Jessica Corbett at Common Dreams writes—Decrying 'Utterly Inadequate' Efforts to Tackle Climate Crisis, UN Chief Declares 'Our War Against Nature Must Stop':
On the eve of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres decried the "utterly inadequate" efforts of governments to curb planet-heating emissions and called for "a clear demonstration of increased ambition and commitment" from world leaders to tackle the crisis.
"For many decades the human species has been at war with the planet. And the planet is fighting back," Guterres told reporters in Madrid Sunday. "We are confronted now with a global climate crisis. The point of no return is no longer over the horizon. It is in sight and hurtling towards us."
"Our war against nature must stop," he declared. "And we know that that is possible. The scientific community has provided us with the roadmap to achieve this."
Guterres referenced various U.N.-affiliated reports from recent years, including three released in the weeks leading up to COP 25, the climate conference that will begin Monday and run through Dec. 13.
The annual Emissions Gap report, published Tuesday by the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP), warned that global temperatures are on track to rise as much as 3.2°C by the end of the century and countries' commitments under the 2015 Paris agreement—a key focus of the upcoming conference—are insufficient to avert climate catastrophe.
The latest Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, published Monday by the World Meteorological Organization, revealed that levels of long-lived greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit record highs in 2018. The previous week, the UNEP and leading research organizations published The Production Gap, which found that planned levels of fossil fuel production through 2030 are "dangerously out of step" with the Paris accord goals.
"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we must limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, reach carbon neutrality by 2050, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030," Guterres noted. "The commitments made in Paris would still lead to an increase in temperature above three degrees Celsius. But many countries are not even meeting those commitments." [...]
TOP COMMENTS
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • THE WEEK’S HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“Reagan's story of freedom superficially alludes to the Founding Fathers, but its substance comes from the Gilded Age, devised by apologists for the robber barons. It is posed abstractly as the freedom of the individual from government control a Jeffersonian ideal at the roots of our Bill of Rights, to be sure. But what it meant in politics a century later, and still means today, is the freedom to accumulate wealth without social or democratic responsibilities and license to buy the political system right out from everyone else.” ~~Bill Moyers, Moyers on Democracy, 2008
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—New factions in DNC fight:
In behind-the-scenes positioning, key congressional lawmakers are seeking to prevent the national party from lapsing into another four-year presidential gestation cycle, where the DNC serves as nothing more than an incubator for the party's ambitions to capture the White House, say leadership aides.
That congressional strategy to deemphasize the presidential race is being paralleled at the state level, where party chairmen are withholding their endorsements and plan to swing their 112 votes in one bloc for a single candidate.
Those party leaders will seek to extract concrete assurances from the eight potential candidates for DNC chairperson who have been invited to address the Association of State Democratic Chairmen (ASDC) on Dec. 11 in Orlando.
Mark Brewer, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party and of the ASDC, said that his group, with its 112 members, "represents at least a fourth" of the 447 total votes, "or even a third, if some of the other committee members don't show."
"What we'd like to see is much more focus on the state and local parties in every state," Brewer said.