SETH W. JAMES

If it seems like I’ve written this blog before, it’s because I have.  The sad part is that, in all likelihood, I’ll be writing it again next year, too.  As The LA Times reported, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, “summer 2024 was Earth’s hottest on record,” with the June, July and August period clocking in at a record-breaking 62.24 degrees Fahrenheit global average.  That wasn’t the only record broken, however, with the hottest day ever recorded having been set (July 22^nd, to be broken next year, no doubt), June and August had their hottest records broken, and with Hurricane Beryl forming in June, the earliest Category 5 record was also set.

More worrying to Earth’s continued ability to sustain human life was the fact that global mean temperatures had exceeded the 1.5C increase limit that climate scientists have long warned us about—a point at which the effects of climate change may begin to rage out of control: the limit has been surpassed nearly every month for more than a year.  As the LA Times noted, “August 2024 was the 13th month in a 14-month period to exceed that benchmark, with the global average temperature measuring roughly 2.72 degrees — or 1.51 degrees Celsius — above pre-industrial levels, according to Copernicus. The streak was broken only by the month of July, which came in just shy of the limit for the first time in a year.”

Now, it is only September, so you may be thinking or hoping that a cool spell will have us come in just under setting a new, hottest-year-ever record.  That is unlikely.  As The Guardian reported, “In order for 2024 not to become the warmest on record, we need to see very significant landscape cooling for the remaining few months, which doesn’t look likely at this stage,” Carlo Buontempo, [Copernicus director,] said.”

With Phoenix setting a record for 114 days with temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with Mexico, Egypt, and Laos breaking their all-time record temperatures (in addition to many other countries), and with UN Secretary-General António Guterres warning that sea levels will “soon swell to an almost unimaginable scale with no lifeboat to take us back to safety,” the predictions about climate change’s worst effects are already upon us.  Worse is yet to come, but what we are now facing should be enough to convince any rational person that the time for radical action is now.  We should demand of all politicians, everywhere, that the use of fossil fuels be brought to an immediate, permanent halt.  Nothing short of that will save humanity.

In the last month of 2023, the nations of the world again met to discuss the worsening effects of human-caused climate change, meeting in Dubia for COP28.  The conference was more contentions than those of years past, beginning with the appointment of Sultan al-Jaber of the United Arab Emirates as the session’s president; Al Jazeera reports that the oil tycoon has alarmed many through his “alleged questioning of climate science.”  (I highly recommend following that link to the AJ article, as it includes an excellent infographic about energy sources by region.)  OPEC poured fuel on the fire by issuing a letter to its member states, Al Jazeera confirmed, to “proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy ie fossil fuels rather than emissions.”  Their letter presaged the hotly contested language debate over the draft text of a resolution from the conference, which initially called for “phasing out” the use of fossil fuels, but was ultimately watered down to simply “transitioning away.”

Though Norway’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Espen Barth Eide, was quoted by Reuters as declaring, “It is the first time that the world unites around such a clear text on the need to transition away from fossil fuels,” the phrase “transition away” was a compromise and a bad one, as it does not set out clear goals and is open to more interpretation than “phasing out.”  Anne Rasmussen, from the Alliance of Small Island States, described the weakened text as, “an incremental advancement over business-as-usual, when what we really need is an exponential step-change in our actions.”  Island states “were among the most vocal supporters of language to phase out fossil fuels and had the backing of major oil and gas producers such as the United States, Canada and Norway, as well as the European Union and scores of other governments,” Reuters goes on to report.

Despite the weakened text and a report that showed that the world was not reaching its goals in curtailing global warming, there were some positive achievements.  The Loss and Damage fund, proposed during COP27, held in Egypt in 2022, was approved.  It will be woefully underfunded, as Al Jazeera reports that, “several countries have pledged a total of $700m, which falls far short of the estimated $400bn damage caused by climate change each year.”  A drop in the bucket of rapidly rising sea levels.  The conference also called for the tripling of renewable energy sources by 2030, which—and perhaps I’m being overly cynical here—is a fairly safe thing for the conference to call for, given how renewables are one of the fastest growing industries.

