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A Massive Climate Summit Just Started in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.

by Myrna Posted on November 27, 2015

Diplomats and scientists are descending on the French capital Monday. They’ll try to save the world. INTERPIXELS/Shutterstock On Monday, roughly 40,000 heads of state, diplomats, scientists, activists, policy experts, and journalists will descend on an airport in the northern Paris suburbs for the biggest meeting on climate change since at least 2009—or maybe ever. The summit is organized by the United Nations and is primarily aimed at producing an agreement that will serve as the world’s blueprint for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of global warming. This is a major milestone in the climate change saga, and it has been in the works for years. Here’s what you need to know: What’s going on at this summit, exactly? At the heart of the summit are the core negotiations, which are off-limits to the public and journalists. Like any high-stakes diplomatic summit, representatives of national governments will sit in a big room and parse through pages of text, word by word. The final document will actually be a jigsaw puzzle of two separate pieces. The most important part is the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). These are commitments made individually by each country about how they plan to reduce their carbon footprints. The United States, for example, has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, mostly by going after carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Nearly every country on Earth has submitted an INDC, together covering about 95 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. (You can explore them in detail here.) The video below, from Climate Desk partner Grist, has a good rundown of how this all really works. The INDCs will be plugged in to a core agreement, the final text of which will be hammered out during the negotiations. It will likely include language about how wealthy nations should help pay for poor nations’ efforts to adapt to climate change; how countries should revise and strengthen their commitments over time; and how countries can critically evaluate each other’s commitments. While the INDCs are unlikely to be legally binding (that is, a country could change its commitment without international repercussions), certain elements of the core agreement may be binding. There’s some disagreement between the United States and Europe over what the exact legal status of this document will be. A formal treaty would need the approval of the Republican-controlled US Senate, which is almost certainly impossible. It’s more likely that President Barack Obama will sign off on the document as an “executive agreement,” which doesn’t need to go through Congress. Meanwhile, outside the negotiating room, thousands of business leaders, state and local officials, activists, scientists, and others will carry out a dizzying array of side events, press conferences, workshops, etc. It’s basically going to be a giant party for the world’s climate nerds. But what about the terrorist attacks in Paris? Of course, all of this will be happening while the French capital is still reeling from the bombings and shootings that left 129 dead on November 13. Shortly after the attacks, French officials affirmed that the summit would still happen. But it will be tightly controlled, with loads of additional security measures. As my colleague James West has reported, many of the major rallies and marches that activists had planned will be canceled at the behest of French authorities. So the festive aspects of the summit are likely to be toned way down, with attention focused just on the formal events needed to complete the agreement. The summit could also direct a lot of attention to the links between climate change, terrorism, and national security. Is this actually going to stop climate change? Short answer, no. The latest estimate is that the INDCs on the table will limit global warming to about 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. As I wrote in October, “That’s above the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) limit scientists say is necessary to avert the worst impacts—but it’s also about 1 degree C less warming than would happen if the world continued on its present course.” No one expects that this summit will be the end of the battle to stop climate change. As technology improves and countries get more confident in their ability to curb greenhouses gases, they’ll be able to step up their action over time. That’s why it’s essential for the agreement to include a requirement for countries to do so. In any case, even if the whole world stopped burning all fossil fuels right now, warming from existing greenhouse gas emissions would continue for decades, so adaptation is also a crucial part of the agreement. Some environmentalists have criticized that incremental approach as not urgent enough, given the scale of the problem. They could be right. But the fact is that right now, there’s no international agreement at all. The Paris talks will lay an essential groundwork for solving this problem over the next couple of decades. And there’s a pretty good chance the talks will be successful. At the last major climate summit, in 2009 in Copenhagen, negotiations crumbled because officials couldn’t agree on a set of global greenhouse gas limits that would hold most countries to the same standard despite differences in their resources and needs. That’s why, this time around, the approach is bottom-up: Because countries have already worked out their INDCs, there’s no ambiguity about what they’re willing to do and no need to agree on every detail. Meanwhile, the mere existence of the talks has already spurred a wave of new investment in clean energy, new commitments from cities and states around the globe, and other actions that aren’t part of the core agreement. And the international peer pressure around the INDCs has already made it clear that simply ignoring climate change isn’t a realistic geopolitical option, even for countries like Russia or the oil-producing Gulf states. That’s a significant change from what would be happening in the absence of the talks. In other words, it’s safe to say that the Paris summit has already been somewhat successful, and now we have the opportunity to see how far that success can go. So everything is peaches and cream? Not quite. There are some big remaining questions about how much money the United States and other wealthy countries will commit to help island nations, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and other places that are highly vulnerable to global warming. The international community is still far short of its goal of raising $100 billion annually by 2020 to fund adaptation. The legal status of the agreement remains unclear. We don’t know whether countries can agree on a long-term target date (say, 2100) to fully cease all greenhouse gas emissions. And it’s unclear how much tension there will be between juggernauts such as the United States, China, and the 43-country-strong negotiating bloc of highly vulnerable developing nations. At Climate Desk, we’ll have an eye on all these questions, and more—both from the ground in Paris and from our newsrooms in the United States. So stay tuned. Originally posted here –  A Massive Climate Summit Just Started in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know. ; ; ;

