Top UN experts urge States to integrate human rights values in current climate change negotiations

Links to the declaration in English and Spanish, see below
Enlaces a la declaración en inglés y español, vea abajo

Top UN experts urge States to integrate human rights values in current climate change negotiations

GENEVA (9 December 2014) – The largest body of independent experts in the United Nations Human Rights system today urged* all Governments around the world to integrate human rights standards and principles in the current negotiations taking place at the Lima Climate Change Conference, from 1 to 12 December 2014, and in the agreement to be adopted in Paris in 2015.

In a joint statement* issued today in Geneva ahead of Human Rights Day (10 December 2014), the group of 76 human rights experts urged the UN member States to ensure that the principle of climate justice is at the core of climate change governance.

“Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our generation, with consequences that transform life on earth and adversely impact the livelihood of many,” said François Crépeau, who currently heads the Coordination Committee of international experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council.

“Human rights must be pivotal in the ongoing negotiations and must be firmly anchored in a new agreement. Any response to climate change must protect, respect, promote and fulfil human rights obligations,” Mr. Crépeau noted.

In their statement, the independent experts stressed that understanding and addressing the human consequences of climate change fundamental and therefore, climate change cannot be effectively addressed without protecting human rights.

“Climate change has a disproportionate effect on many disadvantaged, marginalized and vulnerable individuals and groups, whose ways of life are inextricably linked to the environment,” Mr. Crépeau said

“The human rights framework focuses our attention on the rights of the most vulnerable and marginalized individuals and groups, thus requiring that adaptation policies and measures be developed on the basis of the principles of equality and non-discrimination,” he stressed.

The experts noted that climate justice sees the effect and causes of climate change in relation to the concept of justice, namely, whether the rights of the most marginalized and vulnerable populations are taken into account when implementing response measures and whether such measures are fair, equitable and transparent.

The experts’ call follows an Open Letter sent in October to the State Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, on the occasion of the Bonn meeting of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action.

“We renew our call on the State Parties to include language in the 2015 climate agreement that provides that the Parties shall, in all climate change related actions, respect, protect, promote and fulfil human rights for all,” the independent experts concluded.

(*) Read the full statement by the UN Special Procedures Mandate Holders:
In English: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15393&LangID=E
In Spanish: http://www.ohchr.org/SP/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=15393&LangID=S

ENDS

The Coordination Committee is a body of six independent experts which coordinates and facilitates the work of special procedures as a whole. It is currently composed of Mr. François Crépeau (Chairperson), Mr. Michael Addo, Ms. Mireille Fanon Mendes-France, Ms. Marie-Thérèse Keita Bocoum, Ms. Yanghee Lee and Mr. Chaloka Beyani (ex-officio). Learn more: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/CoordinationCommittee.aspx

“Special procedures” is the general name of the independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms of the Human Rights Council that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Currently, there are 39 thematic mandates and 14 mandates related to countries and territories, with 76 mandate holders. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights provides these mechanisms with support for the fulfilment of their mandates.

Special Procedures: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/Welcomepage.aspx
Country mandates: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/Countries.aspx
Thematic mandates: http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/Themes.aspx

Read the open letter signed by 28 UN human rights experts:http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/SP/SP_To_UNFCCC.pdf

For enquiries and media requests, please contact Melinda Ching Simon (+41 22 917 9113mchingsimon@ohchr.org) or write to ieenvironment@ohchr.org

For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts:
Xabier Celaya, UN Human Rights – Media Unit (+ 41 22 917 9383 / xcelaya@ohchr.org)

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Check the Universal Human Rights Index: http://uhri.ohchr.org/en

 

© 2014

Ebola and Climate Change: ‘We Are Running Out of Time,’ says World Bank President

Not acting on climate change could have the same results as the inaction on Ebola with significant human and economic impact, warned World Bank Group president Jim Yong Kim in a speech Friday to the International Monetary Fund/World Bank Group annual meeting. He said that addressing both would further the World Bank’s goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030.

Jim Yong Kim President World Bank

“In a world where natural disasters, conflict, financial shocks and epidemics are becoming more frequent and destructive, we at the World Bank Group must do everything we can to become even more relevant,” he said. “Indeed, we’ve been fully engaged lately in fighting two of these global threats: the Ebola epidemic and climate change.”

