20,000 experts from 200 countries, plus top world leaders, are now meeting in Katowice in Poland under Cop24 which is part of a series of global climate conferences under the auspices of the United Nations aiming to put a tight brake amid alarming signs of breakdown on the global climatic system, They are predicting very dire consequences to global climate if the brakes are not completely applied at the fastest or the soonest. They are predicting the end of human civilization if these checks are not enforced immediately.
What can we expect of the United Nations Climate Change Conference that opened in Katowice, Poland, on Monday? We sincerely hope that it will no longer serve up just a diet of rhetoric and instead produce a down-to-earth action plan in which all countries do their bit. But that requires the major countries to demonstrate the political will to agree on ways to implement the promises they made in the 2015 Paris treaty to limit temperature rises to avert runaway global warming.
A UN report revealed last week that the goal to ensure fossil fuel emissions peak by 2020 will hardly be attained as the amount of carbon dioxide emitted worldwide in 2017 had actually increased rather than decreased. Another report by the World Meteorological Organization said that the past four years have been the warmest on record and warned that the global temperatures could easily rise by 4-5 C by 2100. The only solace we’ve got is that the just concluded G20 summit at the weekend reiterated the commitment of 19 of the major economies to the fight against climate change – the odd one out being the United States, whose current administration seems to perversely view global warming as simply a vagary of nature, and reiterated its withdrawal from the climate accord to which most other countries have now signed up.
There must absolutely by joint efforts by the international community to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The amount of carbon dioxide emitted in China in 2017 declined by 46 percent compared with that in 2015, according to a report on China’s policies and actions to fight against climate change, demonstrating that China is acting to fulfill its promise to peak its carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, and will spare no efforts in making it happen earlier. Other polluting countries need to emulate China’s example with no further lingering. A mechanism will have to be established to guarantee that the Paris Agreement will be implemented to the letter, and the Talanoa Dialogue will continue to take stock of what all major signatory countries have done and will do by 2020. Those developed countries in particular are expected to show their political will and help their developing counterparts with both fun ds and technologies to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide.
The clock is ticking on a climate bomb whose chain reaction and fallout should it go off would have catastrophic consequences for all life on Earth. There is still time to defuse it, but not much. There is no time left for talking, what is needed is action – from everyone. But this is only the view of many and there are also many dissidents.
As things stand today, there is clearly no global consensus on a climate catastrophe, or on the way the world should tackle it. We think the UN should sober up. It is its responsibility to review its climate agenda and change the message. If by the end of the Katowice summit on December 14, there is still no consensus on a plan of action, the UN should pull the plug on its climate agenda. The two-week UN climate summit, which opened yesterday in Katowice, Poland, is fraught with the conflicting beliefs and stands of nations on the largely UN-promoted threat of global climate catastrophe. The conference will last for two weeks, but despite the unusual length, there is little chance that the nations will agree on the existence of the threat, or on the drastic plan of action that the UN is assiduously promoting. Some, like the UN and many nations, are pressing forward with a policy of fear-mongering. Other countries are totally skeptical about the doomsday prediction, and reject the global warming problem itself. Climate alarmists have warned that the world needs to cut fossil fuel emissions by half by 2030 to avert disaster. The Poland summit seeks to firm up a plan to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Climate skeptics on the other hand totally reject the UN doomsday prediction; they dismiss the alleged need to cut back on fossil fuels and abandon CO2, which would turn the world economy upside down. The troubles hounding the Katowice summit are a direct outcome of the extravagant promises and expectations raised by the 2015 Paris Agreement. In Paris three years ago, countries committed to limit global temperature rises to well below two degrees Celsius. Johan Rockstrom, designated director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the talks in Katowice are crucial in nailing down how the Paris promises will work in practice. This objective faces a formidable wall. According to Rockstorm, delegates to the COP24 “cannot and will not discuss if governments worldwide must achieve rapid greenhouse gas emission reductions to limit climate risks and on how they can do this.” In Katowice, the nations will discuss a proposed rulebook palatable to all 183 states that ratified the Paris deal. This is far from likely. High among the obstacles is the decision of US President Donald Trump to pull out the US from the accord.
Last Saturday, during the G20 leaders summit in Buenos Aires, the US reiterated its decision to “withdraw” from the Paris agreement. Brazil, under its new president Jair Bolsonaro, has signified its intent to follow the American lead and withdraw from the accord. Many fear that the US withdrawal will have a domino effect and lead other nations to pull out from the Paris agreement. It is emblematic of the problems hounding the UN’s climate agenda that the summit is taking place in Katowice, Poland, a mining city, which is sometimes called ‘the coal capital’ of Europe. Coal is a prime target for execution by the UN. Last week, the Polish government announced its plans to open a new coal mine. Meanwhile, the UN just keeps doubling down on its forecast of climate catastrophe. Just last week, the UN Environment Program said the voluntary national contributions agreed in Paris would have to triple if the world was to cap global warming below 2C. According to the Wall Street Journal, when the UN made its doomsday prediction, most of the world yawned.