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A Massive Climate Summit Just Started in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.

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A Massive Climate Summit Is About to Happen in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.

by GayAbdullah Posted on November 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday, roughly 40,000 heads of state, diplomats, scientists, activists, policy experts, and journalists will descend on an airport in the northern Paris suburbs for the biggest meeting on climate change since at least 2009—or maybe ever. The summit is organized by the United Nations and is primarily aimed at producing an agreement that will serve as the world’s blueprint for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the impacts of global warming. This is a major milestone in the climate change saga, and it has been in the works for years. Here’s what you need to know:

What’s going on at this summit, exactly? At the heart of the summit are the core negotiations, which are off-limits to the public and journalists. Like any high-stakes diplomatic summit, representatives of national governments will sit in a big room and parse through pages of text, word by word. The final document will actually be a jigsaw puzzle of two separate pieces. The most important part is the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs). These are commitments made individually by each country about how they plan to reduce their carbon footprints. The United States, for example, has committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, mostly by going after carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Nearly every country on Earth has submitted an INDC, together covering about 95 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. (You can explore them in detail here.) The video above, from Climate Desk partner Grist, has a good rundown of how this all really works.

The INDCs will be plugged in to a core agreement, the final text of which will be hammered out during the negotiations. It will likely include language about how wealthy nations should help pay for poor nations’ efforts to adapt to climate change; how countries should revise and strengthen their commitments over time; and how countries can critically evaluate each other’s commitments. While the INDCs are unlikely to be legally binding (that is, a country could change its commitment without international repercussions), certain elements of the core agreement may be binding. There’s some disagreement between the United States and Europe over what the exact legal status of this document will be. A formal treaty would need the approval of the Republican-controlled US Senate, which is almost certainly impossible. It’s more likely that President Barack Obama will sign off on the document as an “executive agreement,” which doesn’t need to go through Congress.

Meanwhile, outside the negotiating room, thousands of business leaders, state and local officials, activists, scientists, and others will carry out a dizzying array of side events, press conferences, workshops, etc. It’s basically going to be a giant party for the world’s climate nerds.

But what about the terrorist attacks in Paris? Of course, all of this will be happening while the French capital is still reeling from the bombings and shootings that left 129 dead on November 13. Shortly after the attacks, French officials affirmed that the summit would still happen. But it will be tightly controlled, with loads of additional security measures. As my colleague James West has reported, many of the major rallies and marches that activists had planned will be canceled at the behest of French authorities. So the festive aspects of the summit are likely to be toned way down, with attention focused just on the formal events needed to complete the agreement. The summit could also direct a lot of attention to the links between climate change, terrorism, and national security.

