Paris Climate Talks: Now It’s Up to Turnbull to Save the Planet

Climate Talks

by Giles Parkinson, Renew Economy: http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/paris-climate-talks-now-its-up-to-turnbull-to-save-the-planet-51057

The last official round of negotiations before the Paris climate change talks have broken up in Bonn, with some progress made but a global climate deal still needing fresh impetus from political leaders to put the world on a course to rapidly decarbonise the global economy.

In Bonn, after a week of talks, a 20-page text was expanded to 63 pages, and will need to be cut back. But at least there appears to be agreement on what needs to be resolved. The principal blockages remain around the scale of ambition, and on issues such as finance and the concept of “loss and damage”.

The UN has what it says is a “manageable” text and a good “starting point” for negotiations. The text, say observers, has been expanded as each country or bloc inserts their own “bargaining” chip. They say it is now time for the leaders to step in.

Over the next few weeks a series of meetings will be held to try to resolve some of those issues. A pre-Paris ministerial meeting will take place in the French capital from November 8-10, which will be attended by environment minister Greg Hunt.

The G20 Heads of State will then meet in Turkey a few days later, followed by the Heads of State meeting of the Commonwealth (CHOGM) in Malta just before the Paris summit opens.

And it now seems clear that global leaders , including Turnbull, will be invited to be at Paris for the first few days of the talks in an endeavour to break any lingering political deadlock. Those talks will begin on November 30 and last for two weeks. Hunt and foreign minister Julie Bishop will also be in Paris at various points.


Paris should rival Copenhagen as an “event” and a spectacle. Nearly 50,000 people are expected to converge on the French capital for the talks - known as COP21 (they’ve been doing this for 21 years), and for numerous side events.

Australia’s own official delegation could total nearly 30. Another 60 NGOs and “BinGOs” (business types) will also be on the ground. And the media too. RenewEconomy, the only Australian media to cover the last three COPs, will also be there.

What’s at stake is becoming increasingly apparent. Failure at Paris will mean talks drifting aimlessly, possibly for years. Sealing a deal that locks in 2°C means trillions for the fossil fuel industry, because it will mean a major and rapid shift to clean technologies.

The move by the French hosts for an early intervention from political leaders is in complete contrast to the Copenhagen talks, which ended in disarray and confusion after leaders flying in at the last minute were unable to agree on the finer points of text.

Turnbull last week, in an interview with the Guardian, confirmed he will be attending the Paris talks. It will be a particularly poignant moment for him, because it was in the days leading up to the Copenhagen talks that Turnbull was rolled - as opposition leader - by Tony Abbott, over the very same issue.

Turnbull goes to Paris defending Abbott’s climate change policies – a 2030 emissions target that is described as weak, or modest at best, and a mechanism that no one outside of the Coalition seriously thinks will do the job.

This is a critical point for Australia. Turnbull also goes to Paris saying he wants an outcome that puts the world on a path to 2°C, so any effort to lift ambition will be consistent with that policy.

And Australia’s mechanisms, to date, simply consist of plucking emissions from accounting changes or government handouts. It is not yet setting the motions for a decarbonised economy.

As Erwin Jackson from the The Climate Institute notes: “That is the test for this government, and that is where government is trailing business. Business supports the concept of zero net emissions. It is time for the government to catch up.”

The Coalition’s target is for a 26 per cent reduction on 2005 levels by 2030, which represents a 19 per cent reduction on 2000 levels.

It says it will increase this target to 28 per cent if there is no economic fallout, but its own studies show minimal extra economic costs under a 45 per cent reduction target, and even that is based on inflated costs of renewable energy.

This is the opportunity that Turnbull has to help change the course of history. He can’t do it alone, but if more countries, such as Australia and Canada, take a proactive role, rather than dragging the chains, then an effective climate agreement can be achieved.

Turnbull, of course, insists that he takes climate change seriously. No doubt he will be less evangelistic, and hopefully less naive,  than Kevin Rudd, when the then Labor PM went to Copenhagen convinced he could broker a deal between China and the US, and was mortified when he could barely get a seat at the table.

Much has changed since then. China and the US have been working hard to put on a good show that they are taking climate change seriously. Both have put in tough policies to reduce emissions and force out the dirtiest coal-fired generation.

Environmental NGOs say that climate finance remains the elephant in the room: developing nations want more clarity and detail on the $100 billion promised annually by developed countries, and on boosting it after 2020.

Richer nations do not want to be locked into details. But at Bonn, 134 developing countries demanded that developed nations commit to scaling up public climate aid in December’s UN deal.

And, of course, there is the so called “pollution gap”. Right now, the pledges from more than 150 countries would place an upper limit of around 2.7°C if those plans were implemented. That is opposed to the agreed target of 2°C, and a major push from vulnerable nations and some scientists for 1.5°C.

