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‘We’ve Run Out of Time’: Experts and Activists Urge Climate Action Amid Summer of Extremes

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Canadian wildfires.

Property owner Adam Norris surveys the wildfire damage at his home in Drayton Valley, Alberta, Canada, on May 8, 2023.

 (Photo: Walter Tychnowicz/AFP via Getty Images)

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“Still we are not acting with the urgency and determination that is required,” the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Monday.

As parts of the world from China to Texas bake under extreme heat, scientists and advocates are warning that world leaders are running out of time to take action on the climate crisis.

In a speech to a United Nations panel discussion on Monday,, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk cautioned that current policies put the planet on course for a “dystopian future.”

“Yet still we are not acting with the urgency and determination that is required. Leaders perform the choreography of deciding to act and promising to act and then… get stuck in the short term,” Türk said.

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Türk’s remarks came after Reuters ran an article highlighting recent weather extremes and land- and sea-temperature records. Scientists warn that the clock is running out on the chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.

“We’ve run out of time because change takes time,” University of New South Wales climate scientist Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick told Reuters.

Early June 2023 was the hottest on record, with average temperatures even overshooting the 1.5°C mark for a few days. While this has happened before during the Northern Hemisphere winter, this was the first time it has happened during the Northern Hemisphere summer, according to Reuters.

At the same time, sea surface temperatures broke records in both April and May. Temperatures in the Indian and Pacific oceans could rise to 3°C warmer than normal by October, Australia’s weather agency said, according to Reuters.

“We know that our environment is burning. It’s melting. It’s flooding. It’s depleting. It’s drying. It’s dying.”

University of Leeds professor of climate physics Piers Forster told Reuters that the climate crisis was predominantly to blame, but that El Niño, a drop in dust from the Sahara blowing over the ocean, and a turn to low-sulfur shipping fuels that reduced atmospheric particulates also contributed.

“So in all, oceans are being hit by a quadruple whammy,” he said. “It’s a sign of things to come.”

Other signs of things to come include the wildfires burning in Canada, which is in the midst of its worst fire season on record, as AFP reported June 28. The fires have displaced more than 100,000 people, sent toxic smoke spewing south and east, and released a record almost 600 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Places from India to the southern U.S. have sweltered through deadly heat waves. On Thursday, several states in the South and Midwest had reached the highest threat level for their wet bulb temperature—the temperature of a thermometer covered in a wet cloth which is meant to simulate how the human body would react to a combination of heat and humidity in full sun, as The Hill reported. Studies have shown that the human body cannot sweat to cool down when heat and humidity reach certain levels—the most recent research points to a threshold of 88°F at 100% humidity.

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On Sunday, Chinese authorities said that the country had broken records for the number of hot days during the first six months of the year, with Beijing breaking its all-time temperature record to hit a high of 41.1°C on Thursday, as CNN reported.

When the capital finally saw relief Monday, flooding displaced more than 10,000 people in Hunan province, and Shaanxi province’s Zhenba county experienced its worst flooding in 50 years, according to the Independent.

“We know that our environment is burning. It’s melting. It’s flooding. It’s depleting. It’s drying. It’s dying,” Türk said during his remarks Monday.

Türk warned that conditions could get even more extreme if global temperatures rise to around 3°C, which current policies put them on track to do, according to the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“Vast territories would disappear under rising oceans, or become effectively uninhabitable, due to heat and lack of water,” he said.

Türk’s speech was focused on the right to food specifically, and how the climate crisis would continue to interfere with it. Between 2000 and 2023, there had already been a 134% increase in climate and flood disasters, he said.

“More than 828 million people faced hunger in 2021,” he said. “And climate change is projected to place up to 80 million more people at risk of hunger by the middle of this century—creating a truly terrifying scale of desperation and need.”

Yet so far, political and corporate leaders are not responding to the situation with the urgency experts and advocates say it requires. The Bonn climate talks, which occurred amidst the record early June heat, ended with little progress.

“I am hoping that the sheer reality will help us change people’s moves and change the politics.”

“It was very detached from what was going on outside of the building in Bonn—I was very disappointed by that,” Li Shuo, Greenpeace’s senior climate adviser in Beijing, told Reuters.

The next major international climate conference—COP28—begins in the United Arab Emirates in late November, but campaigners are concerned by the fact that its president, Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, is also the head of the UAE’s state oil company.

Meanwhile, Li and Türk still expressed hope for 11th-hour progress.

“We are really getting to the moment of truth,” Li told Reuters. “I am hoping that the sheer reality will help us change people’s moves and change the politics.”

Türk recommended a list of actions including an end to fossil fuel subsidies, a phaseout of fossil fuel use, and a “just transition to a green economy.”

He also said that COP28 needed to be a “decisive game-changer.”