Is this actually going to stop climate change? Short answer, no. The latest estimate is that the INDCs on the table will limit global warming to about 2.7 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. As I wrote in October, “That’s above the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) limit scientists say is necessary to avert the worst impacts—but it’s also about 1 degree C less warming than would happen if the world continued on its present course.” No one expects that this summit will be the end of the battle to stop climate change. As technology improves and countries get more confident in their ability to curb greenhouses gases, they’ll be able to step up their action over time. That’s why it’s essential for the agreement to include a requirement for countries to do so. In any case, even if the whole world stopped burning all fossil fuels right now, warming from existing greenhouse gas emissions would continue for decades, so adaptation is also a crucial part of the agreement.

Some environmentalists have criticized that incremental approach as not urgent enough, given the scale of the problem. They could be right. But the fact is that right now, there’s no international agreement at all. The Paris talks will lay an essential groundwork for solving this problem over the next couple of decades. And there’s a pretty good chance the talks will be successful. At the last major climate summit, in 2009 in Copenhagen, negotiations crumbled because officials couldn’t agree on a set of global greenhouse gas limits that would hold most countries to the same standard despite differences in their resources and needs. That’s why, this time around, the approach is bottom-up: Because countries have already worked out their INDCs, there’s no ambiguity about what they’re willing to do and no need to agree on every detail.

Meanwhile, the mere existence of the talks has already spurred a wave of new investment in clean energy, new commitments from cities and states around the globe, and other actions that aren’t part of the core agreement. And the international peer pressure around the INDCs has already made it clear that simply ignoring climate change isn’t a realistic geopolitical option, even for countries like Russia or the oil-producing Gulf states. That’s a significant change from what would be happening in the absence of the talks. In other words, it’s safe to say that the Paris summit has already been somewhat successful, and now we have the opportunity to see how far that success can go.

So everything is peaches and cream? Not quite. There are some big remaining questions about how much money the United States and other wealthy countries will commit to help island nations, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and other places that are highly vulnerable to global warming. The international community is still far short of its goal of raising $100 billion annually by 2020 to fund adaptation. The legal status of the agreement remains unclear. We don’t know whether countries can agree on a long-term target date (say, 2100) to fully cease all greenhouse gas emissions. And it’s unclear how much tension there will be between juggernauts such as the United States, China, and the 43-country-strong negotiating bloc of highly vulnerable developing nations.

At Climate Desk, we’ll have an eye on all these questions, and more—both from the ground in Paris and from our newsrooms in the United States. So stay tuned.

This story has been revised.

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A Massive Climate Summit Is About to Happen in Paris. Here’s What You Need to Know.

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Purina Pet Food Is So Much More Disgusting Than We Even Knew

by OTHLeannez Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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If you’ve ever purchased seafood or pet food from Nestlé, you may have unwittingly contributed to the abuse of migrant workers in Southeast Asia.

On Monday, Nestlé admitted that it had found indications of forced labor, human trafficking, and child labor in its supply chain in Thailand, where the Switzerland-based company sources some of the seafood that it sells in supermarkets around the world, including in the United States. The findings came after an internal investigation that was launched by Nestlé in December last year, following reports by media and NGOs that linked the company’s shrimp, prawns, and Purina brand pet foods with abusive working conditions.

Many of the workers in question are migrants from Thailand’s less developed neighbors, Burma and Cambodia, who are tricked into laboring on fishing boats after fleeing persecution and poverty at home, according to the Massachusetts-based nonprofit Verité, which at Nestlé’s request interviewed workers at six of the company’s production sites in Thailand. Workers “had been subjected to deceptive recruitment practices that started in their home countries, transported to Thailand under inhumane conditions, charged with excessive fees leading to debt bondage in some cases, exposed to exploitative and hazardous working conditions, and, at the time of assessment, were living under sub-par to degrading conditions,” Verité wrote in its report.