“Ebola and climate change have a few things in common,” he said. “Most importantly, we are running out of time to find solutions to both. Also, until very recently, the plans to fight them were either nonexistent or inadequate. And inaction is literally killing people–one because of the rapid spread of a deadly virus, the other from the poisoning of the atmosphere and the oceans. And finally, perhaps most critically from our point of view, resolving these problems is essential to development, whether from the perspective of human suffering, economic growth or public health.”

Kim, an infectious disease physician, called the initial global response to Ebola “inadequate and slow” but said “Once engaged, we’ve moved with creativity, speed and purpose.” He said that the World Bank’s world on climate change over the last two years provided a blueprint for its response to Ebola.

“Soon after I started at the World Bank [July 2012], I asked my team a simple question: What’s the plan to fight climate change?” he said. “The responses received from our staff and even from leaders in the climate change community were mostly tactical: new technologies here, some efficiencies there. While important, they were not equal to the challenge of keeping a global increase in temperature below 2 degrees Celsius. So, working with others, we developed our own strategy that we hoped could take us a long way toward achieving this objective.”

That five-part plan including carbon pricing, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies, building cleaner cities, encouraging climate-friendly agriculture, and investing in renewable energy sources. He described in detail the World Bank’s campaign on carbon pricing: building a coalition of cooperating governments and businesses.

“At the start of the campaign, we counted 22 countries that would support this goal,” said Kim. “With lobbying, the number kept climbing. Less than a week before the deadline, China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, agreed to support carbon pricing. It became the 54th country to endorse the statement. In the four days before the [UN Climate] summit, 20 more countries signed on. At the time of the announcement, 74 governments and more than 1,000 companies and investors had agreed to put a price on carbon. Together, the countries account for up to 54 percent of the world’s carbon emissions, 52 percent of the world’s GDP and nearly 50 percent of the world’s population.”

“Later today, ministers, CEOs and the World Bank Climate Group will join me to turn this pledge into action,” he said.

“We must maintain this commitment because increasing global fragility and volatility will challenge us more and more every day,” he concluded. “In our march to end extreme poverty, conflict, typhoons, floods, droughts, financial shocks and epidemics may at times slow us. But they will not stop us. The Bank will be aggressive and creative and apply large-scale solutions to help states manage, prepare for, recover from and conquer these risks, so they can grow and flourish.” More

 

© 2014

Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Climate Change

Archbishop Desmond Tutu on Climate Change

© 2014

Never stop being outraged by injustice

Dear friends,

Although I became an Elder last year, this is my first time writing to all of you, so to introduce myself: I am a lawyer and human rights defender. My background is in the women’s rights movement in Pakistan, where I still live and work.

As a human rights lawyer, I look at every issue through a human rights lens. This is particularly important for climate change, which cannot be understood as a purely scientific, environmental issue. Above all, climate change affects people – and the most vulnerable among us are affected most of all.

Jimmy Carter, Mary Robinson and I discussed this very topic with young activists, students and entrepreneurs in Paris last month. These young people are rightly outraged by the injustice of climate change. They are frustrated with political leaders who, by failing to act, are condemning their generation and future generations to a world of conflict, hardship and inequity. My message to these and all young people is: never stop being outraged. Never allow yourselves to become apathetic and pessimistic.

In turn, we Elders were inspired by what we saw and heard during that debate. A room full of young people determined to put their energy into mobilising their fellow citizens, challenging leaders and corporations, changing their own lifestyles, and working together across borders to find solutions to climate change.

It was a privilege to be asked to join The Elders, a group with with no vested interests apart from our common humanity, who are unafraid to speak truth to power. And I have been glad to see that even with our combined experience and influence, we do not underestimate the importance of listening to our ‘Youngers’. I look forward to many more such productive and inspiring discussions.

Best wishes,

Hina Jilani

 

© 2014

This is Climate Change: This is Reality

IPlil Plait has been saying for a long time that to communicate science effectively, we need to connect with people. Scientists have a habit of just relaying facts to each other, since that’s how nature itself works. But people don’t work that way at all, and just reciting facts doesn’t work.

If we want to connect with people, especially over the sound and fury of the anti-science noise machine, we need to be passionate. We need to be emotional. And we need to tell the human story.

