This post is part of Blog Action Day, 7141 blogs and counting, all writing about climate change on the same day. This is cross-posted from Avaaz.org
For more Blog Action, visit blogactionday.org
Right now Copenhagen is the most important city in the world. In just 2 short months, the city might witness the formation of a global climate treaty. You’ve heard of the Kyoto protocol – the climate treaty that the US helped draft 12 years ago? The one that pretty much every other country has signed on to?
Well, the US, with 1/4 of global greenhouse emissions, has more excuses than a student with a late term-paper about why it hasn’t done its part to help solve climate change. The people of the world aren’t impressed.
Two years ago in Bali after a dramatic plea from Papua New Guinea in the final hours, the US and other leaders agreed to make a global treaty in Copenhagen in 2009. According to the Bali agreement, the plan needs to have four key elements to bring all nations together (here’s the homework assignment). It needs to set mitigation targets for every country (reducing carbon emissions). It needs to protect forests from destruction (which cause 20% of global emissions). It needs to help poor countries develop more responsibly than we did by providing clean technology because the world can’t afford to repeat the dirty energy economies of the 20th century. And it needs to help poor countries deal with the present and increasing effects of the climate crisis.
The road-map to Copenhagen, agreed on by the leaders in Bali, places a responsibility on every national government, but the path has been most difficult for the United States. Stubborn, short-sighted politics have delayed action for years, but the window of opportunity for a global deal in Copenhagen has added urgency to our fight.
When the the timetable was set, climate activists like myself stepped up efforts to get the US on track in the two years from December 2007 to December 2009. We threw ourselves into an election that promised change and took on challenges on a historic scale. But that clearly hasn’t been enough.
Photo Credit: Robert Van Warden
We brought 12,000 activists to Powershift09 for the largest lobby day ever, and then stopped the U.S. Capitol plant from ever burning coal again. Just last month over 1,800 flash-mobs all over the world placed wake-up calls to world leaders on the need for climate action. And it’s working; the global movement we’ve been working for is here and its beautiful.
The one tiny, little problem is that a handful of US senators stand between us and a global climate treaty. In Bali, they said the treaty needed to deal with 4 things, things that the senate (and specifically the finance committee) can provide.
Luckily, large environmental organizations are pulling out all the stops to fight for ambitious reductions in domestic emissions – as ambitious as we can get. (But boy are my fingers crossed that we can get something better.)
What we’re lacking, and this is where you come in, are people fighting for those other three provisions. Adaptation, clean-tech transfer and forest protection receive mere lip-service in the initial draft of the Kerry-Boxer bill.
Developed countries need to put money on the table. How much? According to the Climate Action Network International policy paper, $150 billion per year, additional to existing aid, and raised from auction allowances. The European Commission Communication on Climate Financing is talking on a similar scale at least, calling for €50 billion annually by 2020.
What that works out to for the US, is in the range of 5% of allocation revenue for international adaptation, 5% for clean tech-transfer, and 5% for forest protection. The House climate bill in June allocated just 1%, 0.5% and 5%, respectively for those provisions. The Senate can do better and needs to do better. Whether we get a global deal or not could all come down to the next few weeks in the US senate.
We’re so close to the global climate deal we need, but three of the four major provisions required aren’t getting much attention. Let’s give the senators on the finance committee a reason to look beyond their petty interests and own up to the responsibility we have to the world. Take a look at the senate finance committee members and how to contact them.
Two years ago, we could only hope that a good US Senate bill would be the biggest remaining obstacle to a good global climate treaty. It took millions of calls and letters, thousands of individual meetings and one of the largest days of action the world has yet seen to get us here. We’re not done yet. If we can make the case for financing global solutions to the Senate, we can start to see the outlines of history — the story we can tell our grandchildren about how we fought for, and won, a planet they can still enjoy.
