Green | December 15, 2008 | 8 comments

Satisfaction, anger at outcome of Poznan talks

source: http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Satisfaction_anger_at_outcome_of_Poznan_talks_999.html

Image
JanforGore
I fall into the latter category as does the WWF, Greenpeace, and other environmental organizations.The EU-s socalled 20-20-20 plan to decrease emissions by twenty percent by 2020 and have twenty percent renewable electricity by that time is a farce. I truly do wonder if these leaders are actually reading anything regarding the current effects of climate change on this world now besides their own profit reports. Getting only twenty percent of renewable electricity in over ten years time is simply not good enough and sets a lower bar for other countries.

Now, I know there are certain industries that must be shielded by the rich politicians who make their bread and butter by allowing them to keep polluting, but when will there be a meeting of this nature that actually addresses the moral implications of climate change instead of only the monetary ones? I also read up on the outcome of this meeting and the global water crisis was apparently absent. How can you hammer out a deal on climate change and not even include what is currently happening regarding potable water sources and melting glaciers that supply that water that threaten the supply to billions of people?

I am disappointed with this outcome, and wondering just what will happen between now and December 2009 to keep the expectations low. How many coal plants will go online in that next year? How many millions of tons of Co2 pollution will be spewed out all over this world? How much more rainforest will be lost to multi nationals looking to grow corn for ethanol and beef for McDonalds? How much more will the sea levels rise threatening people in Bangladesh and other outlying areas in the world? How much more water will be polluted thus decreasing the potable water available to a growing population? How many trees will be cut down to assauge our rapacious and consumptive lifestyles? And how much longer will we have to hear that Obama is suddenly the climate savior of the world while this world continues to melt around us?

We need action NOW. We need targets set NOW. We need real commitments NOW. I think the only ones satisfied are those who want people to think they hammered out an environmental agreement while knowing all they did was buy more time to keep this all going to still preserve their status quo at least for another year.
  1. groups:
    News and Politics,   Green,   Culture,   Earth and Science
  2. tags:
    News and Politics,  Culture,  Green,  Earth and Science,  6 more
  3.     
    |

8 comments // Satisfaction, anger at outcome of Poznan talks

  • idealist
    • 0
      idealist  

    • why dose money seem to be more important then the water we drink and the air we breath? thats what i would ask the people who get there bread and butter from keeping the enviroment a dead issue.

    • 3 years ago
  • JanforGore
  • GreenhouseNeutralFoundation
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • This is what happens when politicians run these talks. There are no moral codes when greed is the focus. And I can imagine these same countries making some farcical pledge and then sending ships up to the Arctic to drill for oil. They have done nothting since Bali and before but put on a show. Next year they need to see that the people of this world are tired of their grandstanding.

    • 3 years ago
  • SeaJade
    • 0
      SeaJade  
    • Image

    • Marcial Arias, one of the Indigenous focal points of the Global Forest Coalition stated: "We are outraged that due to the opposition of just four industrialized countries, the US, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, the Poznan conference failed to recognize the rights of Indigenous Peoples as enshrined in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This implies that the final outcomes of the current climate talks are likely to lead to serious violations of the human rights of these Peoples, especially forest-dependent Indigenous Peoples."

    • 3 years ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • "An ambitious deal in Copenhagen is still possible, and is needed more than ever, but it will need far more rapid progress than over the past year," it said."

      And that will not happen without pressure from us.

    • 3 years ago
  • NFUSA
    • 0
      NFUSA  
    • JanforGore:

      I agree. This is not progress, it's slow politics. Real change will come from the general population as they do more to reduce their impact and pressure their leaders to do the same. We have to do what is in the best interest of our people and our planet, not our politicians and corporations.

      Now is the Time

    • 3 years ago
  • JanforGore
    • 0
      JanforGore  

    • From the article:

      For some, a marathon UN conference that ended here on Friday cleared essential ground for building a new treaty on global warming, while others saw it as a disappointment or an outright flop.

      The talks under the UN's 192-nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed a work programme for negotiations leading to a treaty in Copenhagen in December 2009 to roll back the threat of global warming.

      The meeting, which ended Friday after a two-day forum at ministerial level, had been a technical and sometimes brutally complex affair but yielded pragmatic results, said some.

      "This was intended as a blue-collar conference that had to deliver practical results on the road to Copenhagen," said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer.

      "What this conference very clearly showed is that from now on it's for real in this process. The countries are getting down to serious negotiations and for an agreement."

      The outcome "was what we were hoping for, and when I say we I think more than just the US," James Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, told AFP.

      "But it is going to require some very sustained work and also a higher level of political will on everybody's part. [It] lays bare the challenge that lies ahead the challenge of getting to an agreement within a year."

      South Africa Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said that some of the issues up for discussion had "led to tension between developed and developing countries."

      "But even so I think we will be ready for negotiations and tension and confrontation are part of negotiations. I will be ready and am looking forward to next year," he told AFP.

      Su Wei, the Chinese chief climate negotiator, said he was "disappointed by the slow progress -- even no progress" at Poznan, with "some parties not going to move anywhere" on certain issues.

      "I think the developed countries are blocking on every item. I don't think that they are objectively prepared to make any progress," Su told AFP.

      Green groups were highly disappointed, with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) saying Poznan was a "major missed opportunity" for hammering out concessions on how to slash greenhouse-gas emissions.

      "This was a moment in time when real leaders would have stepped up and taken the positions that would combat the economic and climate crisis at the same time," WWF bemoaned.

      It said the "only positive decision" was on progress to launch a fund to provide cash to help poor countries cope with climate change -- the so-called Adaptation Fund.

      Developing nations battled for this Fund to tap wider sources of revenue from the burgeoning carbon market under the Kyoto Protocol, but this was rejected by wealthy countries -- a confrontation that reflected "bitterness," de Boer admitted.

      "Developing countries rightly expect the world's wealthiest nations to take the lead. Instead, industrialized countries are continuing to dodge their financial and technology transfer obligations to developing nations," Friends of the Earth International said.

      "The meeting accomplished little more than rehashing the same language discussed in Bali," Greenpeace said. "Saying the same thing you said a year ago is not progress."

      "The best way forward at this point is to draw a line under the Poznan meeting, and look forward to what we can -- and must -- accomplish in less than a year," Greenpeace said.

      British charity Oxfam said Poznan "exposed a shameful lack of progress."

      "An ambitious deal in Copenhagen is still possible, and is needed more than ever, but it will need far more rapid progress than over the past year," it said.

    • 3 years ago
more from Green:
from the community

top videos