11th Petersberg Climate Dialogue - Report

Adam Vaughan of the New Scientist in the latest of his weekly "Fix the Planet" newsletters reported on the recent Petersberg Climate Dialogue. No surprise that Angela Merkel lead from the front and there was no US representative:

Hello, and welcome to Fix the Planet. Don’t be deluded that the pandemic is going to reverse the long-term trend of rising global carbon emissions, warns Angela Merkel. The German chancellor was in forthright form on Tuesday at the 11th Petersberg climate dialogue, an annual meeting to boost international climate action. I don’t usually cover climate diplomacy in this newsletter. However, the virtual meeting was a key one given the seniority of speakers – including Merkel and the UN secretary general António Guterres – and the fact the coronavirus has meant many key milestones in international climate negotiations have been cancelled or postponed.

Angela Merkel at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue. Photo: Michael Kappeler / Getty

So what did they say? Merkel drew several links between the coronavirus crisis and climate change, including the need for multilateralism. “The coronavirus pandemic shows us, yet again, albeit in a painful way, that international cooperation is essential, is crucial,” she said. While noting carbon dioxide emissions were temporarily down, she cautioned: “That does not mean we are able to reverse the trend.” Merkel, who has been hesitant in the past to throw Germany’s backing behind the European Union’s for a more ambitious climate target, said she supported the bloc’s proposed goal of cutting emissions by 50 to 55 per cent by 2030. Notably, she also said it was important countries remain committed to submitting new ambitious plans for cutting emissions, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). We’re stuffed without stronger NDCs - the current ones would see the world warm by more than 3°C. And Guterres? He was combative and strongly tied the pandemic to action on cutting emissions. “Like the coronavirus, greenhouse gas respects no boundaries. Isolationism is a trap,” he said. In particular, he said any covid-19 financial stimulus must be linked to greening economies at the same time. Like Merkel, he called for new NDCs. The big polluters of the world were “key to tackling the climate crisis”, he said, adding the 2015 Paris deal wouldn’t have been possible without the US and China. Without the big emitters, he warned efforts risk being “doomed”. So what did the meeting achieve? “There was some forward-leaning language from all of them, about the need for new, more ambitious targets and the need for a green financial stimulus. The acid test will be whether those are delivered,” says Pete Betts at the European Climate Foundation, who was the UK’s chief climate negotiator until 2018. Imke Lübbeke at WWF Europe says there was a welcome, strong commitment from Merkel and Guterres that any recovery should be a green one. “Merkel was very clear, saying we should not delay [climate] action,” she adds. She was pleased to see the chancellor backing the EU’s tougher climate target, but argues it isn’t enough – Lübbeke wants to see a 65 per cent cut instead of 50 to 55 per cent.

UN secretary general António Guterres says we are "doomed" without climate action by big emitters.

What about those new climate plans, the NDCs? Officially, governments need to submit a new NDC before the end of this year, according to the timetable set out by the Paris agreement. So far, just eight countries have done so. Japan, one of the eight, hasn’t even increased its ambition. Moreover, those countries represent less than 3 per cent of emissions. Nicholas Stern at the London School of Economics says: “I do think the more we can get strong NDCs through this year the better.” He says the EU will be key to influencing what China does. He adds that, while it would be good if the enhanced NDCs are delivered on time, it would be a worthwhile trade-off if they came a little late, but strong. Don’t we also need action from the US? Yes. The US was notably absent from this week’s meeting, as it has been since president Donald Trump took office in 2017. While the US is on course to withdraw from the Paris agreement in November, a victory for his rival Joe Biden would overturn that. The expectation is a Biden presidency would see a big ramping-up of international climate action. Some major countries are waiting to see what happens in the US election before making their own decisions, observers think.

A lesson from CoviD-19: We are not prepared for climate change

The following was originally posted by Kate Guy on The Conversation website. It's worth a few minutes of your time.

Coronavirus shows we are not at all prepared for the security threat of climate change

How might a single threat, even one deemed unlikely, spiral into an evolving global crisis which challenges the foundations of global security, economic stability and democratic governance, all in the matter of a few weeks?