“There is still time to act,” he said. “But that time is now. We must not leave this for our children to fix—no matter how inspiring their activism. The people who must act—who have the responsibility to act—are our leaders, today.”

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘We’ve Run Out of Time’: Experts and Activists Urge Climate Action Amid Summer of Extremes

500+ Groups Say Biden Has ‘No Place’ at Climate Ambition Summit Until He Halts New Oil Projects

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By JAKE JOHNSON Jun 15, 2023

Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Climate protestors take part in a march on April 29, 2023 in Washington, D.C.  (Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

“Regardless of how the White House spins President Biden’s actions, he cannot be a climate leader while continuing to expand fossil fuels.”

More than 500 advocacy groups from six continents urged U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday to declare a climate emergency and halt the further expansion of fossil fuel production ahead of United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres’ September 20 Climate Ambition Summit in New York City.

Such a step, the groups wrote in a letter to Biden and the heads of key U.S. federal agencies, would help make the nation “a first mover in ending the fossil fuel era to right a legacy of historic harms and prevent global climate catastrophe.”

“You cannot claim legitimacy as a domestic or global leader if you continue to speed the destruction of the planet,” reads the letter, which was signed by 350.org, Oil Change International, Climate Action Network Zimbabwe, Fridays For Future South Asia, and hundreds of other groups from more than 60 countries.

“It’s time for the United States to answer the call to protect the future of the planet and use its unparalleled power to show what real climate leadership looks like,” the letter continues, specifically calling on the Biden administration to reject all federal permits for new fossil fuel projects, revoke any “illegally granted” permits for fossil fuel projects, use its authority to limit U.S. oil and gas exports, and declare a climate emergency.

The groups issued their demands shortly after climate campaigners, including signatories of the new letter, announced plans for a global mass mobilization ahead of Guterres’ summit and the subsequent COP28 conference in the United Arab Emirates.

Allie Rosenbluth, U.S. program co-manager at Oil Change International, said Thursday that Biden’s “approach to the climate crisis is nothing short of hypocritical,” noting that the U.S. under his leadership remains “the world’s top oil and gas producer and exporter and is planning the largest expansion in oil and gas production over the next decade.”

To the dismay of climate advocates and scientists, the Biden administration has worked to advance several major oil and gas initiatives in recent weeks, including the Willow Project in Alaska and the Mountain Valley Pipeline in Virginia.

“Every new fossil fuel project is incompatible with a livable future,” said Rosenbluth. “As the world’s biggest historic polluter, the U.S. has a responsibility to lead a global and just transition away from fossil fuels. Voters are not going to ignore Biden’s disastrous climate record unless he starts keeping his climate promises and paves the way for a sustainable future to avert further climate disaster.”

“The world desperately needs Biden to start living up to his rhetoric and address the root cause of the climate crisis.”

The new letter takes key federal agencies to task for failing to act in line with the president’s climate rhetoric, which has deemed runaway planetary warming “an existential threat.”

“Your Department of the Interior should be overseeing a fast and justly managed decline of fossil fuel production. Yet, your administration is actively expanding fossil fuel infrastructure,” the letter states. “It is approving new drilling permits at a faster rate than the previous administration.”

“Your Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration should be rejecting deepwater port permits for mega-polluting crude oil export facilities,” the letter continues. “Your Department of Energy should be a firewall against a flurry of over 20 gas export terminals proposed by industry across the Gulf coast, which could lead to over 1.1 billion metric tons of new emissions. Agencies like your Army Corps of Engineers continue to approve key permits for fossil fuel mega-projects despite clear legal mandates to protect the public interest.”

When he announced the Climate Ambition Summit late last year, Guterres said there is a “non-negotiable” price of entry for world leaders that wish to attend: “credible, serious, and new climate action and nature-based solutions that will move the needle forward and respond to the urgency of the climate crisis must be presented.”

“It will be a no-nonsense summit. No exceptions. No compromises,” he added at the time. “There will be no room for back-sliders, greenwashers, blame-shifters, or repackaging of announcements of previous years.”

Nicole Ghio, senior fossil fuels program manager at Friends of the Earth, said Thursday that unless Biden quickly changes course, “there should be no place for him” at the summit.

“Regardless of how the White House spins President Biden’s actions, he cannot be a climate leader while continuing to expand fossil fuels,” said Nicole Ghio, senior fossil fuels program manager at Friends of the Earth. “The world desperately needs Biden to start living up to his rhetoric and address the root cause of the climate crisis.”

Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue Reading500+ Groups Say Biden Has ‘No Place’ at Climate Ambition Summit Until He Halts New Oil Projects

As World Leaders Dither, Climate Coalition Announces Global Mobilization to ‘End Fossil Fuels

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By JAKE JOHNSON Jun 15, 2023

Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

“The climate crisis is escalating but so is the global movement for climate justice. We need all hands on deck to win this fight.”

