UN climate talks fail to secure new fossil fuel promises
Following bitter rows, the UN climate summit COP30 in Belém, Brazil has ended with a deal that contains no direct reference to the fossil fuels that are heating up the planet.
It is a frustrating end for more than 80 countries including the UK and EU that wanted the meeting to commit the world to stop using using oil, coal and gas at a faster pace.
But oil-producing nations held the line that they should be allowed to use their fossil fuel resources to grow their economies.
The meeting takes place as the UN says it fears global efforts to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels have failed.
I am deeply cynical of the COP now.
There was 1 Polluter lobbyist’s for every 10 activists.
It has been totally captured by the Oil Industry and Big Polluters.
Their interests are the only ones being implemented now.
We were awarded this…
New Zealand awarded dubious ‘Fossil of the Day’ at COP30 climate talks
New Zealand has been given the ignominious ‘Fossil of the Day’ award at the COP30 global climate summit, for its decision to weaken methane emissions policies.
It’s the fourth time in five years that New Zealand has received the dud award, handed out by climate NGO Climate Action Network International and designed to shame countries that block progress at the annual talks.
New Zealand was last named Fossil of the Day in 2023, for the National-led government’s decision to reverse the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration.
It has previously been given the award in 2022 for pushing to delay setting up a loss and damage fund to compensate poorer countries bearing the brunt of climate change-fuelled extreme weather, and in 2021 for the then-Labour government’s decision not to update New Zealand’s emissions target.
Unlike carbon dioxide, which warms the atmosphere for centuries, methane is a short-lived gas but has huge warming potential.
Reducing methane has attracted growing attention as an ’emergency brake’ on warming while the world works on technologies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and remove them from the air.
But in October, the government said it would lower New Zealand’s methane emissions target, after a review found that was sufficient to meet a controversial ‘no additional warming’ goal.
It also scrapped an earlier promise to introduce a price on agricultural methane by 2030.
…as this also happens…
New Zealand slumps again in climate-change league table
New Zealand has tumbled in an international climate-change league table, with authors now ranking it as “low-performing”.
The country fell three places to 44th in the Climate Change Performance Index, after already falling seven places last year.
The report’s authors said New Zealand’s continued slump was mainly due to a series of policy changes that amounted to “backsliding” on climate action.
…the total capitulation to the mining industry, Big Dairy and the polluters is in stark contrast to the catastrophic climate warming events we are witnessing in real time.
The disconnect between the extreme weather events we are seeing in NZ vs the bullshit Methane rules shows we have a climate denying Government empowered by Dark Ag money.
This Government are stripping the Climate Change Commission of its powers just as we need them most!
Look at this image from the Tongariro National Park NZ…
…it is your future.
The small hope that there is…
The surprising countries pulling off stunningly fast clean energy transitions
…simply isn’t enough.
The truth is that the tipping points of no return are upon us.
Apparently bringing your own bags to the Supermarket isn’t enough.
The catastrophic heat via pollution locked into our system goes so beyond what the ice core samples tell us that we are in uncharted territory.
Normally heat like this occurs over hundreds of thousands of years thanks to the angle of the Earth on its axis but we have done that in less than 3 centuries!
When the process occurs naturally over hundreds of thousands of years, the sudden and dramatic flip from burning hot to ice age can occur within decades. Create all that power within centuries and we turbo charge those flipping points in ways far more abrupt and damaging.
The rapid melting of the doomsday glacier in Antarctica and the shut down of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will trigger irreversible environmental collapse within decades, not the end of the century.
That the latest COP can’t even acknowledge the cause of climate warming because the polluters have bought out the process highlights just how fucked we are now.
There is no optimism on the climate front, just consequences now.
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