The United Nations Climate Change Conference is having its 21st meeting in Paris towards the end of 2015. (Hence COP21 or conference of parties)
We’ve been told this is the ‘last effective opportunity’ to keep global warming to ‘a limit safe for humanity’.
However we are reassured by the fact there have been previous last chances, and this website predicts that COP21 will not be the last ‘last chance’.
Normal posts continue below the following collection.
A Global Warming Treaty’s Last Chance. That teetering edifice that is the Kyoto Protocol gets some emergency repair work this week as delegates from 180 countries gather in Bonn to work out problems that threaten to scuttle the deal altogether.
Time Magazine, 16 Jul 2001
In an open letter to delegates at the Montreal environmental summit, beginning today, campaigner Mark Lynas explains why action on climate change can no longer be stalled.
“I’m scared. For 15 years I’ve watched international progress on climate change get slower and slower, even while the pace of global warming seems to get ever more rapid. With time running out for the global climate, your meeting in Montreal represents a last chance for action.”
The Independent, 28 Nov 2005
World leaders will converge on Bali today for the start of negotiations which experts say could be the last chance to save the Earth from catastrophic climate change. Bali could be the last chance to avoid the worst effect of global warming, said Tony Juniper, executive director of Friends of the Earth.
The New Zealand Herald, 3 Dec 2007
Philip Clapp, head of the Washington-based National Environment Trust, says: “Fifteen years of international negotiations have not yet produced a comprehensive agreement that will get developed countries to begin serious reductions.”
He adds: “The framework for such an agreement must come out of the Bali meeting. The scientists are telling us that this is the world’s last shot at avoiding the worst consequences of global warming.”
The Independent, 2 Dec 2007
The world will “suicide” if it cannot strike a strong climate pact soon, Australian environmental scientist Tim Flannery has warned. Professor Flannery, who is attending a UN climate summit in Poland, expressed dismay at the slow progress.
“Resistance is a suicidal tactic,” the former Australian of the year, scientist and author told reporters in Poland. “This round of negotiations is likely to be our last chance as a species to deal with the problem.”
The Age, 9 Dec 2008
“Governments in Poznan must agree to peak and decline global emissions well before 2020 to give people reasonable hope that global warming can still be kept within limits that prevent the worst,” said Kim Carstensen, leader of WWF’s global climate initiative.
WWF, “Poznan provides last chance to curb climate change” 5 Dec 2008
The world faces a final opportunity to agree an adequate global response to climate change at a U.N.-led meeting in Copenhagen in December, the European Union’s environment chief said on Friday.
It is now 12 years since Kyoto was created. This makes Copenhagen the world’s last chance to stop climate change before it passes the point of no return, European Union Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas told a climate conference in Budapest on Friday.
Reuters, Feb 27 2009
Climate change is “simply the greatest collective challenge we face as a human family”, Mr Ban said in a speech on Monday in Seoul. He urged international leaders to reach a deal to limit their countries’ carbon emissions at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December.
The Telegraph, 10 Aug 2009
Without an international agreement to limit global warming, temperatures are likely to rise by 9F (5C) by the end of the century – triggering mass migration, warfare and world hunger, according to the report.
The Telegraph, 2 Dec 2009
A sense of foreboding is one of the few points of general agreement among the 15,000 participants congregating for the next two weeks on this long thin strip of land, marooned between a wide lagoon and the Caribbean Sea. Jairem Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, sees it as the “last chance” for climate change talks to succeed; Connie Hedegaard, the EU’s climate chief, believes a disappointing outcome would “put the whole process in danger”.
The Telegraph (UK), 29 Nov 2010
Rev. Dr. Olav Fyske Tveit, who leads the World Council of Churches, says the upcoming climate conference in South Africa is mankind’s ‘last opportunity’ to address climate change. This week the World Council of Churches general secretary, Reverend Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, called the United Nations UNFCCC COP 17 meeting a “last opportunity for the international community to be responsible in addressing climate change”, and called on the meeting to “act now for climate justice.”
Spero News, 27 Nov 2011
Together with around 20 000 delegates from nearly 200 countries, Ferrial Adam, the climate change and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Africa, will be attending the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which gets under way in Durban in the next two weeks, towards negotiating a new climate regime.
UCANews, 28 Nov 2011
Tomorrow: the earth’s last chance with climate change? Tomorrow, the whole world talks about irreversible global warming as this year’s international climate change summit begins. Participating are 195 countries (almost all of the United Nations).
There are two concurrent meetings: the 8th Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol; and the 18th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They will take place from Monday, November 26, 2012 to Friday, December 7, 2012 at the Qatar National Convention Centre in Doha, Qatar.
The Examiner, 25 Nov 2012
Is the Warsaw Climate Change Conference a last-chance summit? The Warsaw Climate Change Conference opened on Monday 11th November. After the 2012 failure of Doha, this summit could represent a turning point in the fight against global warming.