My research on threats to national security, governance and geopolitics has focused on exactly this question, albeit with a focus on the disruptive potential of climate change, rather than a novel coronavirus. In recent work alongside intelligence and defence experts at the think-tank Center for Climate and Security, I analysed how future warming scenarios could disrupt security and governance worldwide throughout the 21st century. Our culminating report, A Security Threat Assessment of Global Climate Change, was launched in Washington just as the first coronavirus cases were spreading undetected across the US.

The analysis uses future scenarios to imagine how and where regions might be increasingly vulnerable to the resource, weather and economic shocks brought about by an increasingly destabilised climate. In it, we warn:

Even at scenarios of low warming, each region of the world will face severe risks to national and global security in the next three decades. Higher levels of warming will pose catastrophic, and likely irreversible, global security risks over the course of the 21st century.

Little did we know when writing these words and imagining the rapidly evolving shocks to come, that a very similar test of our global system was already brewing as governments sputtered to contain the damage of COVID-19.

Over the first few crucial weeks of this crisis, we’ve seen world leaders take a number of actions that indicate how climate shocks could destabilise the world order. With climate change disasters, as with infectious diseases, rapid response time and global coordination are of the essence. At this stage in the COVID-19 situation, there are three primary lessons for a climate-changing future: the immense challenge of global coordination during a crisis, the potential for authoritarian emergency responses, and the spiralling danger of compounding shocks.

An uncoordinated response

First, while the COVID-19 crisis has engendered a massive public response, governments have been largely uncoordinated in their efforts to manage the virus’s spread. According to Oxford’s COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, countries vary widely in the stringency of their policies, with no two countries implementing a synchronised course of action.

While traditionally a great power like the US might step forward to direct a collective international response, instead the Trump administration has repeatedly chosen to blindside its allies with the introduction of new limitations on trade and movement of peoples. This mismanagement has led to each nation going on its own, despite the fact that working together would net greater gains for all. As the New York Times’s Mark Landler put it, the voices of world leaders are forming “less a choir than a cacophony”, leading to mixed global messages, undetected spread, and ongoing fights over limited resources.

In the face of climate change, such a lack of coordination could be be highly destabilising to world social and economic order. The mass displacement of people, the devaluation of assets, rising seas and natural disasters will call for shared practices and common decency in the face of continued tragedy. Many climate impacts will raise new questions the world has yet to answer. What do we do with nation-states that can no longer reside in their homeland? How do we compensate sectors for ceasing harmful practices such as fossil fuel extraction and deforestation, especially where national economies may depend on them?

We also face new global governance questions around the use of risky geoengineering technologies, which can be deployed unilaterally to alter local climates, but with the potential for vast unintended regional or even global consequences. These are challenges which, like climate change itself, can only be solved collectively through coordinated policies and clear communication. The sort of wayward responses and lack of leadership in response to COVID-19 would only lead to further destruction of livelihoods and order in the decades to come.

Authoritarian agendas

This historic moment is also offering new opportunities for leaders to further dangerous, illiberal agendas. Authoritarians have long used emergency situations as a pretext to further curtail individual rights and consolidate personal power against backdrops of real or imagined public danger. We’ve seen these actions spiral worldwide in the past month in autocracies and backsliding democracies, alike.

President Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines has given security services the directive to open fire on protestors while Vladimir Putin is deploying mass surveillance technologies and new criminal penalties to monitor the Russian population. Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orbán has forced new emergency powers through parliament that muzzle political opposition and allow for his indefinite rule. Even the supposed democratic bastions of the US and the UK are seeing worrying signs of autocratic policies, as surveillance drones are deployed to monitor citizens, scientific expertise is undermined, and open-ended emergency powers are granted to police forces for undetermined time frames.