That’s exactly what it looks like Showtime is doing with its new big-budget eight-part series Years of Living Dangerously, which will show the impact of climate change on our planet. It looks phenomenal, gorgeously shot, and features journalists and celebrities who travel the world to investigate what we’re doing to our planet. Among the people in it are Jessica Alba, Harrison Ford, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lesley Stahl, and Thomas L. Friedman.

This isn’t a fluff piece, from what I can tell: Their science adviser team includes scientists Michael Mann, Katharine Hayhoe, James Hansen, and Joe Romm, among other top-flight climatologists.*

They’ve also set up a really nice website with more information, including links to the stories they cover and the science of climate change. The trailer looks great, and there’s also a version of it on YouTube: More

 

© 2014

A Fierce Green Fire - Trailer

Spanning 50 years of grassroots and global activism, this Sundance documentary brings to light the vital stories of the environmental movement where people fought -- and succeeded -- against enormous odds. From halting dams in the Grand Canyon to fighting toxic waste at Love Canal; from Greenpeace to Chico Mendes; from climate change to the promise of transforming our civilization, A Fierce Green Fire is "nothing less than the history of environmentalism itself." (Los Angeles Times)

From the Academy Award-nominated director of "Berkeley in the Sixties", and narrated by Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, Ashley Judd, Van Jones and Isabel Allende.

Angola: Head of State appoints Ecocide Convention Work Team

The Angolan head of State José Eduardo dos Santos Wednesday in Luanda ordered the setting up of a Work Team to study and draft proposals for incorporation in the country’s legal system of the Ecocide Convention, Angop learned from an official source.

Angolan head of State José Eduardo dos Santos

Ecocide is defined as the destruction or degradation of various ecosystems in a certain territory, through human action or others, putting at stake the full development of the resources by the population.

The United Nations has decided to discuss, approve and promote among the member states an International Convention against the Ecocide, aiming to protect the earth and its living species against the evil and hold legally accountable the institutions, organisms, organisations and their leaders found responsible for the phenomenon.

Internally, the Executive is required to set up national mechanisms of combat against the ecocide, promotion of the enforcement of the law and regulation of the cooperation with the international organisms and organisations involved in the protection of the environment, its technical assistance and exchange of information.

The just appointed Work Team is coordinated by the minister of Environment and includes representatives of the ministries of Energy and Water, Interior, Oil and National Defence.

According to the source, The Work Team is expected to conduct a deep study on the Ecocide Convention draft, by analysing the impact the phenomenon might have on the country’s legal system.

It is also the Work Team’s duty to create a legal framework for the country’s economic development, promote and facilitate international cooperation and provide technical assistance to prevent the ecocide, the source said.

The body is also tasked with arranging and promoting inter-sectoral programmes of information, publicity and social awareness, through environmental education campaigns and identifying and protecting the communities based in threatened areas. More

 

Peaceful Protest Now Illegal In Israel

Israel puts Palestinian female activists on trial

RAMALLAH, West Bank, July 9 (Reuters) - Two Palestinian activists went on trial in an Israeli military court on Tuesday over their involvement in weekly demonstrations against a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Nariman Tamim

Rights groups and activists say the prosecution of Nariman Tamimi and Rana Hamadeh comes amid an uptick of Israeli arrests in recent weeks of Palestinian protest organisers.

The decision to put the two women on trial was unusual since charges against them focus on their entry to a "closed military zone" during a protest in Nabi Saleh village on June 28, an offence that rarely leads to prosecution in court.

"They have been denied the basic human right to peacefully protest over land illegally seized by Israeli settlers, and the Israeli judiciary has used spurious legal tools to punish them," Amnesty International said in a statement.

Villagers began organising protests every Friday after Israelis from the Halamish settlement took control of a spring between the two communities in 2009, which they say deprived them of a source of irrigation.

The protests typically involve flag-waving and rock-throwing by the Palestinian side, which is met by tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition by the Israeli army.

Two Palestinians have been shot dead by soldiers since the protests began, including Nariman's brother Rushdi in November.

During the confrontations, the Israeli army restricts access to the village and declares it a "closed military zone."

The Israeli military did not immediately comment.

Sarit Michaeli of Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said the pair's trial is expected to last months and is part of Israeli policies which "makes it virtually impossible for Palestinians to legally demonstrate".