“Global greenhouse gas emissions need to peak this decade, and get to zero net emissions by the second half of this century,” announced Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC in a press release dated 8th November. “We have the money and technology, the knowledge and the new economic models to get the job done in time,” she confirmed before describing the next two years as “a critical period to act faster on climate.”
Sustainable Mobility, 14 Nov 2013
Last chance: Change needed for climate negotiations in Lima 2014. WWF issued the following statement today from Samantha Smith, Leader of WWF’s Global Climate and Energy Initiative, as the UN climate talks drew to a conclusion:
“A repeat performance next year would be disastrous, not just for the progress of these negotiations, but more importantly for vulnerable communities everywhere and the natural world on which we all depend…By the time we get to next year’s meeting in Lima, we urgently need to have political will, real commitments, and a clear path to a comprehensive and fair agreement in Paris 2015, where a new global agreement on climate change has to be signed.”
WWF Global, 23 Nov 2013
Scientists are calling on world leaders to sign up to an eight-point plan of action at landmark talks in Paris. The key element is the goal to limit global warming to below 2C by moving to zero carbon emissions by 2050. The UN meeting in December is “the last chance” to avert dangerous climate change, according to the Earth League.
BBC News 22 Apr 2015
In 600 pages, Sir Nicholas Stern spells out a bleak future gripped by violent storms, rising sea levels, crippling droughts and economic chaos unless urgent action is taken to tackle global warming. Rising sea levels will threaten countries like Bangladesh but also some of the biggest cities, including London, New York, Tokyo and Shanghai.
Ocean acidification could destroy fish stocks, crop failure will leave hundreds of millions at risk of starvation and up to 200 million people will be displaced by rising sea levels, floods and drought. It is already too late to avoid many of the problems facing people in the Third World.
see also – just plain scary
In short, human driven climate change poses a great threat, unprecedented in type and scale to well-being, health and perhaps even to human survival……
Looking ahead to 2100, for which some modelled scenarios project an average global warming of 4 degrees Celsius , the report foresees that in such conditions people won’t be able to cope, let alone work productively, in the hottest parts of the year. And that’s assuming social and economic institutions and processes are till intact. Some regions may become uninhabitable.
“Australian National University, “Climate change and health: IPCC reports emerging risks, emerging consensus.” 31 Mar 2014
see also – Doomsday
“We might see an ice-free Arctic sea by the year 2030 within some of our lifetimes,” said Mark Serreze from the US National Snow and Ice Centre. “There are some scientists out there who think that even might be optimistic.”
The Age (Australia), 4 Aug 2008
for new category – Arctic sea ice
Famous global landmarks including the Statue of Liberty, Tower of London and Sydney Opera House will be lost to rising seas caused by climate change, scientists have warned.
“It’s relatively safe to say that we will see the first impacts at these sites in the 21st century,” lead author Prof Ben Marzeoin, of the University of Innsbruck in Austria, told the Guardian. “Typically when people talk about climate change it’s about the economic or environmental consequences, how much it’s goin to cost. We wanted to look at the cultural implications.”
see also – just plain scary
As many as one billion people could lose their homes by 2050 because of the devastating impact of global warming, scientists and political leaders will be warned today. They will hear that the steady rise in temperatures across the planet could trigger mass migration on unprecedented levels.
The Independent, 29/4/08
see also – Doomsday
Ice at the North Pole may disappear completely within the next few months for the first time in 20,000 years. “There is supposed to be ice at the North Pole – not water,” said Mark Serreze of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC) in Colorado. “The Centre has been predicting that the Arctic Ocean could be virtually ice-free by 2012 but that point may be reached within months rather than years.”
The Telegraph, (UK) 27 Jun 2008
for new category – Arctic sea ice
The world could be tracking towards irreversible climate change as warming takes place much quicker than previously thought, an Adelaide academic has warned. Climate change expert Barry Brook, of Adelaide University, told a Canberra conference — Imagining the Real Life on a Greenhouse Earth — atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were headed towards 600 parts a million, and forecast global temperature increases of up to six degrees.
Professor Brook said a global temperature increase of three degrees might result in the collapse of the Amazon rainforest, a four-degree increase would lead to the displacement of hundreds of million of people and the extinction of up to half the world’s species, and a five-degree increase would create an ice-free planet and sea-level increases of 80 metres.
The Age, 12 Jun 2008
see also – just plain scary
“For the record; I do not think that any sea ice will survive this summer. An event unprecedented in human history is today, this very moment, transpiring in the Arctic Ocean. The cracks in the sea ice that I reported on my Sierra Club Canada blog and elsewhere over the last several days have spread and at this moment the entire sea ice sheet (or about 99% of it) covering the Arctic Ocean is on the move. Clockwise. The ice is thin, and slushy, and breaking apart.”