As the United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany became the latest in a string of high-profile negotiations to end with little substantive progress, a coalition of environmental groups on Thursday announced plans for a global mobilization that organizers say will bring millions into the streets to demand an end to planet-wrecking fossil fuel production.

The worldwide protests are set to take place on September 15 and 17, days ahead of U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’ September 20 Climate Ambition Summit in New York City and weeks before the crucial COP28 talks in the United Arab Emirates, which will be overseen by the CEO of one of the world’s largest oil companies.

“The launch of today’s escalation campaign to fight back against fossil fuels builds on the legacy of a diversity of resistance movements from across the world who have been leading the fight against the fossil industry and its pernicious influence,” said Tasneem Essop, executive director of the Climate Action Network. “We expect all governments to implement a rapid, just, and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels together with a scaled-up phase-in of renewables.”

“They have to signal that this is the end of the fossil fuel era,” Essop added. “COP28 is a good place to start.”

“We expect all governments to implement a rapid, just, and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels together with a scaled-up phase-in of renewables.”

The coalition behind the mass mobilization invited people around the world to register local events and issued a list of straightforward demands that they say political leaders must embrace if there’s to be any hope of curbing runaway warming.

“The climate crisis is escalating but so is the global movement for climate justice,” the coalition says on its website. “We need all hands on deck to win this fight.”

The six demands are as follows:

1. No new fossil fuels—no new finance public or private, no new approvals, licenses, permits, or extensions. The provision of sufficient, consensual climate funding to realize this commitment everywhere.

2. A rapid, just, and equitable phaseout of existing fossil fuel infrastructure in line with the 1.5°C temperature limit and a global plan, like a Fossil Fuel Treaty, to ensure that each country does its part.

3. New commitments for international cooperation to drastically scale up financial and technology transfers to ensure renewable energy access, economic diversification plans, and Just Transition processes so that every country and community can phase out fossil fuels.

4. Stop greenwashing and claiming that offsets, carbon capture and storage, or geoengineering are solutions to the climate crisis.

5. Hold polluters responsible for the damage they’ve caused and make sure it’s coal, oil, and gas corporations that pay reparations for climate loss and damage and for local rehabilitation, remediation, and transition.

6. End fossil fuel corporate capture. No to corporations writing the rules of climate action, bankrolling climate talks, or undermining the global response to climate change.

Brenna TwoBears, coordinator of the Indigenous Environmental Network, said in a statement Thursday that “the time is now to end fossil fuels.”

“This has been centuries in the making, when colonizers brought the first extractive systems to Turtle Island and commodified the land,” she added. “But shutting down fossil fuels is only one strand among many to weave a basket to hold up the next seven generations. We need a just and equitable transition, where Indigenous people are leading. We need a culture shift to live in balance with our sky and land relatives. We need real solutions that address the problem at its root, not after the fact. A fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty is that real solution.”

Plans for the global days of action come amid growing frustration and alarm among climate advocates and scientists over world leaders’ continued failure to deliver any meaningful action to phase out fossil fuel use and production—the central driver of the planetary emergency—even as carbon emissions keep rising at a record pace and extreme weather wreaks havoc across the globe.

COP27 in Egypt late last year did not yield any meaningful progress toward a global fossil fuel phaseout, and campaigners feel COP28 is also poised to fail given the still-pervasive influence of the oil and gas industry and rich nations’ refusal to act.

Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, COP28’s president-designate, is the CEO of the UAE’s state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

The Guardian reported last week that “Majid Al Suwaidi, director-general of the COP28 climate talks for its host nation… said governments were not in agreement over whether the phaseout of fossil fuels should be on the agenda for the conference, which begins in November.”

“Al Suwaidi said fossil fuels would form a key part of the discussions at COP28,” the newspaper added, “but whether a phaseout would be discussed as part of the official agenda of the talks was still up for grabs.”

Romain Ioualalen, the global policy lead for Oil Change International, emphasized Thursday that “there is no room for additional fossil fuel expansion while limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C” and implored world leaders to “urgently lay the path for the end of oil, gas, and coal” at COP28.

“People around the world have been fighting against the fossil fuel industry for years and will escalate this fight this September at the United Nations in New York and beyond to secure a full, fair, fast, and funded fossil fuel phaseout and massive expansion of renewable energy,” said Ioualalen.

Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingAs World Leaders Dither, Climate Coalition Announces Global Mobilization to ‘End Fossil Fuels

Taking Aim at Industry, UN Chief Warns Fossil Fuels ‘Incompatible With Human Survival’

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Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“The world must phase out fossil fuels in a just and equitable way—moving to leave oil, coal, and gas in the ground where they belong and massively boosting renewable investment in a just transition,” António Guterres said.

António Guterres (Image: ManfredFX licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany).

