U.N. climate negotiators sweat over detail and divides

[rooster59]

U.N. climate negotiators sweat over detail and divides

By Barbara Lewis and Anna Koper

 

FILE PHOTO: Participants take part in the plenary session during COP24 U.N. Climate Change Conference 2018 in Katowice, Poland December 4, 2018. REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

 

KATOWICE, Poland (Reuters) - Half-way through talks to breathe life into the Paris climate deal negotiators haggled over how to share the cost of curbing global warming and struggled to bridge deep political divides.

 

The two weeks of talks, which began at the start of the week, are billed as the most important U.N. conference since the Paris 2015 agreement on climate change.

 

The challenge is to meet a year-end deadline to agree a rule book to limit global warming, when the unity that underpinned the Paris talks has fragmented. U.S. President Donald Trump repeated his call to scrap the Paris climate pact.

 

By the end of Saturday, negotiators aim to have a simplified a draft for high-level ministerial debate starting on Monday.

 

"We still have a lot to do," Michal Kurtyka, the Polish president of the U.N. talks, told a news conference. "It is very technical, very complex, very difficult."

 

Delegates said a major issue was how to reassure developing countries that richer nations would deliver on promises to help finance the cost of shifting to a lower carbon economy.

 

Environmental campaigners are concerned the Katowice talks will lack ambition, after the United States said this year it was withdrawing from the U.N. process. Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, in the talks on Saturday added a further challenge by blocking consensus on a major scientific report.

 

The U.N. report published in October said it was possible to limit the earth's temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and prevent damaging levels of global warming provided radical changes in energy consumption and other steps were implemented.

 

But Saudi Arabia refused to back a proposal from other nations to use wording to "welcome" the report.

 

Delegates said the task of driving the process forward would fall to ministers next week.

 

"It’s a question of who wins? The likes of the European Union and China with economies deeply invested in climate action and dependent on multilateralism for global trade, or the likes of Saudi dissenters of climate science, with vested interests that put us all in the firing line?" Camilla Born, senior policy advisor at E3G, a non-governmental organisation, said.

 

On the streets of Katowice, the capital of Poland's Silesian coal-mining region, thousands of demonstrators marched to demand a deal to limit temperature rises to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

 

Environmental campaigners also marched in Paris, where violent demonstrations triggered by a fuel tax have taken place.

 

Delegates in Katowice said the French social protests were unrelated to the U.N. climate debate, but U.S. President Donald Trump seized on them to call for an end to "the ridiculous and extremely expensive Paris Agreement".

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-12-09

 

[farcanell]

3 hours ago, rooster59 said:

It’s a question of who wins? The likes of the European Union and China with economies deeply invested in climate action and dependent on multilateralism for global trade, or the likes of Saudi dissenters of climate science, with vested interests that put us all in the firing line?" Camilla Born, senior policy advisor at E3G, a non-governmental organisation, said.

So now everyone is starting to look towards China to lead us into the future..... MAGA!

[Emster23]

Welcome the new axis of evil: USA, Russia and Saudi Arabia

[IAMHERE]

Better get some input from those yellow shirts in Paris, the tax they are against was to assist in the cost of curing climate change. Everybody was for fixing climate change as long as the USA was gonna do all the paying, now not so much.

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎12‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 12:46 PM, rooster59 said:

The U.N. report published in October said it was possible to limit the earth's temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and prevent damaging levels of global warming provided radical changes in energy consumption and other steps were implemented.

Sounds good, but that is as far as it will go. All they do is talk, but short on actual real action to take to curb temperature rise. China wants to increase air travel- so much for their contribution.

Meanwhile, far as I know, not a single word about limiting the actual cause of pollution- too many people. When they come up with a strategy to reduce the world's population to 1930 levels I'll take them seriously. Till then, far as I'm concerned, they are just a bunch of parasites milking their positions to go on expensive junkets around the world, and have a good time at tax payer's expense, while achieving zero in real terms.

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎12‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 10:29 PM, IAMHERE said:

Better get some input from those yellow shirts in Paris, the tax they are against was to assist in the cost of curing climate change. Everybody was for fixing climate change as long as the USA was gonna do all the paying, now not so much.

If you believe that the tax would actually have been used for that purpose, you need to do some research. Governments are great at saying they need tax for something in particular, and then wasting it on boondoggles- business as usual. Politicians have no idea how to actually run a country-bureaucrats do that.

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎12‎/‎9‎/‎2018 at 4:19 PM, farcanell said:

So now everyone is starting to look towards China to lead us into the future..... MAGA!

LOL. The only future China is interested in is one where they rule the world, IMO. So far the plan is working well.

[RickBradford]

On 12/9/2018 at 6:46 AM, rooster59 said:

The U.N. report published in October said it was possible to limit the earth's temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius and prevent damaging levels of global warming provided radical changes in energy consumption and other steps were implemented.

Classic UN-style activism.

 

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -  H. L. Mencken

[BangkokBaksida]

On 12/9/2018 at 6:46 AM, rooster59 said:

Delegates said a major issue was how to reassure developing countries that richer nations would deliver on promises to help finance the cost of shifting to a lower carbon economy.

This, I'm afraid, is the whole point of the "global warming" scam:  to transfer money from richer countries to poorer ones - with a good chunk of the transferred money getting lost along the way.

[RickBradford]

2 minutes ago, BangkokBaksida said:

This, I'm afraid, is the whole point of the "global warming" scam:  to transfer money from richer countries to poorer ones - with a good chunk of the transferred money getting lost along the way.

All carefully concealed by fine-sounding phrases like "saving the planet".