That gap will almost certainly not be resolved at Paris, but it is likely that a mechanism that will encourage emitters to ratchet up their climate targets every five years will be agreed.

In the meantime, Bill Shorten has left for a tour of the Pacific Islands accusing Turnbull of selling them short on climate change.  Shorten’s criticism of the Coalition is valid, and Labor shows more ambition with its willingness to push (again) for an emissions trading scheme and a 50 per cent renewable energy target (they could go higher).

But the Pacific Islands will tell them that real action to protect the region will mean no new thermal coal mines, and Labor is emerging as an enthusiastic supporter of all new coal mines, including Carmichael, Shenhua and other extensions.

“The Australian government must help broker an agreement that is not just good for Australia, but will also protect and support poorer nations like our Pacific neighbours,” says Kellie Caught, campaigner with WWF.

“Actions speak louder than words - increasing Australia’s pollution reduction targets, and providing more finance to support poor countries ahead of Paris would send the right signals.”

The Rise, Fall and Return of 1.5°C in the Global Climate Negotiations

(Photo: Stephane de Sukutin/Getty Images)

by Joe Solomon, Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/10/21/rise-fall-and-return-15degc-global-climate-negotiations

On December 16th 2009, two days before the Copenhagen Accord was issued, when there was still a scant sliver of hope for a legally binding treaty, the Prime Minister of Grenada Tillman Thomas took the microphone and called on world leaders to cement a deal with a 1.5 Celsius target.

Thomas called on all countries to protect low-lying island nations from being "swept away in the king wave of climate change" by keeping "temperature increases to well below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels."

Thomas was speaking for the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), a coalition of 44 island countries drawn from all the oceans of the world. By the time Thomas took the microphone, AOSIS had turned "1.5 to Stay Alive" into a unifying rallying cry for over 100 nations - searing an alliance between the Islands and the African bloc.

Desmond Tutu wrote, "A global goal of about 2 degrees is to condemn Africa to incineration." Two degrees represented, in a word, death. Or, as Bruno Sekoli of Lesotho, the then chair of the Least Developed Countries (LCDs) group, put it: 2 degrees would mean “unmanageable consequences - it will leave millions of people suffering from hunger, diseases, floods and water shortages.”

1.5 was the number that represented survival, hope, and unleashing a kind of global World War II-level mobilization to move beyond fossil fuels (after the attack on Pearl Harbor, it took 10 weeks for the US to completely halt car manufacturing, and begin the rapid switch to making aircraft bombers and heavy tanks for the war effort. Those 10 weeks also included the Christmas holiday season). 

The Fall of 1.5°C

Two days after the Prime Minister of Grenada made his plea to the world, President Obama took an overnight flight into Copenhagen and led the push for the Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding treaty with a 2 degree Celsius target at its masthead.

It’s been nearly 5 years since Copenhagen, and now 2 degrees is the darling target for the UN, developed countries, and even many climate activists. It’s a number that has pushed its way into the cultural mainstream, not unlike how the 350ppm target did in 2009. CNN’s John Sutter wrote this past May that 2 degrees is "the most important number you've never heard of." Sutter even launched a fully dedicated CNN column for how we achieve 2°C - named, simply, "two°."

In the last week, VICE, MTV, & Mashable all published articles mentioning the 2 degrees target, without a whisper of 1.5. Wire reports in the AP and Reuters also regularly leave out 1.5 degrees when defining success in Paris. So: what happened to “1.5 to Stay Alive”?

Well, for starters, 141 countries signed onto the Copenhagen Accord - adding their weight to the 2 degrees target. Getting that many countries to agree to something is rare, and creates its own kind of momentum. That momentum was further strengthened at the Cancun talks in 2010, and the Durban talks in 2011, while a review of the science of 1.5 degrees was consistently punted to some later date.

Strategy of 2°C

Two and a half years after Copenhagen, 2 degrees picked up further steam with Bill McKibben’s 2012 Rolling Stone article, "Global Warming's Terrifying New Math."

In the piece, McKibben lays out the flaws of the 2 degrees target. McKibben writes that “2 degrees is far too lenient a target” and amplifies then-NASA’s chief climate scientist James Hansen who said: "two degrees of warming is actually a prescription for long-term disaster." McKibben goes on to point out the consequences of 2 degrees: Island nations would “flat-out disappear,” and African nations would completely dry up.

Despite those intense warnings, however, McKibben ends with a kind of reluctant support of the number, writing, "it's fair to say that it's [2 degrees] the only thing about climate change the world has settled on … the official position of planet Earth at the moment is that we can't raise the temperature more than two degrees Celsius - it's become the bottomest of bottom lines. Two degrees."

Inspired by that Rolling Stone article, 2 degrees would go on to form the bedrock goal for the fossil fuel divestment movement that has since swept the world. 350.org’s launch website for divestment exclaimed, "It’s simple math: we can emit 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming - anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth."

