(MintPress) – Throughout the world, a new normal is settling in. As the climate shifts and changes on a daily basis, a new world of extreme weather is opening — the massive flooding and landslides in Brazil last January; the wildfires in Chile; the record-breaking cold in Europe and the scorching heat in the United States; the droughts in Africa, South America and the U.S.; the torrential rains in Asia; and the flash floods in Indonesia and Bangladesh. That’s not to discount the damage Hurricanes Isaac and Sandy delivered. The cost of humanity’s industry is becoming painfully clear.
Besides the obvious toll of extreme weather on human lives, climate change affects everything from the cost of food (higher temperatures mean less irrigable land and smaller crop yields) to the availability of water (increased storm activity increases the acidity of the water in coastal regions) to the price of electricity (greater extremes in winter and summer temperatures mean a greater need for cooling and heating). It is accepted that the climate is fundamentally cyclical, and changes in weather patterns happen.
But it is also accepted that humans are accelerating the cycle by increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Starting Nov. 26, Doha, Qatar is hosting COP 18, or the 18th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change, in an attempt to name a successor to the Kyoto Protocol — the landmark piece of international legislation that first dealt with the need to regulate carbon emissions.
Despite the optimism such an event creates, several issues have emerged that could ruin everything. Under the first commitment period (2008-2012) of the Kyoto Protocol, 13.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide credits (which are used to offset the amount of carbon dioxide a nation-state releases into the atmosphere) were not used by several nations in the accord. These nations would like the credits to “rollover” to the next commitment period, allowing them the opportunity to release their full share of carbon dioxide, if needed. Opponents to this say that doing this will make carbon cuts meaningless, as the surplus plus the new credits would exceed any proposed cuts.
More damning is the issue of funding. During the COP 15 talks in Copenhagen, the richer nations agreed to provide $100 billion per year through 2020 to help poorer countries adapt to climate change. To get things started, a down payment of $30 billion was to be paid over three years, 2010 to 2012. This was called “Fast Start Finance.” As stated by Oxfam in its Nov. 25 press release:
“As governments meet in Doha at the very end of this period, they are facing a climate ‘fiscal cliff.’ Developed countries have yet to make any concrete financial commitments for the period 2013 to 2020. Oxfam’s research suggests that levels of public climate finance are set to fall in 2013 compared to the past three years. At the very moment that finance must be scaled up to meet the $100 billion per year Copenhagen promise, rich countries look set to scale down.”
All of this underlies a very simple, but essential, point: While the richer nations were more instrumental for creating the current climatological situation, they are the nations that are hindering attempts to reduce the impact of climate change the most. They are also slowing the flow of funding to those most hit by the effect of climate change — poor, Equatorial-based nations that are the least able to pay for the infrastructure repair and reinforcement needed.
This is presenting a class system among the world’s nations. The poorest nations are being exploited and preyed on by the actions and inactions of the world’s wealthiest nations, and — unless a firm, binding commitment is reached among the world’s superpowers (including the United States) that would ensure the protection of those most endangered by climate change — this class struggle threatens to destroy us all.
The haves vs. the have not
The Kyoto Protocol expires Dec. 31. As the member nations of COP 18 meet in Doha this week, a climate “fiscal cliff” faces them. Developed nations have yet to make any definitive financial commitments for 2013 through 2020. This is compounded by the fact that much of the money the big powers have committed has been reclassified from already existing environmental programs, diverted from scheduled and proposed environmental budgets introduced before Copenhagen or taken from existing international aid allocations. According to an Oxfam report, only 33 percent of contributions for climate change aid to developing nations are actually new budget additions. The urgency toward assisting developing nations’ climate change needs were first codified internationally at COP 10 in Cancun.
In Cancun, the member nations pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level to prevent a rise of the average global temperature of more than 2 degrees Centigrade by the end of the century. The United Nation’s Environmental Programme’s Emissions Gap Report 2012 points out that greenhouse gases are 14 percent above the levels needed in 2020 to keep the projected rise below 2 degrees. The report states that at the current pace, 58 gigatons per year of carbon dioxide will be present in the atmosphere by 2020, 14 gigatons per year more than what scientists project is the maximum for the Cancun limit. Even if the most generous, liberal pledges from the member nations are honored, there would still be an 8 gigaton deficit, according to the UNEP. That is equivalent to the world’s industrial output.
In light of the eurozone crisis, austerity attempts in the United States and the weakening of the yuan, the world’s superpowers have pulled back their support for funding greenhouse gas reduction. This is, tragically, the time that an expansion in spending is needed, instead of a reduction.
Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP, said, “The report provides a sobering assessment of the gulf between ambition and reality.” The report suggests inexpensive actions that have been effective in nationwide emission reduction, such as increasing vehicle and appliance performance standards and reducing deforestation. These actions have been taken primarily for economic reasons, which is a crucial approach, according to the report’s key author, Dr. Monica Araya. “If we want politicians to endorse these policies they have to be able to go out there and sell them on the basis of the benefits they create for their people and not just for the planet.”