A warming world will only result in more disaster-related events for power-hungry leaders to take advantage of in the years ahead. From the nationalisation of resources to the deployment of militaries in response to climate shocks, it can be all-too-easy for public safety needs to bleed into personal political opportunities. The second-order effects of climate change, from supply chain instability to the migration of peoples, will also provide authoritarian leaders more fodder for their ethno-nationalist ideologies, which inflame divisions in society and could help broaden their personal appeal. Without clear and sturdy limits on executive power, the disruptive impacts of climate change will be used to further chip away at democratic freedoms across the world.

Overlapping shocks are the new normal

Finally, this situation is teaching the globalised world new lessons on the devastating consequences of compounding shocks. Managing a deadly global pandemic is bad enough, even before you layer on the massive unemployment, trade disruptions and economic shutdown that its mitigation sets in motion.

The months ahead will bring about additional crises – some related to the pandemic, like a massive uptick in public debt used to bail out national economies. But other near-term shocks may themselves be climate change-induced, from new forecasts for large-scale floods this spring in the central US, to a prospective repeat of 2019’s severe summer heat waves across Europe.

These disasters have the potential to strike just at the time when people are being advised to shelter inside, many in at-risk areas and without adequate indoor cooling. Overlapping, historic shocks like this are becoming the new normal in our climate-changed era. As public disaster response budgets spiral and loss of life mounts each year, governments will continue to struggle to contain their compounding damage.

Scientists and security professionals alike have long warned about the devastating potential of climate change, alluding to how it might rattle our global governance systems to breaking point. But few could have expected that the fissures in our institutions would be revealed so soon, let alone on such a disturbingly large scale.

We can treat the current global crisis as a sort of “stress test” on these institutions, exposing their vulnerabilities but also providing the urgent impetus to build new resilience. In that light, we could successfully rebound from this moment with more solid global security and cooperation than we knew going into it. Decision-makers should take a hard look at their current responses, problem-solving methods, and institutional design with future climate forecasts like our Threat Assessment in mind.

We know that even steeper and more frequent global shocks are in store, particularly without serious climate change mitigation efforts. What we don’t yet know is whether we’ll repeat current patterns of mismanagement and abuse, or if we’ll chart a more proactive and resilient course through the risks that lie ahead.

Plastic Straws Survive CoviD-19!!

A bit tongue-in-cheek that headline but it does just highlight the sometimes bizarre consequences of the CoviD-19 pandemic. Edie has reported that Defra has pushed back the ban on plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds to October 2020 (It should have come in this month). Some may shrug their shoulders and say that it's just a couple of months, why worry, but there is cause for concern if this is an indication of a general relaxation of environmental concerns. In this case the ban has been in the offing for a couple of years and producers should have been damn-nearly ready by the time SARS-CoV-2 started its dirty work in the UK. A delay is really not justified.

Free Access to TNA Records

Any genies out there? Read this.

Time to Call HMG to Account

I have been keeping my counsel, sitting on my hands, biting my tongue, giving the powers that be the benefit of the doubt, and hoping, just hoping.

Enough. That bloody tin badge has done it for me. How dare Matt Hancock wave a ****ing badge about (costing more than some care workers' hourly pay) as if it were a cure all.

It is time that these arse-protecting ditherers were called out.

OK - so you are in a situation that you have never experienced before. You are unsure of how to proceed. You don't understand all the science. The science itself is not conclusive (That's what science is, dumbo. If it was totally conclusive there'd be no need for scientists!).

You know you will make mistakes. So stand up. Admit it. And engage us in your thinking. Allows us to challenge you. Only through challenge and scrutiny will you make better decisions.

And, with a bit of humility read this.

My New MP's Office Responded Pretty Quickly

But didn't really read my original email:



Dear Kris

Thank you for your rapid response.

May I bring to your attention a couple of things?

1) The automated reply from Ms Richardson's office asks that correspondents supply a telephone contact number. I do not understand why that is necessary. You have my email address for written interaction and my postal address to check against the electoral register so that you may be ensured that I am one of Ms Richardson's constituents. I suggest that you consider dropping the call for a telephone number to be supplied.

2) In my email I ask for Ms Richardson's approach to ensuring that COP26 is a success and for her take on not delaying conclusion of Brexit negotiations. In neither case is it necessary for "the relevant department" to reply.