But Nestlé isn’t the only one with a tainted supply chain: The mistreatment of migrants is systematic in Thailand’s fishing sector, Verité found, meaning that other American and European companies that buy seafood from the country are likely complicit in similar labor abuses. These abuses have been highlighted by the US State Department, which last year downgraded Thailand to the lowest level in its annual report on human trafficking, and they underpin several lawsuits that have been filed recently against retailers including Nestlé and Costco Wholesale Corp. Steve Berman, managing partner of the law firm Hagens Berman, which in August filed a class-action lawsuit against Nestlé, told the New York Times that the company’s report on Monday was “a step in the right direction,” but added that “our litigation will go forward because Nestlé Purina still fails to disclose on its products, as is required by law, that slave labor was used in its making.”

For its part, Nestlé has vowed to publish a strategy to protect workers in Thailand, including by bringing in outside auditors and training boat owners about human rights. “This will be neither a quick nor an easy endeavour, but we look forward to making significant progress in the months ahead,” Magdi Batato, Nestlé’s executive vice president in charge of operations, said in a statement.

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Purina Pet Food Is So Much More Disgusting Than We Even Knew

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France Scrambles to Secure Upcoming Climate Talks After Deadly Attacks

by EvanGenders Posted on November 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Saturday, just a day after terrorist attacks in Paris left at least 129 people dead and hundreds more injured, the French government vowed to forge ahead with a long-scheduled international summit on climate change.

The summit, which is scheduled to start in just two weeks, will take place at an airport in the northern suburbs of Paris, not far from the stadium that was the site of multiple bombings on Friday. There, world leaders plan to hash out final details of the most wide-reaching international agreement ever to combat climate change. White House officials confirmed to Politico that President Barack Obama still intends to attend the talks, as scheduled prior to the attacks. Dozens of other heads of state are expected to be there as well.

“The summit will go ahead with reinforced security measures,” French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said. “This is an absolutely necessary step in the battle against climate change and of course it will take place.”

Christiana Figueres, who chairs the UN agency overseeing the talks, released a similar statement on Twitter:

Even prior to the attacks, 30,000 French police officers were scheduled to secure the event, according to Radio France International. More than 10,000 diplomats, non-governmental organization employees, and journalists are expected to attend the summit. Specific new security measures have not yet been made public, but Politico quoted an unnamed French official who said participants should expect “extremely tightened security” following the attacks.

Paul Bledsoe, a former climate advisor to President Bill Clinton, also told Politico that the attacks could actually improve the odds that the talks reach a successful outcome.

“The resolve of world leaders is going to be redoubled to gain an agreement and show that they can deliver for populations around the world. The likelihood for a successful agreement has only increased because of these attacks,” Bledsoe said.

On Thursday, just a day before the attacks, Secretary of State John Kerry appeared to butt heads with his French counterpart over what the exact legal status of the agreement will be. Other questions remain as well, such as how wealthy, heavily polluting countries such as the United States will help developing nations pay for climate change adaptation. But overall, the Paris talks are expected to yield a better outcome than the last major climate summit, in Copenhagen in 2009, which failed to produce any meaningful action to curb greenhouse gas emissions or prepare for the impacts of global warming.

Meanwhile, on Monday French officials said they would block a series of rallies and side events that were scheduled to take place outside the main negotiations. Environmental groups are scrambling to work out how to change their plans following the attack. Several groups involved in organizing protests and rallies that were intended to coicide with the Paris talks confirmed to Mother Jones that a hastily arranged meeting to hash out a plan will take place on Monday evening, Paris time. Will Davies, a spokesman for Avaaz, one of the main advocacy groups involved, said that despite the flurry of activity, plans for global marches in cities other than Paris were still going ahead as scheduled.

Stay tuned for more updates on this story.

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France Scrambles to Secure Upcoming Climate Talks After Deadly Attacks

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This Chart Shows Which Countries Are the Most Screwed by Climate Change

by SiobhanSez Posted on November 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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Verisk Maplecroft

One of the cruel ironies of climate change is that its impacts tend to fall hardest on the countries least equipped to manage them.