Looking at COP28 as a whole, particularly at the language debate that forced the conference to extend for an additional day to reach a consensus, we see the short-term, short-sighted, and self-interested greed of fossil fuel producers again preventing Humanity from taking the extraordinary steps needed to preserve the Earth’s ability to sustain human life.  And yet, there is, even in this battle, some small glimmer of hope.  The forces of greed have clearly transitioned away from their habitual frontal assault on climate change remediation and are now conducting a rear-guard action: could it be that they, finally, see their inevitable defeat in the distance?  Nevertheless, we know that they will contest every inch and that the delay they cause will likely cost Humanity its very existence.  All delay is defeat: we need action now.

As world leaders gather this week for the 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP28, let’s look back at some of the major climate events of the year, as 2023 marks a new, sad record for humanity.

2023 will undoubtedly be declared the hottest year on record, once December’s numbers are officially in, but we know that the hottest month ever recorded has already happened: according to NASA, that month was July 2023.  “Overall, July 2023 was 0.43 degrees Fahrenheit (F) (0.24 degrees Celsius (C)) warmer than any other July in NASA’s record, and it was 2.1 F (1.18 C) warmer than the average July between 1951 and 1980.”  ABC News, citing the U.S. National Centers for Environmental Prediction, reports that July also produced the hottest day ever recorded, July 6^th, when temperatures reached “17.23 degrees Celsius, or 63.01 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Extreme temperatures can lead to a host of environmental dangers and 2023’s record-breaking heat did just that.  As Drought.gov reported, “Summer began with the worst drought in the plains and Midwest and ended with the worst drought across the southern U.S.”  But while the United States and Canada saw record droughts and dry conditions, other parts of the world saw record flooding.  CNN reported that “the Mediterranean region [has] been lashed by Storm Daniel, the result of a very strong low-pressure system that became a “medicane” – a relatively rare type of storm with similar characteristics to hurricanes and typhoons which can bring dangerous rainfall and flooding.”  Daniel slammed into Greece, dropping a year’s worth of rainfall in a matter of hours; the flooding grew so bad that rescuers had to employ boats along city streets, to reach people stranded in their inundated homes.  Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis later announced that at least 15 people had died due to Daniel.  The storm then moved on to Turkey, causing at least another 7 deaths, when flash floods caused by the deluge hit cities and rural areas.

The worst of the climate-change fueled destruction to hit the Mediterranean in 2023 ravaged Libya, where the UN reports that 11,000 people perished.  The torrential rain overwhelmed two dams in the country, dams that had not received proper maintenance in the years following Libya’s 2011 revolution, and when they broke, many thousands of people were killed or swept out to sea; the UN estimates that an additional 10,000 people went missing and may never be recovered.

The Mediterranean was not the only region to see flooding, sadly.  Typhoons Saola and Haikui tore through the South China Sea, inundating southern China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.  Hong Kong recorded the highest hourly rainfall since 1884.  In Brazil, more than 30 people were killed when flooding hit Rio Grande do Sul, the worst environmental disaster to hit the state in 40 years.  Even in the drought-ridden United States, unusual rain and flooding soaked the typically dusty Burning Man Festival, stranding thousands of would-be revelers in the Nevada desert.

On the other end of the climate-change spectrum, 2023’s record-breaking heat also led to unprecedented wildfires.  As the Washington Post reports, in Canada “about 45.7 million acres (18.5 million hectares) have burned in 2023, surpassing the previous high of 17.5 million acres (7.1 million hectares) based on records dating back to 1983, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center . . . . just shy of nine times the annual average.”  The wildfires were so extensive that many Canadians were forced to flee their homes and not just in rural areas, with numerous Canadian cities calling for total evacuations as the fires drew ever closer.  The smoke pollution from the fires covered all of North America, affecting air quality across the continent.  “A Washington Post analysis at the end of June showed hundreds of locations reached their all-time highs for smoke pollution from wildfires and others have joined the list since.”

Canada was, unfortunately, not unique in suffering wildfires in 2023.  As The New York Times reports, the island of Maui, Hawaii, suffered a combination of environmental and infrastructure hazards that led to the worst wildfire catastrophe to ever hit the state.  “Nearly 16 percent of Maui County was in a severe drought at the time of the blaze, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Compounding the trouble, none of the 80 warning sirens placed around the island were activated, there was a water shortage for firefighters, and the evacuation route was jammed with traffic.”  The high winds that whipped the fires into an unstoppable conflagration came from Hurricane Dora, many miles off the cost, which brought no—what would have been—life-saving rain.  The historic and much beloved town of Lahaina was completely razed, with at least 100 people having died; some residents had been forced to flee into the ocean to escape the fires.  It is believed that powerlines contributed to starting the fires and several lawsuits have since been filed against the power company that left the lines electrified, despite high winds from the hurricane.

