Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumPlastics, Biodiversity, Desertification, Climate: 2024 Laid Bare The Collapse Of Environmental Diplomacy
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Its a far cry from the hopeful days of 1987 when the world adopted a treaty that is now reversing the dangerous loss of stratospheric ozone by banning certain chemicals. That was followed by a 1992 Earth summit that set up a United Nations system for negotiating environmental problems, especially climate change called Conference of Parties or COPs. A flurry of these conferences in a row fell relatively flat.
The biodiversity COP in Cali, Colombia in October ran out of time, ending with no big agreement except to recognize Indigenous peoples efforts. Novembers climate change COP in Baku, Azerbaijan, on paper reached its key goal of increasing financing for poor nations to cope with warming, but the limited amount left developing nations upset and analysts saying it wasnt nearly enough. A plastics pollution meeting in Busan, South Korea, the next week got many nations saying they wanted to do something, but didnt in the end. And the conference on desertification in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia also failed to reach an agreement on how to deal with drought. We can sum up all these four multilateral meetings of 2024 that we are still failing, said Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.
Nine years ago, when more than 190 nations came together to adopt the historic Paris agreement, countries had a mindset that realized a healthy planet benefitted every one, but weve lost track of that, said former U.N. climate secretary Christiana Figueres, who shepherded that deal. Were now entering as though we were gladiators in the Colosseum with an attitude of fighting and confrontation. And that mindset is not very productive.
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Thirty years ago when the climate conferences started there was debate over how decisions should be adopted.
A prominent fossil fuel industry lobbyist and Saudi Arabia pushed hard to kill the idea of majority or supermajority vote and instead adopt the idea of consensus so that every country more or less had to be on board, said climate negotiations historian Joanna Depledge at Cambridge University in England. Through that they managed to stymie, to weaken the negotiations, Depledge said. The nature of consensus is we end up moving at the pace of the slowest, said PowerShift Africas Mohamed Adow. Gore, Depledge and others are advocating for new rules to make COP decisions by supermajority rule, not consensus. But past efforts have failed.
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https://apnews.com/article/united-nations-climate-biodiversity-plastics-drought-summits-failure-64b40bc06287a92d33bcdbfea4f3bf5f
NNadir
(34,839 posts)...I held in humanity is gone.
2naSalit
(93,420 posts)I saw this coming decades ago and spent a lot of years trying to educate the masses but I found that nobody wants to hear about it until it hurts them.
NNadir
(34,839 posts)...some huge problem would occur, usually Godzilla or some other monster, and all the world's scientists would huddle in a room, often at the UN, come quickly to consensus, advise the Govrrnments (often the military) and the problem would be solved in a half hour of film when the governments accepted the scientific advice.
So much for science fiction.
What's coming in my view is much worse than one million Godzillas in my view.
The only 1950s science fiction movie that really reflects what is coming - I watched it recently - is, I think, "Forbidden Planet," in which an advanced civilization wipes itself out because of "monsters from the id," the freudian id, by employing a technology that empowers their worst, basest, instincts.
It struck me as eerily familiar.
As children say, "are we there yet?"
I also have musical references as well as literary, all pretty dark. The most enjoyable of which is a song from 1987, Ship of Fools by World Party. The lyrics are remarkably poignant for the moment.
World Party
Written by: Karl Edmond De Vere Wallinger
We're setting sail
To the place on the map
From which no one has ever returned
Drawn by the promise of the joker and the fool
By the light of the crosses that burn
Drawn by the promise of the women and the lace
And the gold and the cotton and pearls
It's the place where they keep all the darkness you need
You sail away from the light of the world
On this trip, baby
You will pay tomorrow
You're gonna pay tomorrow, yeah
You will pay tomorrow
Save me
Save me from tomorrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools, no, no, no
Oh, save me
Save me from tomorrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools, no, no, no
I want to run and hide
Right now
Avarice and greed
Are gonna drive you over the endless sea
They will leave you drifting in the shallows
Or drowning in the oceans of history
Traveling the world, you're in search of no good
But I'm sure you'll build your Sodom, like you knew you would
Using all the good people for your galley slaves
As your little boat struggles through the warning waves
But you don't pay
You will pay tomorrow
The musical part is equally good. I looked up Wallinger and found that he recorded all the instruments himself and that he passed away last March.