When drought or sea level rise strike the United States, communities at least have access to federal aid, top scientific expertise, public investment in expensive climate-ready infrastructure, and the like. But some of the most extreme effects of global warming are headed for developing countries—drought wiping out crops in East Africa, or catastrophic hurricanes pounding Southeast Asia—that don’t have access to those resources.

New research from Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consultancy, paints a pictures of where vulnerability to climate change is most pressing. Their analysis drew on three criteria: exposure to extreme events, based on the latest meteorological science; sensitivity to impacts (i.e., does a country have other sources of income and food supply if agriculture takes a hit?); and adaptive capacity—are the country’s government and social institutions prepared to work under adverse climate conditions and help citizens adapt to them?

Unsurprisingly, Africa and Southeast Asia ranked the lowest, while Scandinavian countries ranked the highest. (While definitely at risk from sea level rise, countries such as Norway and Sweden have rich, highly functional governments to manage adaptation.) The major global climate talks in Paris are coming up in just a couple weeks; the chart above makes it clear why it’s so important for big players like the US and China to work closely with delegations from developing countries on solutions that will provide immediate support and relief.

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This Chart Shows Which Countries Are the Most Screwed by Climate Change

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The Keystone XL Pipeline Isn’t Dead Yet. Here’s What You Need to Know About What Comes Next.

by Myrna Posted on November 3, 2015

Excerpt from:  The Keystone XL Pipeline Isn’t Dead Yet. Here’s What You Need to Know About What Comes Next. ; ; ;

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The Keystone XL Pipeline Isn’t Dead Yet. Here’s What You Need to Know About What Comes Next.

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The World’s Plan to Save Itself, in 6 Charts

by DewittRhein Posted on October 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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World leaders have a pretty comprehensive plan to fight climate change, according to a United Nations report released Friday—even if it doesn’t go as far as many of them had hoped.

In just over a month, representatives from most of the countries on Earth will gather in Paris in an attempt to finalize an international agreement to limit global warming and adapt to its impacts. The video above is a snappy explainer of what’s at stake at this meeting, but suffice it to say the proposed deal is split into two keys parts. First is the core agreement, parts of which may be legally binding, that comprises broad, non-specific guidelines for all countries. It calls on countries to take steps such as transparently reporting greenhouse gas emissions and committing to ramp up climate action over the next few decades.

But the real meat-and-potatoes is in the second part, the “intended nationally determined contributions” (INDCs). The INDCs are what sets the Paris talks apart from past attempts at a global climate agreement in Kyoto in 1997 and Copenhagen in 2009. Those summits either left out major polluters (the US dropped out of the Kyoto Protocol; China and India were exempted) or fell apart completely (Copenhagen), in large part because they were built around universal greenhouse gas reduction targets that not everyone could agree to.

This time around, the UN process is more like a potluck, where each country brings its own unique contribution based on its needs and abilities; those are the INDCs. The US, for example, has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025, mostly by going after carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. So far, according to the World Resources Institute, 126 plans have been submitted, covering about 86 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. (The European Union submitted one joint plan for all its members.) Those contributions are likely to limit global warming to around 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100. That’s above the 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) limit scientists say is necessary to avert the worst impacts—but it’s also about 1 degree C less warming than would would happen if the world continued on its present course.

Now, we have a bit more insight into how countries are planning to make this happen. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the group that is overseeing the Paris talks, combed through all the INDCs to look for trends. Its report is a bit convoluted and repetitive; I don’t recommend it to any but the nerdiest climate nerds. But I pulled out a few of the charts as an overview of what global action on climate change really looks like.

