#climate talks

Excerpt from this story from The Guardian:

More than 5,000 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to the UN climate summits over the past four years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, inadequate climate action and record oil and gas expansion, new research reveals.

Lobbyists representing the interests of the oil, gas and coal industries – which are mostly responsible for climate breakdown – have been allowed to participate in the annual climate negotiations where states are meant to come in good faith and commit to ambitious policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The roughly 5,350 lobbyists mingling with world leaders and climate negotiators in recent years worked for at least 859 fossil fuel organizations including trade groups, foundations and 180 oil, gas and coal companies involved in every part of the supply chain from exploration and production to distribution and equipment, research shared exclusively with the Guardian has found.

Just 90 of the fossil fuel corporations that sent lobbyists to climate talks between 2021 and 2024 accounted for more than half (57%) of all the oil and gas produced last year, according to the analysis by Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO), a coalition of 450 organizations campaigning to stop the fossil fuel industry blocking and delaying global climate action.

These corporations, which include many of the world’s most profitable private and publicly owned oil and gas majors, accounted for the production of 33,699m barrels of oil equivalent in 2024 – enough to cover more than the entire area of Spain with a 1cm blanket of oil.

The same 90 firms also account for almost two-thirds (63%) of all short-term upstream fossil fuel expansion projects which are gearing up for exploration and production, according to the newly released Global Oil and Gas Exit List – a dataset which includes more than 1,700 companies covering more than 90% of global oil and gas activity.

If executed, these expansion projects will produce enough oil – 2.623m km² at 1cm thickness – to coat the entire landmass of seven European countries (France, Spain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway) combined.

After extensive climate talks for the past two weeks, COP27 is coming to an end — now what?

This video was created in collaboration with Nature's Newsroom.

We have been being taught for a very long time that the world's problems are because the world is becoming overpopulated. Many movies and tv shows are pushing the idea that we need a 'culling of the herd' to lower our population in order to save our planet.

We are basically being taught that 'we' are the enemy, and that 'we' need to die for the planet to live. I would teach you something else, that it is our system and way of life that is killing the planet, and that 'we' can save the planet not by seeing to the death of billions, but rather by changing the part of our system that encourages us to destroy the planet and use our resources inefficiently.

I believe this can be accomplished with a system that I call 'The Hour'.

The world and the UN should give up on these COPs. They have become large scale cocktail parties and lobbying events for the fossil fuel industry, with predictable arguments and failures and with relatively inconsequential stories of success. Add to the witches brew the sudden appearance of trump, so at a minimum I would just halt these climate meetings so long as the jerk is president of the US.

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Negotiators at this year’s United Nations climate summit struck an agreement early on Sunday in Baku, Azerbaijan, to triple the flow of money to help developing countries adopt cleaner energy and cope with the effects of climate change. Under the deal, wealthy nations pledged to reach $300 billion per year in support by 2035, up from a current target of $100 billion.

Independent experts, however, have placed the needs of developing countries much higher, at $1.3 trillion per year. That is the amount they say must be invested in the energy transitions of lower-income countries, in addition to what those countries already spend, to keep the planet’s average temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond that threshold, scientists say, global warming will become more dangerous and harder to reverse.

The deal struck at the annual U.N.-sponsored climate talks calls on private companies and international lenders like the World Bank to cover the hundreds of billions in the shortfall. That was seen by some as a kind of escape clause for rich countries.

As soon as the Azerbaijani hosts banged the gavel and declared the deal done, Chandni Raina, the representative from India, the world’s most populous country, tore into them, saying the process had been “stage managed.”

“It is a paltry sum,” Ms. Raina said. “I am sorry to say that we cannot accept it. We seek a much higher ambition from developed countries.” She called the agreement “nothing more than an optical illusion.”

Speakers from one developing country after another, from Bolivia to Nigeria to Fiji, echoed Ms. Raina’s remarks and assailed the document in furious statements.

“Let me be crystal clear,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey, Panama’s special envoy for climate. “This process was chaotic, poorly managed, and a complete failure in terms of delivering the ambition required.”

The financing negotiations were complicated by the election of Donald J. Trump less than a week before the summit’s opening day. As the world’s biggest economy, with significant sway over global financial institutions, the United States has been essential to meeting climate finance pledges.