The above instances are only a snapshot of the increasingly brutal effects of climate change, which we’ve seen throughout 2023 and will, undoubtedly, see again in 2024.  For decades now, the United Nations Climate Change Conferences have given world leaders the opportunity to take the radical actions needed to save humanity from the climate change that we have caused: and for decades now, the leaders of humanity have failed to do so.  I hope, as always, that COP28 will be different, that it will lead to the solutions that, so far, only scientists and novelist seem capable of envisioning.  Whether they reach these solutions this year or ever, we must all do our best to drive them forward: the best way to do that, of course, is to vote.  2024 is a month away.  Vote.  Vote to save our lives.  Vote for any number of important issues; vote despite the unconscionable obstacles erected by the terrorists of the Republican Party to stop voters from making their voices heard; vote because it is your right.  But most importantly, vote for those who will take action against climate change, because without it, Earth will lose its ability to sustain human life.  Vote.

On May 22, 2023, Arizona, Nevada, and California reached an agreement with the Interior Department to voluntarily reduce the amount of water that they take from the Colorado River.  The agreement comes after years of drought and refusal to cut water usage, even as the river continued to dwindle.  As the New York Times reports, “The agreement, announced Monday, calls for the federal government to pay about $1.2 billion to irrigation districts, cities and Native American tribes in the three states if they temporarily use less water.”  The ominous word in the Times’ reporting is, temporarily.  The reduction amounts to 2.3 million acre-feet of water, initially, to come from the largest users; an additional 700,000 acre-feet in reductions, however, needs to be identified by the states or the Interior Department has threatened to simply withhold the water, a move that would certainly end up in the courts.

The agreement may preserve water levels in Lakes Mead and Powel, in the short-term, avoiding a dead-pool situation, which would prevent the two reservoirs from generating power for millions of people and delivering water for drinking, irrigation, and industrial uses: what the agreement does not do, however, is address the underlying causes of the drought or the unavoidable need for more cuts as climate change worsens.  Today’s drought will look like a deluge, tomorrow.  The current deal only extends until 2026, which may be convenient for politicians, as it is after the next Presidential election, but it only puts off the technological and social development needed to permanently deal with the realities of climate change.

While I am pleased that some action was taken to preserve the two reservoirs, the victory is pyrrhic, a delaying tactic in a struggle that will brook no delay.  The money provided to those financially impacted by the water-usage reduction may protect their businesses, but it does not solve the problem: if that money—and, realistically, a lot more of it—had been devoted to desalinization development, water-usage reduction technology, and relocation of agriculture, then 2026 would not loom on the horizon, a battle to be refought.  At the end of the day, without a permanent solution, without action to end climate change, the disaster thought to have been avoided today will nevertheless fall tomorrow.

On April 11^th, the Biden Administration published a new proposal for how to adjust the water allocations from the Colorado River to the seven states that rely on the river for drinking water and agriculture, a proposal that diverges significantly from the longstanding precedent, quaintly known as the Law of the River, which up until now has distributed the water based upon seniority, favoring California’s claims.  As the New York Times has noted, “The Colorado River supplies drinking water to 40 million Americans as well as two states in Mexico, and irrigates 5.5 million agricultural acres. The electricity generated by dams on the river’s two main reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, powers millions of homes and businesses.”

With such devastating impacts hanging in the balance, and the states that rely upon the river being unable or unwilling to reach a voluntary agreement, the new proposal would reduce the amount of water received by California, Nevada, and Arizona by up to one-quarter.  Those three states are the only three of the seven that the federal government can directly impact, through water releases from Lake Mead and Lake Powell.

The goal of the Biden Administration’s proposal is, as the Washington Post reports, “to assess potential rule changes for how water is released from Lake Powell and Lake Mead to protect these reservoirs from falling below what is known as “minimum power pool.” That’s the point at which the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams can no longer produce hydropower because there is not enough water to flow through the turbines safely. These reservoir elevations — about 3,500 feet above sea level at Lake Powell and 950 feet at Lake Mead — will be the thresholds that the federal government is working to avoid. Lake Powell stands just 20 feet above that level and is less than a quarter full.”