Types of targets: Most of the INDCs contain specific emission reduction targets. (Not all do; some countries, such as the small island nations, have such small or nonexistent emissions that it wouldn’t make sense to promise to reduce them.) The most common way to state these targets is to promise that emissions at X future date will be lower than they would be with no action. Indonesia, for example, has pledged to increase its emissions over the next 25 years by 29 percent less than it would have under a “business as usual” scenario. The US commitment fits in the second category, an “absolute” target where emissions actually begin to go down. Others specify a date at which emissions will “peak,” or set a goal for emissions per unit of GDP or energy production (“intensity”).

UNFCCC

Greenhouse gases: The commitments cover a broad range of greenhouse gases (most cover more than one), but carbon dioxide is the most common enemy. That’s no surprise, as it’s by far the most common.

UNFCCC

Economic sectors: In different countries, different economic sectors are more or less responsible for climate pollution. In the US, the number-one source of emissions is coal-fired power plants; thus, President Barack Obama’s plans focus on the power sector. In Indonesia, by contrast, deforestation is the biggest problem. Most plans cover more than one sector, but the most common is energy.

UNFCCC

How to fix it: This section finds that implementing renewable energy is the most common way countries are planning to meet their targets. More interesting is the tiny role played by carbon capture, use, and storage, down at the bottom of the chart. This refers to technology that “captures” greenhouse gas emissions on their way out of power plants, or directly from the atmosphere, and buries or re-purposes them. Support for carbon capture—also known as “clean coal”—is popular with policymakers who don’t want to curb coal use (including GOP presidential contender John Kasich), even though it remains costly and unproven at scale.

UNFCCC

How to adapt: Many countries’ INDCs also contain information about how they plan to adapt to climate change. Water use, agriculture, and public health appear to be the biggest areas of focus.

UNFCCC

A terrible, no-good, very bad summary: The most important question is clearly how all this adds up to reducing the world’s greenhouse gas footprint and averting the worst threats posed by climate change. But the chart that addresses this question (below) is…not great. I’m including it so you have some sense of one big drawback of the Paris approach—without universal emissions targets, it’s a lot harder to specify what the cumulative effect of these plans will really be. In short, here’s what this chart shows: The gray line is global greenhouse gas emissions up to today. The orange line is how emissions will grow over the next couple decades if we do nothing. The three blue lines show how quickly we would need to reduce emissions to keep global warming to 2 degrees C; the longer we wait to take action, the steeper the cuts have to be. The yellow rectangles show a snapshot of where the INDCs leave us.

UNFCCC

So, we’re better off than before, but we’re not out of danger. That’s why it’s essential for the core agreement to include requirements that countries adopt even more aggressive goals in the future; that’s one of the key things that will be debated in Paris. In other words, the Paris meeting is just one key battle in a war that’s far from over, Jennifer Morgan, director of the WRI’s global climate program, said in a statement.

“Despite the unprecedented level of effort, this report finds that current commitments are not yet sufficient to meet what the world needs. Countries must accelerate their efforts after the Paris summit in order to stave off climate change. The global climate agreement should include a clear mandate for countries to ramp up their commitments and set a long-term signal to phase out emissions as soon as possible.”

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The World’s Plan to Save Itself, in 6 Charts

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This Could Be the Worst Climate Crisis in the World Right Now

by RockyHTUNv Posted on October 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday afternoon, Indonesian President Joko Widodo cut short a visit to the United States and headed home to oversee efforts to extinguish a rash of epic wildfires that have engulfed his country.

Joko was in Washington, DC, for a photo op with President Barack Obama, to talk about climate change, and to promote Indonesia as a choice venue for foreign investors. His trip was also supposed to include a stopover in San Francisco for meetings with tech industry executives. But Joko’s decision to return to Indonesia early underscores the challenges his country faces in stopping the worst deforestation on Earth—deforestation that is playing a critical role in global climate change.