The UNEP report also suggests that time is running out for a reversal of global warming that would satisfy the 2 degrees C goal. According to Christiana Figueres, the talk’s lead at Doha this week, “It is a reminder that time is running out but that the technical means and the policy tools to allow the world to stay below a maximum 2C are still available to governments and societies.” A previous analysis from the World Meteorological Organization has stated that the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2011. This resulted in a 30 percent increase in the warming effect on the climate between 1990 and 2011.
In developing nations, particularly those in the tropics, climate change has manifested in disastrous tropical storms, ferocious hurricanes, vast flooding, typhoons, landslides and water acidification. The funds needed to repeatedly rebuild themselves — if not available from foreign assistance — must come from developmental aid budgets, which could traumatize a small nation.
The largest of the big nations, the United States, is the biggest offender in this. According to Oxfam, the U.S. only contributed $2.9 billion in new funds to Fast Start Finance, opting to repurpose existing credits and loans toward meeting the remainder of the nation’s obligation. The U.S. which infamously opted out of the Kyoto Protocol during the George W. Bush administration, has not accepted the 0.7 percent of the gross national income as Official Development Assistance that the EU, Japan, China and Australia committed to. The EU, Japan and Australia have all met or nearly met their obligations to the fund; although only 27 percent of the EU’s contribution and $366 million of Australia’s contribution can be called “new money.” In addition, 57 percent of Fast Start Finance’s money is actually loans, which must be paid back with interest.
Another issue lies with the matter of “hot air.” In the drafting of the Kyoto Protocol, certain EU nations were given larger carbon allowances to help ease the industrial transitions needed to satisfy the protocol. These allowances were so large that EU nations ended up with carbon allowance surpluses that they would like to rollover to the upcoming period. The problem lies with the fact that the surplus is as large as the industrial carbon dioxide output for the planet, and allowing it to stand basically negates any and all carbon-emission cutting.
Last year at COP 17 in Durban, South Africa, a “coalition of the willing” — an alliance of the European Union, several small island states and several poor nations — helped to push forward the Durban Platform, which will allow the bigger nations to extend the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2013 as a way to extend their carbon cutting obligations. In return, a new commitment from all nations — including China and India — to reduce emissions starting in 2020 would be negotiated.
But, with no money in the climate fund as of the end of this year, such lofty plans may be endangered. With no assistance coming in for climate change issues, the poorer nations may abandon their alliances with the richer nations. Both the United States and China have made gestures toward making progress with global warming, but most are dubious. Tracy Carty, a climate change policy advisor from Oxfam, said, “On the broad elements of 2015, we aren’t going to see any ‘big-bang’ moments in Doha like we saw in Durban. But on finance it is a crossroads – this is a period where we are coming to the end of a tranche of money and we don’t know what’s on the table for next year.”
Standing up for the little guys
It may be hard to accept, but the U.S. is in austerity mode; Republicans and Democrats are actively attacking each other about every expenditure and every proposed change to the tax code. The scary part of all of this is that the U.S. — with a deficit in many of its states and with an expanding national debt — is doing better than most of the world. In countries such as Spain and Greece, the confidence in the national government does not exist, as repeated bailouts and monstrous debt has rotted their economies from the inside.
In this environment, foreign aid would be the first thing to be cut. It’s natural to take care of your own problems before worrying about your neighbor. But, this is rarely a prudent course of action.
Imagine this: You live in a cul-de-sac with a single neighbor. Both of you mutually use a driveway and are both responsible for its upkeep. Money has been getting tight, and while you usually take care of the repairs yourself, you allowed your neighbor to take the slack for once.
So, you wait …
… and wait …
… and wait …
… until the driveway is in such a state of disrepair that no one can use it. It’s only then that you ask if your neighbor can afford to fix the driveway.
This is the scenario with foreign aid in light of austerity. The richer nations are asking the smaller nations to take care of their own problems, despite the lack of resources to do that. A poor nation that must bankroll its own recovery effort will be subject to predatory loans and insurmountable interest or to cannibalistic efforts to bankroll the repairs at the cost of something else — like the nation’s schools. Despite the popular call to “keep our aid money at home,” there is an obligation morally and humanistically to aid and support those who need help most.
In a Huffington Post blog from June, Ben Barber said this about austerity cuts for foreign aid:
“The impending aid cut was one of three powerful facts that leaped out of many hours I spent sitting on panels June 6 and 7 in Washington, and from chatting with providers of bullet proof jeeps, medical kits, efficient stoves, water purification systems and emergency tents and generators:
- Despite knowing in 2010 that a famine was coming, the world wasted six months before shipping food to the Horn of Africa, letting perhaps 50,000 people die.
- For the first time in history, more people now die of chronic diseases — caused by obesity, smoking, alcohol and sedentary occupations — than from infections and trauma. Prevention now can save more lives than medical treatment.
- Although millions of dedicated aid workers live with the dust and danger of Sudan, Somalia and Afghanistan, the financial crisis is forcing aid managers to cut back on costly Western aid teams and instead hire local people, train them and hope all goes well.“
In this race to save the climate, what we do for those who have the least resonates and is multiplied throughout the world.