By Jessica Corbett Jun 15, 2023

As United Nations climate talks came to a disappointing conclusion in Germany on Thursday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres delivered remarks in New York City targeting “the polluted heart of the climate crisis: the fossil fuel industry.”

Guterres’ comments came just after he met with civil society leaders and ahead of his September Climate Ambition Summit in NYC, which is set to be followed in November by the U.N. conference COP28, hosted by the United Arab Emirates in Dubai.

“Countries are far off track in meeting climate promises and commitments. I see a lack of ambition. A lack of trust. A lack of support. A lack of cooperation. And an abundance of problems around clarity and credibility,” he said. “The climate agenda is being undermined. At a time when we should be accelerating action, there is backtracking. At a time when we should be filling gaps, those gaps are growing.”

“Meanwhile, the human rights of climate activists are being trampled. The most vulnerable are suffering the most,” Guterres continued, noting that current policies put the world on track for a 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century, nearly double the 2015 Paris climate agreement’s more ambitious 1.5°C goal. Hitting the higher number, he said, “spells catastrophe.”

“Yet the collective response remains pitiful. We are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open—with far too many willing [to bet it] all on wishful thinking, unproven technologies, and silver bullet solutions,” he declared. “It’s time to wake up and step up. It’s time to rebuild trust based on climate justice. It’s time to accelerate the just transition to a green economy.”

“It’s time to wake up and step up. It’s time to rebuild trust based on climate justice. It’s time to accelerate the just transition to a green economy.”

While acknowledging the important roles of governments and financial institutions—particularly from the Global No[r]th—in the worldwide transition to renewables, Guterres also said that “the fossil fuel industry and its enablers have a special responsibility.”

“The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions. It’s fossil fuels—period,” he said in what was widely seen as a rebuke of recent remarks from Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, whose selection as COP28’s president-designate is controversial around the world given that he is also the UAE’s industry minister and CEO of the country’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

“The solution is clear: The world must phase out fossil fuels in a just and equitable way—moving to leave oil, coal, and gas in the ground where they belong and massively boosting renewable investment in a just transition,” Guterres asserted. However, just a tiny fraction of the oil and gas industry’s record $4 trillion windfall last year was put toward a clean future.

Stressing that “the world needs the industry to apply its massive resources to drive, not obstruct, the global move from fossil fuels to renewables,” Guterres called for “credible” transition plans “that chart a company’s move to clean energy—and away from a product incompatible with human survival.”

“Otherwise, they are just proposals to become more efficient planet-wreckers,” he said. Condemning plans that “rely on dubious offsets,” the U.N. leader said that they “must include reducing emissions from production, processing, transmission, refining, distribution, and use.”

While the press conference was far from the first time Guterres has called out the fossil fuel industry, his comments were lauded by campaigners preparing for a global mobilization in September, planned for just before the U.N. chief’s summit.

“The U.N. secretary-general’s speech echoes the call from people from across the world today demanding an end to the era of fossil fuels,” said Alex Rafalowicz, executive director of the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative. “The time for rhetoric, empty promises, and greenwashing is over.”

“Governments must work together to put in place an action plan to move away from dependence on oil, gas, and coal in the fairest and fastest way possible,” Rafalowicz added. “We will be on the streets to ensure peoples’ demands are carried into the negotiation halls in September. Climate impacts are escalating, fossil fuel corporations are digging in, but people are stepping up to end fossil fuels; fair, fast, and forever.”

Guterres’ remarks came as negotiators finished gathering in the German city of Bonn to prepare for COP28.

Oil Change International (OCI) global policy lead Romain Ioualalen said Thursday that “this speech by the U.N. secretary-general is a wake-up call for the countries that wasted two weeks arguing over procedural matters at the Bonn climate conference instead of charting a path towards a COP28 decision to phase out fossil fuels.”

“Countries must step up and fulfill the promises they made in Paris in 2015 to halt fossil fuel expansion and agree to a fair, fast, and full transition away from oil, gas, and coal and towards renewables,” Ioualalen continued. “Over 70 countries have called for a COP28 decision on fossil fuel phaseout in Bonn. Countries like Colombia and the members of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance are doing the hard work of implementing measures to keep oil and gas in the ground.”

“The contrast between this leadership and the actions of the world’s biggest historic polluter, the United States, could not be more striking,” he argued, adding that under President Joe Biden, “the U.S. has failed in its responsibility to lead a global and just transition away from fossil fuels and avert further climate disaster and has instead actively promoted fossil fuel expansion including with public money.”

OCI was among over 500 groups that sent a letter Thursday to Biden and leaders of key U.S. federal agencies demanding executive action “to stop expanding oil, gas, and coal production, the core driver of the climate emergency,” by the September summit.

Original article republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue ReadingTaking Aim at Industry, UN Chief Warns Fossil Fuels ‘Incompatible With Human Survival’