MelindaTuhus.net
Connect with me on Social Media
  • Home
  • Body of Work
  • Blog
  • Contact

The Post-Paris Climate World

12/15/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Here I am with the cool banner I made for the Jobs, Justice, Climate march and rally in Boston on December 12, with some help from a couple of artist friends. (That’s my friend Ben of 350CT.org holding the other end.) It was on the last day of the U.N. climate summit (COP 21) in Paris, where an agreement was announced to keep global warming below 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), with an aspirational goal to keep it below 1.5 C (2.7 degrees F).

There are lots of discouraging things one could say about the agreement – like the reduction targets aren’t binding (at the insistence of the U.S., because that would have made it a treaty that the Senate would have to ratify, which of course it wouldn’t, given that the Republicans’ main goal has been all along to defeat President Obama’s agenda, never mind pass anything themselves). It also relegated to the preamble, and took out of the main body of the document, references to indigenous rights and women’s equality, without which achieving true climate justice will be much more difficult.

Some critics even say that the whole thing is a charade, because world leaders waited so long to take real action that keeping the earth from warming 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels is going to be almost impossible to achieve, never mind the 1.5 degree limit.

But I like how Bill McKibben, writer, climate activist and co-founder of 350.org, put it so succinctly (paraphrasing): the Paris agreement doesn’t save the planet, but it makes it possible to maybe save the planet in the future.

On the Monday after the close of the Paris summit, fossil fuel stocks in the U.S. closed lower, while renewable energy stocks closed higher. This is the trend, helped along by the incredibly successful fossil fuel divestment movement.

One thing that wasn’t mentioned at the summit was the need to keep 80 percent of remaining fossil fuels in the ground, but that’s exactly what we must do if we have any hope of staving off climate catastrophe. There were two main chants at the end of the Boston rally, as several hundred of us took over the streets between the Common and Faneuil Hall: “The People, the planet and peace over profit,” and once we got there, “Get up, get down, keep fossil fuels in the ground!” And we have to, at the same time, promote energy efficiency and renewables.

British writer George Monbiot put it well when he said, in an interview on Democracy Now, “… there is not the commitment to leave fossil fuels in the ground. And simply developing new renewables, new technologies, while continuing to use the old ones, is like going on a diet and say, 'Well, OK, I might have eaten six Big Macs and an entire Black Forest gâteau today, but I also had a salad.' You’ve got to stop eating the Big Macs and stop eating the Black Forest gâteau, if you’re going to lose that weight. And it’s just the same here with climate change. The key task is to leave the fossil fuels in the ground.”

That’s going to be the demand going forward. I don’t know if we’ll succeed, but I do believe the climate movement – which includes millions of people around the world, at minimum – is on the ascendancy.

For a nice 5-minute video montage of the December 12 rally, go here:
https://www.facebook.com/FutureFocusMediaCoop/posts/792186500909688

And for all kinds of great coverage of the Paris climate summit and what comes next, visit www.Democracynow.org and www.350.org.

0 Comments

    Melinda Tuhus

    Welcome to my blog, Leaves and Fishes. It connotes that I'll  often be blogging about environmental issues, though certainly not exclusively. It also references the idea that when people pool their resources -- even if meager --  generous and equitable outcomes can result. Finally, since  "leaves" and "fishes" are both nouns and verbs, I hope to have fun with the words I write. 

    Archives

    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.