There’s more to global warming than pollution from cars and power plants. In the United States, coal-fired power plants are the No. 1 source of carbon dioxide emissions, followed by tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks. That’s why the Obama administration has focused its climate policies on those sources; Obama’s signature plan aims to reduce power-sector emissions by one-third by 2030. Those policies get some natural help from the ecosystem, as trees and soil soak up carbon out of the atmosphere. In the United States, thanks to forest conservation and climate-friendly farming practices, land use (a term climate wonks use to describe emissions that come from the land rather than from man-made infrastructure and vehicles) actually offsets about 13 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions from the rest of the economy.

But on a global scale, land use is a source of greenhouse gas emissions, rather than a sink. The biggest culprit is deforestation: Living trees store carbon; dead trees release it back into the atmosphere as they decompose. Emissions from crop soil, fertilizer, and livestock also play a major role. Overall, land use accounts for about one-quarter of the world’s total greenhouse gas footprint.

In Indonesia, the situation is even more dire. According to the World Resources Institute (WRI), land use represents 61 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. That means deforestation causes far more climate pollution than all of the country’s cars and power plants combined.

In fact, Indonesia has the world’s highest rate of deforestation, even higher than Brazil, which contains most of the Amazon rainforest. From 2000 to 2012, according to research published in Nature, Indonesia lost more than 23,000 square miles of forest to logging, agriculture, and other uses. That’s roughly the size of West Virginia. In 2010, the government attempted to put the brakes on deforestation by exchanging a two-year moratorium on new logging permits for $1 billion in aid from Norway and the United States. But according to Susan Minnemeyer, a forest analyst at the WRI, that policy appears to have had the “perverse impact of accelerating deforestation, because those with permits felt that they had to take action quickly or they would no longer be able to.”

This all adds up to global-scale pollution: Indonesia is the world’s fifth-ranking greenhouse gas emitter, coming in just behind Russia and India. In other words, we can’t stop climate change without saving Indonesia’s rainforests.

Indonesia is in the middle of a public health crisis from forest fire haze. The problem isn’t just deforestation, but how that deforestation is happening. In Indonesia, forests are often cleared out with fire. This can be done legally with a permit, but it’s often carried out illegally as well. This year, forest fires are also being fueled by El Niño-related weather patterns. The combination of El Niño and intentional deforestation has proven incredibly dangerous: The country has experienced nearly 100,000 fires so far this year, the worst since the last major El Niño in 1997. Fire activity typically ramps up in September and October, the end of the dry season, and over the last couple of weeks the conflagrations have grown to crisis proportions—hence Joko’s hasty return. The fires are so big they can be seen from space.

The greenhouse impact from those fires is staggering: On several days over the last month, emissions from Indonesian forest fires have exceeded all emissions from the US economy:

World Resources Institute

To make matters worse, more than half of those fires occur on land made of peat, the thick, soil-like material made from decomposed plant matter. Peat is packed with carbon, and fires that occur on peatland can have a global warming impact 200 times greater than fires on normal soil, according to the WRI. Last week, Joko said the government would stop issuing new permits for commercial development on peatland, but that won’t stop the fires that are already burning.

Climate pollution is just part of the problem. Firefighting costs are pushing $50 million per week. The impact of this fire season on Indonesia’s economy could reach $14 billion. And the thick blanket of haze that is stretching from the country across Southeast Asia has caused at least 10 deaths from haze-related illness and 500,000 cases of acute respiratory illness.

Your snacks and makeup are part of the problem. Of course, Indonesians aren’t just chopping and burning down trees for fun. Besides logging, one of the main uses for cleared land is to plant African oil palm, the fruits of which are used to produce palm oil. Palm oil is the world’s most popular form of vegetable oil, and half of it comes from Indonesia. It’s also found in about half the processed food you encounter in a grocery store (as well as many cosmetics).

Palm oil has some advantages over other oils: It’s cheap to produce and doesn’t contain trans fats, and the trees yield far more oil in the same land area—using fewer chemical fertilizers—than soybeans or sunflowers. According to the World Bank, the increase in global demand for cooking oil by 2020 could be met with palm oil using one-seventh the land area that would be required to fill that demand using soybeans. For that reason, it could actually have many environmental advantages over other types of oil.