In April of this year, Naomi Klein told French news site BastaMag that 2 degrees is "a target that is already a very dangerous one for many communities. But it provides us with a global carbon budget."

The strategic purpose of shouldering the 2 degrees target seems rather clear: since world leaders already agree on 2 degrees - and since those leaders have historically been inclined to set the Earth on a course of varying degrees of hellish intensity far beyond 2 degrees, it’s a chance to hold their feet to the fire. You might say: You can leverage consensus far better than you can leverage a lofty hope.

UN Doubles Down on 2 Degrees; UN Scientists Cry Out

By now, 150 countries have submitted their pledges for the Paris climate talks, with the European Union saying it would only back a deal with 2 degrees cemented as its goal. UN climate leadership is also gung-ho for 2 degrees even as the UN climate chief Christiana Figueres is worried pledges so far won’t cut it, and will lead to a 3 degrees world.

Whenever a country submits their pledges for Paris, the UNFCCC (the UN climate body) issues a stock press announcement to celebrate and uses it as a chance to highlight the 2 degree goal.

Curiously, when countries submit pledges calling for the more audacious 1.5 target, the response is much different. The UN’s press announcement regarding Belize, for example, counters the country’s ambition by saying the Paris agreement will "empower all countries to act to prevent average global temperatures rising above 2 degrees Celsius."

More curious still, this past June the UN’s very own special expert investigation, tasked with examining the difference between a 1.5ºC and 2ºC limit, concluded that 2 degrees is "inadequate" as a safe limit and that 2 degrees could "hardly be seen as a 'guardrail' protecting us fully from dangerous anthropogenic interference." Two degrees would threaten "the very existence of some atoll nations" whereas 1.5 degrees may keep sea level rise to below 1 meter, perhaps preventing the outright drowning of  countries like Tuvalu and the Maldives.

Dr. Petra Tschakert, a member of the UN’s 1.5 vs. 2 investigative team (and a co-author of the UN’s latest climate report) points out that "the 2°C target will carry more extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, and heat waves" - calling all of those "utterly unacceptable risks … for poor and marginalized communities."

The UN working group in charge of reviewing their experts' findings on the disparities between 1.5 and 2 degrees is set to make a final call in the midst of the Paris negotiations.

Island Nations Hold Their Ground

Island Nations, while not quite as unified as they were in 2009, aren’t done fighting for the target they believe is a necessity to their survival. The Marshall Islands Foreign Minister told the World Post in September: “We want to keep everything under 2 degrees - under 1.5 degrees, if possible …”.

A roundtable of Pacific Islands passed the Suva Declaration in September as a way to inject 1.5 back into the negotiations. The President of Fiji then took the microphone at the United Nations to plea for limiting “global average temperature increase to less than 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels” - mentioning that Fiji has “plans to move some 45 villages to higher ground, and we have already started.”

Last week, an alliance of Caribbean Islands partnered with a renowned poet in Saint Lucia to launch a "1.5 to Stay Alive campaign," calling on Island artists to lend their voice. And AOSIS has publicly stayed firm. Their latest post from late September states: “AOSIS has long contended that ‘well below 1.5 degrees Celsius’ is the right global goal to be aiming for, which is evident in the latest science, the UN’s own scientific review, and the extent of the extreme weather we are witnessing on every continent.”

This past May, Phillipines climate minister, Mary Ann Lucille L. Sering, asked, "How can we possibly subscribe to more than double current warming given what less than 1°C has entailed?" Just this past weekend, Typhoon Koppu came bearing down on the Philippines - sending over twenty thousand people fleeing from floods and mudslides, and killing at least twelve. 

Will 1.5 Find New Life in Paris?

Will Paris see a return of the battle for 1.5 or will all the momentum go towards sealing the deal on 2 degrees? In a sense, the answer is multiple choice.

The latest Paris draft deal - released October 20th - leaves three options, holding global temperature [below 2°C], [below 2 or 1.5°C] or [below 1.5°C], each option literally tucked into brackets for future clarification (the final choice was literally just added in Bonn - 1.5°C as a standalone target choice was not in the draft earlier this month).

With most of the negotiating cards from delegates, scientists, and UN leadership already on the table - the main wild cards left to be seen will likely be played by civil society.

The "largest [acts of] climate civil disobedience" are on the calendar for December, and a global movement to "reclaim our power" is already showing its force around the globe. It may be fair to say the Paris summit will be ringed by the most colorful, massive protests and highly orchestrated shows of dissatisfaction of any of its kind in the past 20 years.

If Island Nations can forge their call with those voices coming from the streets, then perhaps 1.5°C - and the fate of the planet’s most vulnerable - may yet stand a fighting chance after all.

Joe Solomon is a co-founder of GreenMemes.org, and is the former social media coordinator for 350.org and Energy Action Coalition. Joe is the co-editor of "The Most Amazing Online Organizing Guide Ever." He currently lives in West Virginia.