What is not clear is whether the Interior Department’s authority over Lake Mead and Lake Powell, and the water releases that deliver water to the three states impacted by the proposal, will stand up to legal scrutiny, if California, Nevada, and Arizona choose to challenge the rule change in court.  A long legal fight could be disastrous, as a stay imposed by the court to block action would continue the decades of inaction and overuse that have brought us to this brink in the first place.

A 45-day public comment period has begun for the proposal and the Interior Department is expected to make a decision this August.

As the IPCC declared in its AR6 report last month, only radical action can address climate change.  The Colorado River will continue to shrink as the parching of the west worsens and only radical action will preserve some usefulness from what water is left.  Change will come to the states that rely upon the river: the question is whether the change will be deliberate and effective, or if the change will come in the form of abandoned cities, food shortages, and massive internal migration.

The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its newest report, AR6, on Monday, March 27 2023, reiterating in unequivocal terms that Humanity is killing itself.  The report enumerated the irrefutable human causes of climate change and warned that the goal of limiting global mean temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as set by the Paris Agreement in 2015, is now impossible without radical action on the part of the world’s wealthiest—and most polluting—nations.

AR6 is not, of course, the IPCC’s first report, having delivered studies warning of the increasing dangers of climate change since 1990.  Despite these warnings, since that year, more than 40% of the carbon emissions that are destroying the planet’s ability to sustain human life have been produced.  As CNN characterizes it, “[t]he biggest threat to climate change action is the world’s continued addiction to burning fossil fuels, which still make up more than 80% of the world’s energy and 75% of human-caused planet-heating pollution.”  In order to meet the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, AR6 finds that global levels of planet-heating pollution must fall by 60% by 2035.

As The Washington Post reported, “[b]oth the U.N. chief and the IPCC also called for the world to phase out coal, oil and gas, which are responsible for more than three-quarters of global greenhouse gas emissions.”  And yet, despite this desperate need having been raised for the last 33 years, The Post continues, “[t]he Biden administration has just greenlit the hugely controversial Willow oil drilling project in Alaska. Once operational, it is projected to produce enough oil to release 9.2 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year – equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads.”  On the other side of the planet, China granted permits in 2022 for coal production across 82 sites, the equivalent of commissioning two large coal power plants per week.

I have written before about the myriad effects of climate change, ranging from the destruction of oceanic food webs to increased frequency and destructiveness of weather disasters to the unprecedented growth of infectious disease outbreaks.  With flooding in the North West, drought in the South West, tornados across the Midwest and South, all combining with catastrophic train derailments, toxic spills threatening drinking water, and unnavigable river emergencies—and all of it in the same week that AR6 was released—we are seeing a stark preview of what is to become our new normal.  Our infrastructure and, indeed, our very way of life has already demonstrated perilous vulnerability to the proportionately minor climate change we have experienced thus far.  How will Humanity cope when the number of storms, famines, heat waves, and the desperate migration to escape them grow by an order of magnitude?  That’s what exceeding 1.5C means.

AR6 also clearly laid out the underlying cause of Humanity’s inaction on climate change: it is, as it has been throughout our long history, the haves killing the have nots.  The wealthiest 10% of Humanity generate three times the pollution of the poorest 50%, the report stated.  And despite the plummeting costs of solar and wind energy and the opportunity it affords to reduce inequality and improve the lives of the 700 million people suffering from what the report terms “energy poverty,” which would not only reduce carbon emissions but would also mitigate the causes of migration, the wealthiest among us still cling to the power sources of the past, dooming the rest of us who do not have the means to seal ourselves away from the fallout of their choices.  As the IPCC’s Chair, Hoesung Lee, said, “The choices we make now and in the next few years will reverberate around the world for hundreds, even thousands, of years.”  To choose inaction is to choose the death of Humanity.

On Sunday, March 5^th 2023, after nearly 20 years of setbacks and delays, the United Nations reached an agreement on The High Seas Treaty.  As NPR reports, “[t]he treaty will create a new body to manage conservation of ocean life and establish marine protected areas in the high seas . . . in the regions outside national boundary waters . . . [t]he treaty also establishes ground rules for conducting environmental impact assessments for commercial activities in the oceans.”  The current treaty is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which was created in 1982 and came into force in 1994 and does not address the challenges facing ocean ecosystems and food webs.  Sadly, the new treaty—as important a step forward as it is—also lacks a mechanism for saving the oceans as we know them today.