Arctic News 18 Mar 2013 – Paul Beckwith, Sierra Club Canada, 23 Mar 2013
The importance of the speed and magnitude of recent population growth in boosting future greenhouse gas emissions is well recognized among scientists… Each birth results not only in the emissions attributable to that person in his or her lifetime, but also the emissions of all his or her descendents. Hence, the emissions savings from intended or planned birth multiply with time…
No human is genuinely “carbon neutral,” especially when all greenhouse gases are figured into the equation. Therefore, everyone is part of the problem, so everyone must be part of the solution in some way.
“Facing a Changing World: Women, Population and Climate,” UN Population Fund, 2009
for new category – in their own words
“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late,” said Rajendra Pachauri, a scientist and economist who heads the IPCC. “What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” He said that since the IPCC began its work five years ago, scientists have recorded “much stronger trends in climate change,” such as a recent melting of polar ice that had not been predicted. “That means you better start with intervention much earlier.”
New York Times 17 Nov 2007
see also – Doomsday
Rather than try to ‘solve’ climate change I suggest in Section 10.3 that we need to approach climate change as an imaginative idea, an idea that we develop and employ to fulfil a variety of tasks for us. Because the idea of climate change is so plastic it can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve may of our psychological, ethical and spiritual needs This section offers four mobilising narratives to climate change; narratives rooted in our human instincts for nostalgia, fear, pride and justice.
Dr. Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity, Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 341
for new category – in their own words
There is no population more captive to the effects of global warming than the incarcerated. A new study from Daniel W. E. Holt of the Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law explains over 144 pages what the climate-change toll truly is on the two-million-plus bodies caged in our prison system.
“The correctional sector may be alone in facing the prospect of viable constitutional litigation if it does not effectively adapt to the changing climate,” reads the report. The legal and fatal consequences of failing to adapt to climate change and overheating prisons are yet more rationale for reducing the incarcerated population, reads the report.
Mother Jones: Environment, 2 Oct 2015
see also – action plan
thanks to David Mulberry
Modelling of Arctic sea ice by the Met Office Hadley Centre climate model shows that ice invariably recovers from extreme events, and that the long-term trend of reduction is robust — with the first ice-free summer expected to occur between 2060 and 2080.
Press Release, British Met Office, 15/10/2009
for new category – Arctic sea ice
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Looking back at 65 years’ worth of statistics, Environment Canada’s senior climatologist David Phillips noted that since 1948, winter temperatures in the prairie regions have increased by an average of four degrees Celsius. Ironically, warmer weather can mean greater snowfall.
“As we warm up, we may see more moisture, we may see more moist air masses, and therefore we could very well see more snow rather than less snow, because the air masses are going to be more moist and so therefore you’re going to be able to wring out more snow than you would be if it was dry air,” Phillips said.
Prince Albert Daily Herald, 29 Jan 2013
Under climate change scenarios and current snowmaking technology, the average ski season at the case study ski area in Canada (Lakelands tourism region) was projected to reduce by 0-16% in the 2020s, 7-32% in the 2050s and 11-50% in the 2080s. Without snowmaking the season would decline substantially by 37 – 57% in the 2050s.
5th World Conference on Sport and Environment, Turin 2-3 December 2003 (IOC/UNEP) Rolf Bürki, Hans Elsasser, Bruno Abegg
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see also – having it both ways
It has often been demonstrated that the ongoing rapid climate change in the Arctic region is causing substantial change to Arctic ecosystems. Now Danish researchers demonstrate that a warmer Greenland could be bad for its butterflies, becoming smaller under warmer summers.
“Our studies show that males and females follow the same pattern and it is similar in two different species, which suggests that climate plays an important role in determining the body size of butterflies in Northeast Greenland,” says senior scientist Toke T. Hoye, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University.
Science Daily, 7 Oct 2015
see also – Say what?
thanks to David Mulberry
Dismissing the possibility of a Republican win in November,(former Senator) Wirth called a second Obama administration term “the last window of opportunity” to enact policies that can avert a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. “It’s the last chance we have to get anything approaching 2 degrees Centigrade,” he said. “If we don’t do it now, we are committing the world to a drastically different place.”
Climate progress, 23 Dec 2011
see also – Doomsday
Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama’s first administration, he added.
The Guardian, 18 Jan 2009
see also – Doomsday
Combating climate change should be seen as a “war” that must be won for the sake of future generations, the Prince of Wales said as he received his Global Environmental Citizen award last night. “We should see this as a war we simply have to win. Our successors will pay dearly for our inaction and we surely owe it to them to take urgent steps now.”
The Telegraph, 12 Apr 2008
see also – Say what?
After another U.N. climate conference gave only modest results, European Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard says the process needs to provide a “substantial answer” to global warming in two years to remain relevant. I think that it has to deliver a substantial answer to climate change in 2015, Hedegaard said. “If it fails to do so, then I think this critical question will be asked by many more.”
USAToday, 24 Nov 2013
see also – Say what?