Morgan Goodwin is a fellow at the Avaaz Action Factory in DC
This treaty will give away our sovereignty and redistribute American “wealth”, our taxes, to 3rd world countries. Man made global warming is a fallacy. One of the biggest Marxist hoaxes perpetrated on man. Lock N’ load the treasonous cockroaches are here to play.
Liberty – I’m not quite sure what your talking about with cockroaches and all that. Global warming is threatening people’s livelihoods, their security and their freedom.
Furthermore, our ‘wealth’ it least partly based on exploitation. Exploitation of American resources, and when those started to get used up, exploitation of resources of other countries – all things that take away people’s freedom. So yes, we have a tremendous responsibility to act.
This is disgusting,
I hope you little runts like the political re-education camps, here’s a tip, try and
get along without your glasses because they are ones they will shoot first.
If you need a villain for your eco-scare, try multinational corporations, not the
general public.
Someone please expalin to me why the U.S. needs to sign on to anything in order to be “green?” As a Sovereign nation we can do anything we want in terms of helping the climate. Signing onto this treaty will give the U.N. the ability to say what the U.S. can or cannot do. To say that global warming is threatening lives or livelihoods, security, and freedom is erroneous.
I agree with Liberty1776. Hasn’t it finally been admitted by the ‘experts’ that the other planets in our solar system shared same warming trend that the earth followed? Hasn’t it been shown that the net change in emissions from European countries who are throwing money hand over fist at ‘green energy’ is zero? Which globes’ warming are you fighting? Why do you want to transfer wealth from a country where capitalism has enriched the lives of its citizens to countries where citizens are oppressed?
I am concerned about the environment. I recycle. I don’t waste electricity. I avoid disposable products. Do you? Or do you just talk about it and want to pass laws requiring it? I’m getting really tired of people like you wanting to steal from people like me who have worked hard for every dime I have.
Do you people think about the true consequences of want you want in advance? Remember R12? It is a very efficient refrigerant. It has been mandated away. Now, we spend more money on energy in products that use far less efficient refrigerants. More fuels are used to cool our cars, houses (or yurts), and freezers with the new, less efficient refrigerants. The new “greener” refrigerants are more caustic to components. Components have to be replaced more frequently. Huge amounts of energy are expended in the manufacture of replacement components. What does that do for net emissions?
The only “green” initiative that I think is reasonable (when considering all aspects and not just the knee jerk things) is to hop on your bicycle and ride it to work. But when it rains or snows I sure am glad I have a car.
As a person who is trying to decide where I stand on this subject – I am curious – with our economy the way it is now, where are these millions of dollars that are going to be sent to other countries, to help them clean up, going to come from?
Dear Morgan Goodwin,
This treaty WILL give away our sovereignty—NO COMMENT ?!?!??!?!
Hi Morgan,
Thanks for this post! As someone whose senator is on the finance committee, I’d really like to talk to you more about this important chance to influence the Copenhagen process. If you’re able to shoot me an email at nicke.activism[at]gmail.com, I’d like to ask your advice on how to get the most out of a couple opportunities coming up to influence one of the committee members.
Thanks again!
I believe in our being responsible to the earth we inhabit; I believe that we have nearly destroyed it reaching forevermore for things we don’t need. However, I don’t believe that there is any solution to “fix” the damage or prevent more until people are willing to give up the things that require the energy. And I certainly don’t think that a country, or multiple countries, who are experiencing the economic crises we are in now need to be spending billions of dollars/year trying to put a bandaid on something that can’t be fixed without major changes in lifestyle. Each country needs its own energy plan, I agree, but this is not something that can be addressed on a worldwide scale. You can blame the US Finance committee all you want to, but I think they have enough on their hands just now without adding something like this to it. When you are prepared to give up your computer, your cell phone, your car, and stop flying around the country to convince someone to give you the money of other people to pay for the eradication of the emissions you yourself are contributing to, then talk to me about support. Until then, the best thing you can do is conserve.