The problem with The High Seas Treaty is that it does not address the fundamental threat to Earth’s oceans, which is, of course, climate change.  The increase in atmospheric carbon is having—and will continue to have an ever-worsening—effect on ocean acidification.  As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, describes it:

“When CO2 is absorbed by seawater, a series of chemical reactions occur resulting in the increased concentration of hydrogen ions. This increase causes the seawater to become more acidic and causes carbonate ions to be relatively less abundant.  Carbonate ions are an important building block of structures such as sea shells and coral skeletons. Decreases in carbonate ions can make building and maintaining shells and other calcium carbonate structures difficult for calcifying organisms such as oysters, clams, sea urchins, shallow water corals, deep sea corals, and calcareous plankton.”

So, in other words, there is and will be plenty of carbon in the oceans, but it won’t be available to the creatures that need it to build shells, skeletons, eggs, and similar structures.  And while the extinction of shellfish everywhere may come as a blow to oyster bars and their many patrons around the world—to say nothing of the three billion people who rely on the oceans as their primary source of protein and other nutrients—the extinction of tiny, shell-building animals at the bottom of the food chain will cause entire food webs to collapse.  Consider this, also from the NOAA:

““The pteropod, or “sea butterfly,” is a tiny sea snail about the size of a small pea. Pteropods are an important part of many food webs and eaten by organisms ranging in size from tiny krill to whales. When pteropod shells were placed in sea water with pH and carbonate levels projected for the year 2100, the shells slowly dissolved after 45 days. Researchers have already discovered severe levels of pteropod shell dissolution in the Southern Ocean, which encircles Antarctica.”

By the NOAA’s estimation, therefore, by the year 2100, pteropods will dissolve away to nothing in the world’s oceans—and everything above them in the food web will starve.

Though the conservation efforts set forth in The High Seas Treaty will undoubtedly produce positive impacts for humanity’s stewardship of Earth’s oceans, without comprehensive action to reduce atmospheric carbon, the benefits of the new treaty can only be seen as near-term.  In the long term, the collapse of oceanic food webs still looms with no solution in sight.  See you in 77 years.

The Colorado River Water Users Association Conference, the largest annual meeting of its kind in the United States, took place late last year in Las Vegas, Nevada, where water managers placed a bet that every human in the country may have to cover by as early as this summer.  Climate change has significantly reduced rainfall in areas that feed major rivers, while desiccated land between mountains and rivers now absorbs snow-melt runoff before it can reach lower elevations.  The impact on the Colorado River has proven significant, if not isolated, with The Washington Post reporting that, “In 1999, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the country, held 47.6 million acre-feet of water. That has fallen to about 13.1 million acre-feet, or 26 percent of their capacity. An acre-foot equals 326,000 gallons, or enough to cover an acre of land in a foot of water.”  Both Lake Mead and Lake Powell were created by damns that control water delivery to downstream states, as well as producing electricity from their hydroelectric plants.  “The average annual flow of the river during that period has been 13.4 million acre-feet — while users are pulling out an average of 15 million acre-feet per year,” said James Prairie, Research and Modeling Group Chief at the Bureau of Reclamation.  With water levels now at historic lows, coupled with ever-increasing demand, both damns could stop functioning, losing the ability to deliver water or power, by as early as this July for Lake Powell and following within two years for Lake Mead.  The Biden Administration had set an August 2022 deadline for voluntary water-usage cuts, a deadline that had expired without action.  A crisis is coming that will see water delivery stop for states in the southwest, impacting drinking water for residents and irrigation for farms that provide a significant portion of the country’s winter produce.

The Colorado River crisis, sadly, is not isolated.  The Mississippi River had also seen historic lows last year, with water levels falling so significantly near in Memphis, Tennessee, that in mid-October barges were unable to navigate the river.  Special dredging and water release measures were needed to restart the trans-river shipping.  While this has happened before, it is now happening more often and the effects of the transportation interruption can be seen on nearly anyone’s store shelves, as the cessation of barge traffic on The Mississippi River leads inevitably to food and product shortages.  Worse is to come, unfortunately, as climate change advances and the water level in rivers across the continent continue to fall, barge traffic as we know it may come to a permanent halt, resulting in a shift to using more trucks and trains, further straining the few, dilapidated bridges that cross major rivers, which in turn will produce more shortages along with increased emissions of climate-changing exhaust.