The court on Tuesday released Tamimi on bail but mandated that she stay inside her house each Friday and barred Hamadeh from entering Nabi Saleh on Fridays while the trial continues.

In the last week, Israel arrested two other prominent activists in the West Bank villages of Bil'in and Beit Ummar, who organise protests as part of a strategy dubbed "popular resistance" blessed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel has occupied the West Bank and sown it widely with Jewish settlements since capturing it in the 1967 Middle East war along with East Jerusalem and Gaza - land Palestinians want for a future state.

Most countries consider the settlements illegal. Israel, which disputes this, cites historical and Biblical links to the West Bank and Jerusalem. (Reporting By Noah Browning, Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Ralph Boulton) More

 

 

The Biggest Criminal Enterprise in History

Terracide and the Terrarists Destroying the Planet for Record Profits

We have a word for the conscious slaughter of a racial or ethnic group: genocide. And one for the conscious destruction of aspects of the environment: ecocide. But we don’t have a word for the conscious act of destroying the planet we live on, the world as humanity had known it until, historically speaking, late last night. A possibility might be “terracide” from the Latin word for earth. It has the right ring, given its similarity to the commonplace danger word of our era: terrorist.

The truth is, whatever we call them, it’s time to talk bluntly about the terrarists of our world. Yes, I know, 9/11 was horrific. Almost 3,000 dead, massive towers down, apocalyptic scenes. And yes, when it comes to terror attacks, the Boston Marathon bombings weren’t pretty either. But in both cases, those who committed the acts paid for or will pay for their crimes.

In the case of the terrarists -- and here I’m referring in particular to the men who run what may be the most profitable corporations on the planet, giant energy companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron,ConocoPhillips, BP, and Shell -- you’re the one who’s going to pay, especially your children and grandchildren. You can take one thing for granted: not a single terrarist will ever go to jail, and yet they certainly knew what they were doing.

It wasn’t that complicated. In recent years, the companies they run have been extracting fossil fuels from the Earth in ever more frenetic and ingenious ways. The burning of those fossil fuels, in turn, has putrecord amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Only this month, the CO2 level reached400 parts per million for the first time in human history. A consensus of scientists has long concluded that the process was warming the world and that, if the average planetary temperature rose more than two degrees Celsius, all sorts of dangers could ensue, including seas rising high enough to inundate coastal cities, increasingly intense heat waves, droughts, floods, ever more extreme storm systems, and so on.

How to Make Staggering Amounts of Money and Do In the Planet

None of this was exactly a mystery. It’s in the scientific literature. NASA scientist James Hansen first publicized the reality of global warming to Congress in 1988. It took a while -- thanks in part to the terrarists -- but the news of what was happening increasingly made it into the mainstream. Anybody could learn about it.

Those who run the giant energy corporations knew perfectly well what was going on and could, of course, have read about it in the papers like the rest of us. And what did they do? They put their money into funding think tanks, politicians, foundations, and activists intent on emphasizing “doubts” about the science (since it couldn’t actually be refuted); they and their allies energetically promoted what came to be known as climate denialism. Then they sent their agents and lobbyists and money into the political system to ensure that their plundering ways would not be interfered with. And in the meantime, they redoubled their efforts to get ever tougher and sometimes “dirtier” energy out of the ground in ever tougher and dirtier ways.

The peak oil people hadn’t been wrong when they suggested years ago that we would soon hit a limit in oil production from which decline would follow. The problem was that they were focused on traditional or “conventional” liquid oil reserves obtained from large reservoirs in easy-to-reach locations on land or near to shore. Since then, the big energy companies have invested a remarkable amount of time, money, and (if I can use that word) energy in the development of techniques that would allow them to recover previously unrecoverable reserves (sometimes by processes that themselves burn striking amounts of fossil fuels): fracking, deep-water drilling, and tar-sands production, among others.

They also began to go after huge deposits of what energy expert Michael Klare calls “extreme” or “tough” energy -- oil and natural gas that can only be acquired through the application of extreme force or that requires extensive chemical treatment to be usable as a fuel. In many cases, moreover, the supplies being acquired like heavy oil and tar sands are more carbon-rich than other fuels and emit more greenhouse gases when consumed. These companies have even begun using climate change itself -- in the form of a melting Arctic -- to exploit enormous and previously unreachable energy supplies. With the imprimatur of the Obama administration, Royal Dutch Shell, for example, has been preparing to test out possible drilling techniques in the treacherous waters off Alaska.

