Dipankar Saha of India’s Central Pollution? Control Board questioned the reliability of the results from the IEA, a respected intergovernmental organization based in Paris. “They don’t consider the policies of renewable energy that India has taken up over the past three years,” Saha said. “Over the years, foreign studies related to climate change, health or infrastructure are either extrapolated or come with inflated data. This needs to be tallied with government data to understand the real picture.”
Looking forward
U.N. accords are always works in progress, but the Paris Agreement is an historically unprecedented rallying point for the world to save itself from incalculable climatic disruption. Therefore, what happens next week in Bonn could affect the social and economic state of the world for generations. “The science is clear: if we don’t get our act together before 2020, you can forget about the 2°C and 1.5°C targets,” Paul Oquist, Nicaragua’s chief negotiator said this week while calling out the “failure” of the developed world to deliver on its “existing commitments.”
A report released at the end of the week showed that the tiny island nation of Fiji would have to spend $4.5 billion—an entire year of its GDP—over the next 10 years to protect itself from the onslaught of climate change. “Fiji is asking the world for drastic action on climate change, building resilience through adaptation and reducing greenhouse gas emissions so that climate change does not impose a limit to our development and the aspiration of our people to live in their own lands,” Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama said in a statement released with the report, which Fiji compiled with help from the World Bank.
Next week’s proceedings in Bonn should reveal insights into the developed world’s appetite for delivering the financial assistance and bold emissions cuts necessary to help the most vulnerable nations and to keep global warming below 2°C. “If we do not respect decisions that we have made, then how can we build trust among the parties?” Chinese negotiator Chen Zhihua said Thursday. “There is no disagreement about the pre-2020 urgency,” said Elina Bardram, head of the E.U.’s delegation. “But we must find solutions that … do not compromise progress… .”
On another pivotal matter, China and the United States are co-chairing a summit working group on emissions verification. Given China’s past reluctance to allow outside verification of its emissions and the U.S. government’s opposition to the Paris Agreement as a whole, the outcomes from this working group will be worth watching. “This is the test of Chinese leadership,” said Andrew Light, a former U.S. climate negotiator and fellow at the World Resources Institute. “If China is really going to step into the leadership vacuum created by the United States, then they must also accept that other countries must be allowed to see what they’re doing with respect to their emissions. Because that is absolutely essential to get Paris to succeed.”
The Trump administration’s Bonn side event promoting fossil fuels is scheduled for Monday. Barry Worthington, director the United States Energy Association, a fossil fuel advocacy group, told Climate Home he hoped to close some deals while in Bonn to speak at the event. “We in the U.S. are very dedicated to increasing our fossil fuel production and exporting to other countries,” he said. Seyni Nafo, chair of the Africa Group of Negotiators, said some countries in his region would be good marks for U.S. fossil fuel promoters at the conference. “If you are presented with a certain technology with a finance package, that’s what you are going to implement,” he said. “That’s the situation in which we find ourselves. If the fossil option is the cheapest one and you have access to do it and it’s a simple process, that’s what you are going to do.”