As chilling as the cold facts of the worsening water crisis may be, falling water levels in rivers and lakes have revealed just how historic our current situation is, in often grizzly fashion.  Back in May of 2022, human remains were discovered in a metal drum on the (newly receded) shoreline of Lake Mead, remains that bore a gunshot wound to the head.  The body was followed by five more, as the falling water level revealed tragedy after tragedy, foreshadowing the loss of life that is to come, as water scarcity and food shortages loom.  Old shipwrecks, too, have resurfaced as waterlines have fallen: on The Mississippi, near Baton Rouge, a ferry believed to have sunk in the late 1800s to early 1900s was exhumed from its watery grave as the river withdrew; near The Great Salt Lake, the “W.E. Marsh No. 4,” a boat used by the Southern Pacific Railroad, emerged as the lake’s water level dropped.  As our rivers and lakes become graveyards, how many more signs will be needed before humanity demands action of itself?

The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, COP27, recently concluded in Sharm El-Sheikh, Sinai, Egypt, where humanity again chose not to save itself.  I remember Sharm, somewhat, from my time serving as a member of the Multinational Force and Observers, a peacekeeping force that, since 1981, has sat on the border between Egypt and Israel and prevented war.  41 years without a war is quite an achievement.  The city, sadly, could not bestow a similar record of achievement upon this year’s climate conference, which ended without a commitment to reducing greenhouse gasses.

“We need to drastically reduce emissions now—and this is an issue this COP did not address,” said António Guterres, Secretary General of the UN.  “We are already halfway between the Paris Climate Agreement and the 2030 deadline.”

Anyone following at least the headlines concerning COP and climate action generally, will have probably run across the number 1.5 degrees Celsius.  That number refers to a goal set by the Paris Climate Agreement, to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above historical median Earth temperatures.  The IPCC—The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that assesses the science related to climate change—has clearly stated that every fraction of a degree above this mark will drastically increase the harmful effects of climate change, things such as droughts, heatwaves, flooding, storms (i.e. hurricanes and typhoons), and more.  As bad as all of those direct consequences can be, however, it is the knock-on effects that are particularly harmful to human beings: with droughts and flooding comes food shortages, emergency migration—as people flee famine and conflict—wars erupt as nations or non-national entities struggle to seize what water resources remain, while heatwaves and mega-storms kill directly and destroy the infrastructure used to sustain human life.  And all of those consequences become more frequent, and take place in more parts of the world, with each fraction of a degree the Earth warms.

Kenyan environmental youth activist Elizabeth Wathuti summed up the situation best when she said, “The interconnected food, nature and climate crisis are right now affecting us all, but the frontline communities like mine are hardest hit. How many alarm bells need to be sounded before we act?”  How many, indeed.  There have been 27 COP conferences and humanity has yet to agree to save itself.  There were, however, several plans taken forward regarding finance, observation, and, most importantly, the “loss and damage” fund.

One of the many harmful effects of the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement was the stalling of a framework and funding for addressing the immediate damage caused by climate change.  COP27 laid the groundwork for such a “loss and damage” fund, which will help struggling countries to recover and adapt.  It’s the “adapt” part that worries me.

From the UN’s news service: “Observers have warned that new language including “low emissions” energy alongside renewables as the energy sources of the future is a significant loophole, as the undefined term could be used to justify new fossil fuel development against the clear guidance of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA).”  It should also be noted that short-term benefits—such as carbon-credit trading, under Article 6 of the Paris Climate Agreement, which allows for the selling of carbon emission limits, and adaption efforts—are a growing interest for big business.  It has been estimated that “adaption” technologies and strategies, which worryingly do not strive to prevent climate change, merely make it more bearable, could grow into a $2 trillion-per-year industry.  To me, this seems dangerous: if big business can make more money “adapting” to climate change than they can by preventing it, what chance do we have of avoiding the worst effects of climate change?

In closing, at this year’s COP we saw more of the same inaction that has been dooming humanity for decades.  It is encouraging to see wealthy nations, such as the United States, take some action to remediate the damage they are causing to other nations, through the “loss and damage fund,” and yet such a fund will never mitigate the coming damage caused by the Earth surpassing the 1.5-degree Celsius mark.  The only way forward to a future in which humanity continues to exist on the Earth is to cease the production of greenhouse gasses, particularly from the use of fossil fuels: with the major producers of fossil fuels—such as Russia and Saudi Arabia—continuing to block UN action, supported by big business and the billionaires around the world, the only way forward seems farther away than ever.