Call it irony, if you will, or call it a nightmare, but Big Oil evidently has no qualms about making its next set of profits directly off melting the planet. Its top executives continue to plan their futures (and so ours), knowing that their extremely profitable acts are destroying the very habitat, the very temperature range that for so long made life comfortable for humanity.

Their prior knowledge of the damage they are doing is what should make this a criminal activity. And there are corporate precedents for this, even if on a smaller scale. The lead industry, the asbestos industry, and the tobacco companies all knew the dangers of their products, made efforts to suppress the information or instill doubt about it even as they promoted the glories of what they made, and went right on producing and selling while others suffered and died.

And here’s another similarity: with all three industries, the negative results conveniently arrived years, sometimes decades, after exposure and so were hard to connect to it. Each of these industries knew that the relationship existed. Each used that time-disconnect as protection. One difference: if you were a tobacco, lead, or asbestos exec, you might be able to ensure that your children and grandchildren weren’t exposed to your product. In the long run, that’s not a choice when it comes to fossil fuels and CO2, as we all live on the same planet (though it's also true that the well-off in the temperate zones are unlikely to be the first to suffer).

If Osama bin Laden’s 9/11 plane hijackings or the Tsarnaev brothers’ homemade bombs constitute terror attacks, why shouldn’t what the energy companies are doing fall into a similar category (even if on a scale that leaves those events in the dust)? And if so, then where is the national security state when we really need it? Shouldn’t its job be to safeguard us from terrarists and terracide as well as terrorists and their destructive plots?

The Alternatives That Weren’t

It didn’t have to be this way.

On July 15, 1979, at a time when gas lines, sometimes blocks long, were a disturbing fixture of American life, President Jimmy Carter spoke directly to the American people on television for 32 minutes, calling for a concerted effort to end the country’s oil dependence on the Middle East. “To give us energy security,” he announced,

“I am asking for the most massive peacetime commitment of funds and resources in our nation's history to develop America's own alternative sources of fuel -- from coal, from oil shale, from plant products for gasohol, from unconventional gas, from the sun... Just as a similar synthetic rubber corporation helped us win World War II, so will we mobilize American determination and ability to win the energy war. Moreover, I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation's first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20% of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.”

It’s true that, at a time when the science of climate change was in its infancy, Carter wouldn’t have known about the possibility of an overheating world, and his vision of “alternative energy” wasn’t exactly a fossil-fuel-free one. Even then, shades of today or possibly tomorrow, he was talking about having “more oil in our shale alone than several Saudi Arabias.” Still, it was a remarkably forward-looking speech.

Had we invested massively in alternative energy R&D back then, who knows where we might be today? Instead, the media dubbed it the “malaise speech,” though the president never actually used that word, speaking instead of an American “crisis of confidence.” While the initial public reaction seemed positive, it didn’t last long. In the end, the president's energy proposals were essentially laughed out of the room and ignored for decades.

As a symbolic gesture, Carter had 32 solar panels installed on the White House. (“A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people: harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”) As it turned out, “a road not taken” was the accurate description. On entering the Oval Office in 1981, Ronald Reagan caught the mood of the era perfectly. One of his first acts was to order the removal of those panels and none were reinstalled for three decades, until Barack Obama was president.

Carter would, in fact, make his mark on U.S. energy policy, just not quite in the way he had imagined. Six months later, on January 23, 1980, in his last State of the Union Address, he would proclaim what came to be known as the Carter Doctrine: “Let our position be absolutely clear,” he said. “An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

No one would laugh him out of the room for that. Instead, the Pentagon would fatefully begin organizing itself to protect U.S. (and oil) interests in the Persian Gulf on a new scale and America’s oil wars would follow soon enough. Not long after that address, it would start building up a Rapid Deployment Force in the Gulf that would in the end become U.S. Central Command. More than three decades later, ironies abound: thanks in part to those oil wars, whole swaths of the energy-rich Middle East are in crisis, if not chaos, while the big energy companies have put time and money into a staggeringly fossil-fuel version of Carter’s “alternative” North America. They’ve focused on shale oil, and on shale gas as well, and with new production methods, they are reputedly on the brink of turning the United States into a “new Saudi Arabia.” More

 

Drastic Reductions In CO2 Output Critical For Survival

Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears

Research facility at Mauna Loa

The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.

