COP24 Summit in Katowice

[pieter]

Creating engagement between key, global stakeholders



CLIMATE CHANGE – The New Economy is a long-standing publishing initiative that brings further clarity and purpose to the critical climate debate. It creates a platform for governments, corporate business leaders and their advisors to work together, in order to carry forward the progress that was made at the last COP23 Summit in Bonn, Germany. The COP24 Summit, this December, will play a vital role in this process.

We all agree that we need to move beyond the success of the last COP Summit in Bonn and establish a stronger global commitment to deliver appropriate international climate action.

CLIMATE CHANGE – The New Economy will be working with all the main stakeholders from now until December 2018, setting the tone for a successful outcome during the COP process by bringing together all the key players to have their say on the key issues, challenges and structures that are needed for success today and beyond Katowice, Slaskie, Poland.

The introduction will be written by Michal Kurtyka, Polish Deputy Energy Minister. The foreword will be provided by Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, ensuring that this will be a truly historical publication and event.

www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/395170,Poland-ready-to-take-its-share-of-responsibility-for-climate-president
www.foxnews.com/world/world-faces-impossible-task-at-post-paris-climate-talks
news.sky.com/story/tens-of-thousands-protest-as-un-climate-summit-begins-in-poland-11570066
www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/12/01/world/europe/ap-climate.html
www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/03/david-attenborough-collapse-civilisation-on-horizon-un-climate-summit
www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/cop24-focused-setting-rules-combat-climate-change-181202093323005.html
www.euronews.com/2018/12/03/cop24-tens-of-thousands-of-climate-change-protesters-march-in-brussels

CNN: COP24 climate conference: World facing 'greatest threat in thousands of years'
edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/cop24-katowice-updates-12-3-18/index.html

BBC: Sir David Attenborough: Climate change 'our greatest threat'
www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46398057

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

[karl]

Pieter

When then to begin pointing fingers at top world poluters then fingers begin to fly about like feathers in a stout wind. Then when all of a sudden, most all fingers point at a central spot on the map, and that central spot seems to be The United States for some reason. One would first think of Poland with their high usage of coal burning, but they seem to be at the bottom of the list..

What though is most disturbing, and that is the slash and burn in the Brazilian basin. Most but not all the blame lies upon the shoulders of farmers who have over many many years, practice slash and burn to clear off forest land to then plant crops for their living. This is well and good, but in reality, those same farmers know very well that such forest land is very thin soil and after between two to three years, the soil becomes worn out and they then move on to another location to continue their farming practice. Mean while, the area cleared by those very same farmers, becomes eroded by seasonal rains and results in deep gullies and eroded areas that takes years for the forest to reclaim what was destroyed.

For as with the above farmers, a taboo subject in Brazil, is logging and deep forest roadway building. This entails clear cutting of ancient hard wood trees that have taken 100s of years to reach their high growth. Once logging is completed in each respected area, there is little attempt in reseeding or at least, repairing the damage done to the eco system, but simply left to the destructive nature of seasonal rains that erode the soil in to deep gullies and becomes useless.

Then, as if the respective farmers are not bad enough, and with them, the loggers and clear cutters of trans-state motorway construction.

There is the gold miners. These people perhaps are the worse for the environment. For they not only slash and burn for clear cutting, they then dig out large areas of soil to each work the ground for the gold. What they leave behind, is very ugly. Dependant upon mining techniks, if using high pressure/volume directed water jets to wash out the surrounding soil, this becomes extremely damaging to the surrounding area. For it scours off the top soil down to the gravel or even in some cases, bedrock and leaves the entire area void of vegetation. The later results to the local and some times reginal area is not difficult to emagine.

www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/slash-and-burn-brazil-shreds-laws-protecting-its-rainforests-2289107.html

Karl

[karl]

Pieter

In the spirit of space saving, the following is a list and percent of co2 emissions share by respective state. We only have one earth to live on, best we take care of it..

www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html#.XAXrJGhKiK8


Now then to Russia. It needs be of noten that perhaps and not an excuse for failures of the Russian Federation Government. The Russian Federation is in deed a very very vast area with areas of extreme difficulty in reaching let alone managing of such occurances as forest fires and melting tundra. Even with the all terrain tracked vehicles, other then over frozen ground, for the reason of heavy forest areas and rugged terrain with swamps and marshes, makes it almost impossible other then aircraft to reach. This would be not so advertised instances of oil well fires. Those things as located in far off reaches, are mostly impossible to extenguish let alone control. For often those fires will burn for months meanwhile, every thing is going in to the air. What laten effects if any drifts the hundreds of Km to populated areas is a question unanswered.

www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/329165-global-warming-russia-climate-change


Karl

[Jaga]

Pieter,

very interesting. Katowice is just a right place for environmental conference. I listed to Schwarzenegger and he was right that local communities, local cities and governments have a say with Paris agreement and they did not drop out of it like pres. Trump did.

[Jaga]

Pieter, thanks for the updates. I asked my friend who lives nearby, she said that this is an exteritorial zone where the meeting takes place:

www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/12/15/negotiators-strike-deal-global-climate-talks-questions-linger-over-whether-it-measures-up/?utm_term=.affcf4cf7883

‘1,000 little steps’: Global climate talks end in progress but fail to address the galloping pace of climate change

December 15 at 4:38 PM
KATOWICE, Poland — Weary climate negotiators limped across the finish line Saturday night after days of round-the-clock talks, striking a deal that keeps the world moving forward with plans to curb carbon emissions. But the agreement fell well short of the breakthrough that scientists — and many of the conference’s own participants — say is needed to avoid the cataclysmic impacts of a warming planet.

The deal struck Saturday at a global conference in the heart of Polish coal country, where some 25,000 delegates had gathered, adds legal flesh to the bones of the 2015 Paris agreement, setting the rules of the road for nearly 200 countries to cut their production of greenhouse gases and monitor one another’s progress.

While President Trump announced his intentions to withdraw the United States from the Paris agreement, the Obama administration had already joined, and the text of the agreement doesn’t allow for formal withdrawal until late 2020. In the meantime, the U.S. remains involved in the negotiations and sends an annual delegation.

Trump has rejected the science behind climate change, and his administration has adopted policies that will roll back efforts to cut emissions. If Trump does not win reelection in 2020, a subsequent president could rejoin the Paris agreement.

The agreement reached in Poland prods countries to step up their ambition in fighting climate change, a recognition of the fact that the world’s efforts have not gone nearly far enough. But, like the landmark 2015 agreement in Paris, it does not bind countries to hit their targets. And observers questioned whether it was sufficient given the extraordinary stakes.

“We are driven by our sense of humanity and commitment to the well-being of the earth that sustains us and those generations that will replace us,” Michal Kurtyka, the Polish environmental official who presided over the two-week international summit, said late Saturday as the marathon talks drew to a close.

Kurtyka noted the difficulty of finding global consensus on issues so technical and, in many ways, politically fraught. “Under these circumstances, every single step forward is a big achievement,” he said. “And through this package, you have made 1,000 little steps forward together.”

Approval of the agreement prompted a standing ovation from the delegates. But even as they cheered, the outcome raised immediate questions about whether the steps taken in Katowice were big enough as global emissions continue to rise.

“In the climate emergency we’re in, slow success is no success,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. “In an emergency, if the ambulance doesn’t get you to the hospital in time, you die. If the firetruck doesn’t get to your house in time, it burns down.”