Yours sincerely




Sent from my Personal account via my desktop.

On 14/04/2020 11:02, HEARSUM, Kristopher wrote:

Dear Richard,

Many thanks for your email regarding climate change.

I want to follow on from the automated response you would have received to let you know that I have read and noted the points you have raised and thank you for taking the time to bring this to my attention.

We are dealing with a much higher volume of correspondence due to COVID19. However, I can confirm that your concerns have been raised with the relevant depertment who will respond more fully to the points you have kindly brought to our attention.

I appreciate your patience in the meantime. Stay safe.

Kind regards,

Kris Hearsum

Kristopher Hearsum | Office Manager
The Office of Angela Richardson MP
Member of Parliament for Guildford
House of Commons, London, SW1A 0AA

My MP's Automated Response

Hmm! All a tad pompous isn't it?

Angela Richardson MP

Member of Parliament for Guildford
House of Commons

London SW1A 0AA

Thank you for your email which has been safely received by the newly elected Member of Parliament for Guildford.

Please ensure that you have provided your full name, postal address and contact telephone number with your email. If you have not, please re-send your email with this information.

Please note that there is a strict Parliamentary convention which means that I can only reply to my own constituents. If you are unsure if I am your MP, please click here and enter your postcode.

My office aims to respond to all enquiries as quickly as possible. That said, please be aware that I receive a significant volume of correspondence and while I will try to reply to diary and policy queries within 14 working days, there may be a short delay in getting back to you. Please be advised that the volume of correspondence is currently much higher than usual due to concerns around COVID19. Therefore, if the response time to your email is greater than usual, your patience is appreciated.

We do understand it is a worrying and uncertain time for many and the current crisis affects us all, including our friends and family. In such times we all need to pull together and help one another.

Please be assured that if you contact me concerning urgent casework you will receive an initial response as quickly as possible.

Thank you again for getting in touch,

 

 

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UK Parliament Disclaimer: this e-mail is confidential to the intended recipient. If you have received it in error, please notify the sender and delete it from your system. Any unauthorised use, disclosure, or copying is not permitted. This e-mail has been checked for viruses, but no liability is accepted for any damage caused by any virus transmitted by this e-mail. This e-mail address is not secure, is not encrypted and should not be used for sensitive data.

First Email to my New MP

Starting off gently:


Dear Ms Richardson,

This being my first communication with you may I offer my congratulations on your becoming MP for Guildford earlier this year?

As I write we face a global existential threat in the form of climate change and the near-term crisis that is the SARS-CoV-2 induced Covid-19 pandemic.

The latter has resulted in the postponement of COP26, due to be held in Glasgow in November. This was clearly the right thing to do, given the attention that there necessarily has to be on managing Covid-19. However, it should not prevent the underlying preparative work from taking place. Indeed, it provides an opportunity for the UK to catch up from the chaos surrounding the sacking of Claire O'Neill and the general unpreparedness that has been evident since that time. There is much heavy lifting for the UK to do to ensure that this, the biggest moment in climate change negotiations since the 2015 Paris agreement, is a success. The near 200 countries who signed up to the Paris agreement are due to upgrade their emissions plans at COP26 in line with the agreed target of less that 1.5 degC global temperature rise. A mere 6 have so far presented their plans and at least one, that from Japan, has been universally described woefully inadequate. The leg work required of the UK to ensure that COP26 members bring forward, and subsequently undertake, realistic and robust plans should not be underestimated. I will be interested to hear how you will be encouraging the achievement of this goal over the next year.

Having said that delaying COP26 was the correct thing to do I am mystified as to why the UK Government is sticking to its end of 2020 target for concluding Brexit negotiations. The financial and commercial damage being done by the Covid-19 emergency is such that the UK needs to conclude a deal with the EU that maximises the long term health of the country's economy. I do not see how rushing to an end-point while so much time and effort is being expended on managing the on-going health crisis will achieve this. I will be pleased to understand your take on this.

Yours sincerely

COP26 Postponed

Edie's post says enough. Will the UK government get its act together? Hmmm.