Scientific instruments showed that the gas had reached an average daily level above 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.

The best available evidence suggests the amount of the gas in the air has not been this high for at least three million years, before humans evolved, and scientists believe the rise portends large changes in the climate and the level of the sea.

“It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster,” said Maureen E. Raymo, a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a unit of Columbia University.

“It symbolizes that so far we have failed miserably in tackling this problem,” said Pieter P. Tans, who runs the monitoring program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that reported the new reading.

Ralph Keeling, who runs another monitoring program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, said a continuing rise could be catastrophic. “It means we are quickly losing the possibility of keeping the climate below what people thought were possibly tolerable thresholds,” he said.

Virtually every automobile ride, every plane trip and, in most places, every flip of a light switch adds carbon dioxide to the air, and relatively little money is being spent to find and deploy alternative technologies.

China is now the largest emitter, but Americans have been consuming fossil fuels extensively for far longer, and experts say the United States is more responsible than any other nation for the high level.

The new measurement came from analyzers atop Mauna Loa, the volcano on the big island of Hawaii that has long been ground zero for monitoring the worldwide trend on carbon dioxide, or CO2. Devices there sample clean, crisp air that has blown thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean, producing a record of rising carbon dioxide levels that has been closely tracked for half a century.

Carbon dioxide above 400 parts per million was first seen in the Arctic last year, and had also spiked above that level in hourly readings at Mauna Loa.

But the average reading for an entire day surpassed that level at Mauna Loa for the first time in the 24 hours that ended at 8 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Thursday. The two monitoring programs use slightly different protocols; NOAA reported an average for the period of 400.03 parts per million, while Scripps reported 400.08.

Carbon dioxide rises and falls on a seasonal cycle, and the level will dip below 400 this summer as leaf growth in the Northern Hemisphere pulls about 10 billion tons of carbon out of the air. But experts say that will be a brief reprieve — the moment is approaching when no measurement of the ambient air anywhere on earth, in any season, will produce a reading below 400.

“It feels like the inevitable march toward disaster,” said Maureen E. Raymo, a scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a unit of Columbia University.

From studying air bubbles trapped in Antarctic ice, scientists know that going back 800,000 years, the carbon dioxide level oscillated in a tight band, from about 180 parts per million in the depths of ice ages to about 280 during the warm periods between. The evidence shows that global temperatures and CO₂ levels are tightly linked.

For the entire period of human civilization, roughly 8,000 years, the carbon dioxide level was relatively stable near that upper bound. But the burning of fossil fuels has caused a 41 percent increase in the heat-trapping gas since the Industrial Revolution, a mere geological instant, and scientists say the climate is beginning to react, though they expect far larger changes in the future.

Indirect measurements suggest that the last time the carbon dioxide level was this high was at least three million years ago, during an epoch called the Pliocene. Geological research shows that the climate then was far warmer than today, the world’s ice caps were smaller, and the sea level might have been as much as 60 or 80 feet higher.

Experts fear that humanity may be precipitating a return to such conditions — except this time, billions of people are in harm’s way.

“It takes a long time to melt ice, but we’re doing it,” Dr. Keeling said. “It’s scary.”

Dr. Keeling’s father, Charles David Keeling, began carbon dioxide measurements on Mauna Loa and at other locations in the late 1950s. The elder Dr. Keeling found a level in the air then of about 315 parts per million — meaning that if a person had filled a million quart jars with air, about 315 quart jars of carbon dioxide would have been mixed in.

His analysis revealed a relentless, long-term increase superimposed on the seasonal cycle, a trend that was dubbed the Keeling Curve.

Countries have adopted an official target to limit the damage from global warming, with 450 parts per million seen as the maximum level compatible with that goal. “Unless things slow down, we’ll probably get there in well under 25 years,” Ralph Keeling said. More

 

Editorial

If we want to continue life in some semblance to what we have become accustomed there needs to be a drastic global reduction in carbon output into the atmosphere. If we care about the lives of our children and grand children we need to speak out now. Our governments spend an obscene amount of money on the military driven by the lobbying of the defence industry which needs to be spent on reducing greenhouse gas output.

