27 November 2015, The Conversation, Out of step: marching for climate justice versus taking action. This weekend, tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of people in cities around the world will take to the streets to protest against governments’ inaction on climate change. Past experience suggests media coverage will be largely sympathetic, if cursory, and (many) politicians will say that they hope the Paris climate summit that begins immediately afterwards represents a turning point. We have been here before. Quite often. There have been demonstrations at international climate meetings since at least 1990. However, “sympathy” marches in places far removed from the climate talks – such as those planned this weekend – are less frequent. So, can they make a difference? Read More here
Tag Archives: UNFCCC
24 November 2015, Renew Energy, Carbon budgets: Knowing when to hold and when to fold. As global leaders pull up a seat around the negotiating table in Paris in the next fortnight, there is no doubt discussion will quickly turn to the carbon budget and how to spend it. That’s the budget that will determine whether the world stays under two degrees of warming or sails into the unchartered waters of three, four or even a five-degree temperature increase. No one imagines that decision will be made this December at this Conference of the Parties. However to retain any hope of a safe and stable climate, the next decade will see debate around the division of the world’s carbon budget front and centre of discussions between nations, scientists, economists and financial analysts. It’s the gravitational pull of this discussion that will ensure the now heated debate surrounding divestment versus engagement as the most effective form of shareholder activism gets a more forensic examination. Certainly the debate is a now a fairly regular presence in the media, as individual and institutional investors become increasingly wary of the environmental, social and long-term financial risks posed by various holdings within their portfolios. In the last few years the issue’s profile has been raised in response to the fossil fuel divestment movement. Pressure for change is growing from within the community, fuelled in part by a growing awareness of how personal finances are being invested by banks and other institutions. This awareness is largely driven by technological change – investors now have access to more information than at any point in history – if BHP Billiton has a dam wall collapse the world knows within minutes. Read More here
24 November 2015, The Conversation, Australia should back calls to end coal and save its drowning neighbours. While all of us of will experience the effects of climate change most are not facing the inevitable disappearance of our country. Yet that is the case for the 92,000 inhabitants of Kiribati, as well as other low-lying island states across the planet. With its nation dispersed over more than 20 islands, some increasingly subject to ocean flooding, the Kiribati government has purchased land in Fiji to relocate some of its inhabitants. Over the coming century Kiribati, along with every other maritime region, faces rising seas driven by oceans expanding as they warm, and by melting ice sheets and glaciers. Ahead of the Paris climate conference, which begins on November 30, Kiribati’s president Anote Tong has issued a call for a moratorium on new coal mines. On his recent visit to Melbourne I spoke to President Tong about the prospects for Kiribati in a warming world, and efforts to mitigate the worst impacts. End coal to saving drowning islands. President Tong related that his call for a coalmine moratorium has had a sympathetic hearing from US President Barack Obama. He and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott talked amiably but (at best) agreed to disagree. As yet, he has been unable to meet with Abbott’s successor Malcolm Turnbull. What impressed me particularly is that, just as indigenous Australians relate to the land, President Tong was deeply passionate that the islands of Kiribati are the ancient, ancestral home of his people. President Tong however is under no illusion that anything will happen quickly when it comes to weaning the world off coal. He points out that coal-fired power stations will be needed in the medium-to-long term to heat the colder northern countries. Read More here
21 November 2015, The Guardian. Naomi Klein, What’s really at stake at the Paris climate conference now marches are banned. Whose security gets protected by any means necessary? Whose security is casually sacrificed, despite the means to do so much better? Those are the questions at the heart of the climate crisis, and the answers are the reason climate summits so often end in acrimony and tears. The French government’s decision to ban protests, marches and other “outdoor activities” during the Paris climate summit is disturbing on many levels. The one that preoccupies me most has to do with the way it reflects the fundamental inequity of the climate crisis itself – and that core question of whose security is ultimately valued in our lopsided world. Here is the first thing to understand. The people facing the worst impacts of climate change have virtually no voice in western debates about whether to do anything serious to prevent catastrophic global warming. Huge climate summits like the one coming up in Paris are rare exceptions. For just two weeks every few years, the voices of the people who are getting hit first and worst get a little bit of space to be heard at the place where fateful decisions are made. That’s why Pacific islanders and Inuit hunters and low-income people of colour from places like New Orleans travel for thousands of miles to attend. The expense is enormous, in both dollars and carbon, but being at the summit is a precious chance to speak about climate change in moral terms and to put a human face to this unfolding catastrophe.The next thing to understand is that even in these rare moments, frontline voices do not have enough of a platform in the official climate meetings, in which the microphone is dominated by governments and large, well-funded green groups. The voices of ordinary people are primarily heard in grassroots gatherings parallel to the summit, as well as in marches and protests, which in turn attract media coverage. Now the French government has decided to take away the loudest of these megaphones, claiming that securing marches would compromise its ability to secure the official summit zone where politicians will meet. Once again, the message is: our security is non-negotiable, yours is up for grabs. Some say this is all fair game against the backdrop of terror. But a UN climate summit is not like a meeting of the G8 or the World Trade Organisation, where the powerful meet and the powerless try to crash their party. Parallel “civil society” events are not an addendum to, or distractions from, the main event. They are integral to the process. Which is why the French government should never have been allowed to decide which parts of the summit it would cancel and which it would still hold. Read More here