Unfortunately, much palm oil production now happens in highly vulnerable ecosystems, often in the former habitats of endangered animals such as tigers and orangutans. Pressure is growing on Indonesia’s palm oil producers to stop deforestation and stay out of sensitive areas. A handful of major US food processors, including Nestlé and PepsiCo, have adopted commitments to rid their supply chains of palm oil linked to deforestation, according to a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. But that report also that found many fast-food chains are lagging behind. Last year, an Indonesian court ordered the first-ever major fine—$30 million—for a palm oil company found to have cleared forest in protected orangutan habitat.

Indonesia’s climate test. For the international climate negotiations coming up soon in Paris, Indonesia has pledged to increase its emissions over the next 25 years by 29 percent less than it would have under a “business as usual” scenario. That won’t be possible without curbing forest fires and deforestation. So for Indonesia, getting a grip on palm oil producers will be even more important than going after power plants, as Obama is doing. Joko has been moving in the right direction, Minnemeyer said, but it’s unclear how his promises will hold up.

“Across the board, there has been very weak enforcement of Indonesia’s environmental laws,” she said. If they’re going to meet their climate target, “the fires are going to be a key part.”

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This Could Be the Worst Climate Crisis in the World Right Now

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How to live and farm in an old volcano

by ShantaeCarrera6 Posted on October 26, 2015

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The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

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Codex: Space Marines (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

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Continued:  

How to live and farm in an old volcano

Posted in Anchor, aquaponics, Custom Quest, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Hagen, LAI, Monterey, ONA, organic, solar, solar power, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How to live and farm in an old volcano

3 Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Is Being Overly Pessimistic About Climate Action

by Myrna Posted on October 16, 2015

The world can’t wait for campaign finance reform. And it doesn’t have to. Albert H. Teich/Shutterstock One doesn’t think of Bernie Sanders, with his ambitious proposals to provide free public college tuition and Medicare for all Americans, as someone whose imagination is unduly constrained by political reality. Yet when it came to climate change in Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate, Sanders was surprisingly pessimistic. “Nothing is gonna happen unless we are prepared to deal with campaign finance reform,” said Sanders, “because the fossil fuel industry is funding the Republican Party, which denies the reality of climate change and certainly is not prepared to go forward aggressively.” Is that true? Is climate action impossible without first getting corporate money out of politics? If so, that’s discouraging for climate hawks. Enacting campaign finance reform would be at least a five-step process: Elect a Democrat president. Luck into a conservative Supreme Court justice leaving the Court while that Democrat is president. Appoint a replacement. Have that judge join the Court’s existing liberal wing in overturning Citizens United v FEC. Then have the very same corporate-funded Congress vote to reform the system that got them elected. The world cannot wait that long to deal with climate change. But it shouldn’t have to. Sanders’ analysis is overly pessimistic for three reasons: 1. He is thinking like a legislator, not a president. There is a lot the president can do to reduce emissions substantially in the next decade or so under existing laws. As I explained on Thursday, Sanders and Hillary Clinton have not yet explained in detail how they would use the Clean Air Act to reduce emissions. Will they regulate carbon emissions from other sources besides power plants, and tighten methane leakage regulation on fracking wells, as Martin O’Malley proposes? Will they ban fossil fuel extraction on federal land? As president, they could do those things, and more, thereby reducing emissions enough to meet the near-term goals we’ll lay out in any global climate agreement reached in Paris this December. Read the rest at Grist. Continued:  3 Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Is Being Overly Pessimistic About Climate Action ; ; ;

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3 Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Is Being Overly Pessimistic About Climate Action

Posted in Citadel, Citizen, eco-friendly, FF, G & F, GE, Hagen, LAI, Monterey, ONA, OXO, PUR, Safer, solar, solar power, Ultima, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 3 Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Is Being Overly Pessimistic About Climate Action