You the people must speak out. Demand action from your governments. Demonstrate. Take to the streets.

Summarizing some key details from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)’s recent trends summary:

• World military expenditure in 2010 is estimated to have reached $1.63 trillion at 2010 prices;
• This represents a 1.3 per cent increase in real terms over 2008 and a 50 per cent increase since 2001;
• This corresponds to 2.6 per cent of world gross domestic product (GDP), or approximately $236 for each person in the world;

The USA with its massive spending budget, is the principal determinant of the current world trend, and its military expenditure now accounts for just under half of the world total, at 41% of the world total;

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes … known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.… No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

— James Madison, Political Observations, 1795

More

 

Researcher uncovers hidden facts of Israeli-Palestinian water politics

The Israeli government has been forcing the Palestinian Authority into approving water infrastructure for illegal West Bank settlements for the past 15 years, according to research by a University of Sussex academic.

The research by Senior Lecturer in International Relations Dr Jan Selby is published today (5 February 2013) in the journal Water Alternatives.¹

It presents the first known evidence of the Palestinian Authority lending its official consent to parts of Israel’s settlement expansion programme.

Settlements and related infrastructure are illegal under international law, and are recognised as one of the major obstacles to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The research is based on minutes of the Joint Water Committee – an Israeli-Palestinian body often upheld as an example of good Israeli-Palestinian relations – and interviews with participants. Dr Selby concludes that:

• Israel has repeatedly made its approval of improvements to Palestinian water supplies conditional upon Palestinian Authority approval of new water facilities for Israeli settlements;
• the Palestinians, who face serious water shortage issues and an underdeveloped supply system, have given this approval in almost every case;
• the arrangement was known about by former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and current President Abu Mazen;
• international donors have known that Israel’s approval of donor-funded projects for Palestinians is conditional on Palestinian approval of Israeli settlement infrastructures, but have preferred to remain silent on the issue;
• the Palestinian water crisis in the West Bank has significantly worsened since the creation of the Joint Water Committee.

Dr Selby says: “None of the parties emerge very well from these findings. Israel has been exploiting Palestinian desperation for improved water supplies. The Palestinian Authority has been pressured into consenting to its own colonisation and has not contested Israel’s cynical tactics as forcefully as it might have done.

“And international donors have variously stood by or been complicit in activity which is contrary to international law, and contrary to their own policies on the peace process, and which has helped to undermine the possibility of a two state solution.” More

 

Dutch government may face legal action over climate change

The Dutch government is facing the threat of legal action if it fails to take swift action on climate change.

The move, which is thought to be the first time that European human rights legislation has been used to take a government to court over climate change failures, is intended to put the spotlight on what campaigners say is a lack of action and force them to prioritise cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

Urgenda, the pressure group behind the move, sent a letter to ministers calling on them to announce new initiatives on cutting emissions. Without that, the group said it would proceed to the courts.

The government of the Netherlands has not yet responded.

The Dutch campaigners believe similar laws could be used in other countries to force the hand of governments. Marjan Minnesma, of Urgenda, and one of the leaders of the action, said: "We definitely want to give a strong example to other countries. We believe we can take this to the courts and we would like organisations in other countries to look at what we are doing and consider it for themselves."

Their campaign is supported by the Nasa climate scientist Prof James Hansen. "In the climate and energy debate we need more pressure and involvement from the public, willing to defend our rights and those of our children and grandchildren using all the means of our laws to achieve justice," he said.

Wednesday's move came as governments prepared to meet for the next round of United Nations negotiations on climate change, to start at the end of this month in Doha, Qatar. This year marks the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto protocol, and some governments – including the EU and Australia, but not the US, Japan or Canada – are expected to sign up to a continuation to 2020, with fresh commitments to cut emissions. More

 

Watching Sandy, Ignoring Climate Change

A couple of weeks ago, Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, issued a study titled “Severe Weather in North America.”

According to the press release that accompanied the report, “Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.” The number of what Munich Re refers to as “weather-related loss events,” and what the rest of us would probably call weather-related disasters, has quintupled over the last three decades. While many factors have contributed to this trend, including an increase in the number of people living in flood-prone areas, the report identified global warming as one of the major culprits: “Climate change particularly affects formation of heat-waves, droughts, intense precipitation events, and in the long run most probably also tropical cyclone intensity.”

