The "Lima Call For Action"

The Lima climate talks ended last weekend. Those talks were meant to set the stage for the Big Event, which will be held in Paris next year.

Predictably, the Lima Call For Action is just what is says—a call for action. A call for action is not action. A call for action is more abject failure in what has now become a long tradition of failure.

We are told that there was progress of sorts. Let's look at that.

By establishing a new structure in which all countries will state (over the next six months) their contributions to emissions mitigation, this latest climate accord moves the process in a productive direction in which all nations will contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Working to fulfill the promise made in the 2011 Durban Platform for Enhanced Action to include all parties (countries) under a common legal framework, the Lima decision constitutes a significant departure from the past two decades of international climate policy, which – since the 1995 Berlin Mandate and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol – have featured coverage of only a small subset of countries, namely the so-called Annex I countries (more or less the industrialized nations, as of twenty years ago).

The expanded geographic scope of the Lima Call for Climate Action and thereby the incipient Paris agreement – and the emerging architecture of a pragmatic hybrid combining bottom-up “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions” (INDCs) with top-down elements for reporting and synthesis of contributions by the UNFCCC Secretariat – represents the best promise in many years of a future international climate agreement that is truly meaningful.

There's a lot of gobbledygook to wade through here, but there are two "important" points. First, this is the first climate failure in which all parties (countries) all failed together.

Well done!

And now we turn to the "intended nationally determined contributions" (INDCs). These are nationally determined because each country gets to "choose" what "commitment" it might or might not make in Paris next year. And what form will those "commitments" take?

Importantly, the Lima decision provides that each country’s INDC shall include a clear statement of emissions mitigation, and may include quantifiable information on reference points (such as base year), time frame of implementation and coverage, assumptions and methodological approaches for estimating and accounting for greenhouse gas emissions, as well as each country’s own assessment of its INDC’s fairness and ambition.  These statements of national contributions are to be submitted by the end of March, 2015, although countries that miss that “deadline” can then make their submissions by June.

How can a "statement of emissions mitigation"—not a commitment to emissions mitigation, merely a vague statement about it—be "clear" if the party (country) in question may or may not include "quantifiable information on reference points (such as base year), time frame of implementation" and all the rest?

Here we encounter the very essence of human bullshit because actual emissions mitigation is a dangerous road to go down (read Adventures In Flatland, Part II and Part III).

The only thing that "clear" about the Lima Call For Action is that it was only possible to get all the parties on board because no country had to commit itself to anything emissions reduction-wise—not even in the future!

If that isn't abject failure, I don't know what is.

Finally, the main bone of contention in Lima was how much compensation ($$$) and technology transfers the rich countries will make to the "developing" countries so those up-and-comers will not burn fossil fuels. India led the fight on the developing side. The rich countries clearly did not want to compensate the poorer countries on anything like the the scale they wanted, and did not.

So those talks failed too. The Lima Call For Action was mostly about money, who has it and who will get it. At least humans are consistent. Sigh.

 

Comments

[colinc]

"The Lima Call For Action was mostly about money, who has it and who will get it."

It has been my observation for the past 2 decades that, in fact, the very lives of 90+% of all the people in OECD countries and, more recently, "developing" nations are "all about the mother-fuckin' money." (H/T Leopold Stoch.) For more than a century that has been the main point in the programming to which we have all been subjected for the dual purposes of enriching the already too wealthy and reducing everyone else to mere resources, i.e. cogs in a vast "machine" serving the primary goal previously stated. Unless one is a billionaire-plus, and in the "favor" of those with even more, all others are no more than "fodder." Indeed, any actions taken at this time or in the future to "mitigate" AGW will only and exclusively enhance the survivability of the parasites which have enslaved the masses. Therefore, the choices "we the people" should be considering are 1) save "them" so they can do it all over again or 2) wipe the slate clean and let "nature" begin anew in a few million years.