Munich Re’s report was aimed at the firm’s clients—other insurance companies—and does not make compelling reading for a general audience. But its appearance just two weeks ahead of Hurricane Sandy seems to lend it a peculiarly grisly relevance. Sandy has been called a “superstorm,” a “Frankenstorm,” a “freakish and unprecedented monster,” and possibly “unique in the annals of American weather history.” It has already killed sixty-five people in the Caribbean, and, although it’s too early to tell what its full impact will be as it churns up the East Coast, loss estimates are topping six billion dollars.

As with any particular “weather-related loss event,” it’s impossible to attribute Sandy to climate change. However, it is possible to say that the storm fits the general pattern in North America, and indeed around the world, toward more extreme weather, a pattern that, increasingly, can be attributed to climate change. Just a few weeks before the Munich Re report appeared, scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York, published a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the apparent increase in extreme heat waves. Extreme summertime heat, which just a few decades ago affected much less than one per cent of the earth’s surface, “now typically covers about 10% of the land area,” the paper observed. “It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies”—i.e., heat waves—“such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small.” It is worth noting that one of several forces fuelling Sandy is much-higher-than-average sea-surface temperatures along the East Coast.

Coming as it is just a week before Election Day, Sandy makes the fact that climate change has been entirely ignored during this campaign seem all the more grotesque. In a year of record-breaking temperatures across the U.S., record drought conditions in the country’s corn belt, and now a record storm affecting the nation’s most populous cities, neither candidate found the issue to be worthy of discussion. Pressed about this finally the other day on MTV, President Obama called climate change a “critical issue” that he was “surprised” hadn’t come up during any of the debates, a response that was at once completely accurate and totally disingenuous. (As one commentator pointed out, he might have brought up this “critical” issue on his own since “he is the friggin’ POTUS.”) More

 

 

 

Bill McKibben on Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change: "If There Was Ever a Wake-up Call, This Is It"

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s start with Bill McKibben. Bill, you’ve just made it back to Vermont, to your home. Can you talk about the significance of what the East Coast is facing right now?

BILL McKIBBEN: Well, I think, Amy, that the first thing is this is a storm of really historic proportion. It’s really like something we haven’t seen before. It’s half, again, the size of Texas. It’s coming across water that’s near record warmth as it makes its way up the East Coast. Apparently we’re seeing lower pressures north of Cape Hatteras than have been ever recorded before. The storm surge, which is going to be the very worst part of this storm, is being driven by that huge size and expanse of the storm, but of course it comes in on water that’s already somewhat higher than it would have been in the past because of sea level rise. It’s—it’s a monster. It’s—Frankenstorm, frankly, is not only a catchy name; in many ways, it’s the right name for it. This thing is stitched together from elements natural and unnatural, and it seems poised to cause real havoc. The governor of Connecticut said yesterday, "The last time we saw anything like this was never." And I think that’s about right.

AMY GOODMAN: There certainly was a lack of discussion, to put it mildly, in the presidential debates around the issue of climate change.

BILL McKIBBEN: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: I don’t think it was raised at all in the three debates.

BILL McKIBBEN: How do you think Mitt Romney is feeling this morning for having the one mention he’s made the whole time? His big laugh line at the Republican convention was how silly it was for Obama to be talking about slowing the rise of the oceans. I’d say that’s—wins pretty much every prize for ironic right now.

There has been a pervading climate silence. We’re doing our best to break that. Yesterday afternoon, there was a demonstration in Times Square, a sort of giant dot to connect the dots with all the other climate trouble around the world. Overnight, continuing in Boston, there’s a week-long vigil outside Government Center to try and get the Senate candidates there to address the issue of climate change.

It’s incredibly important that we not only—I mean, first priority is obviously people’s safety and assisting relief efforts in every possible way, but it’s also really important that everybody, even those who aren’t in the kind of path of this storm, reflect about what it means that in the warmest year in U.S. history, when we’ve seen the warmest month, July, of any month in a year in U.S. history, in a year when we saw, essentially, summer sea ice in the Arctic just vanish before our eyes, what it means that we’re now seeing storms of this unprecedented magnitude. If there was ever a wake-up call, this is it. More

I suggest that it is an abuse of human rights for states not to undertake all possible adaptation and mitigation measures against climate change. Editor