By Pastor Dean Simpson, for the Chippewa Valley Post
Editor’s Note: Pastor Dean Simpson has provided summaries of the most important developments at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, which began on Nov. 30 and ended on Saturday (Dec, 12), a day later than originally planned, as noted in the Summary below. The goal of the conference was to reach a legally binding and universal agreement on climate change. To see previous reports, click here.
Rev. Simpson is the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church and chairs a newly formed Eco-spirituality Working Group whose membership includes several other clergy, UW-Eau Claire science faculty members, JONAH members working on “environmental justice” issues and other community members. The group is working to convene community conversations focused on the intersection of faith/spiritual values and community action on global climate challenges.
Highlights from the Paris Climate Summit (COP21): Day 11 (Dec. 11)
This material summarizes notes on the Paris Climate Change Conference that appeared in “Carbon Brief,” a United Kingdom-based website that covers the latest developments in climate science and policy, and energy policy. Some has also come from the BBC News Service.
Negotiations at the Paris climate summit will continue until Saturday – a day later than expected.
“We are nearly there. I’m optimistic,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is chairing the summit. Efforts to forge a final deal faltered on Friday, forcing the talks to run an extra day.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the negotiations were the “most complicated, most difficult, but, most important for humanity.”
Fabius told reporters in Paris that he would present a new version of the draft text on Saturday morning and he was “sure” it would be approved and would be “a big step forward for humanity as a whole.
“We are almost at the end of the road and I am optimistic,” he added.
Sticking Points:
- Climate finance: How countries pay for efforts to reduce, stop and cope with the effects of climate change?
- Differentiation: Related to the finance problem: how to “differentiate” between developed countries that can afford to donate money, and developing countries that need support. Richer nations want emerging economies to take on more of the burden of cutting emissions, and providing funding for very poor nations hit by the impacts of higher temperatures.
- Overall goal: What is it? Should nations try to limit global rises in temperature to 2°C or 1.5°C or to “well below 2°C” – above what they were in pre-industrial times? The global average temperature has already risen by roughly 1°C.
One of the major talking points during the negotiations at COP21 in Paris has been whether the international community should aim to limit global temperature rise to the internationally accepted 2°C above pre-industrial levels, or a more stringent target of 1.5°C.
The draft agreement text published last Saturday gave two options: “below 1.5°C” or “well-below 2°C. The updated text issued on Wednesday afternoon added “below 2 °C” as a third option.
With global temperatures rise set to pass the 1°C mark this year, is a 1.5°C limit feasible? What would achieving it mean in practice? And how would a 1.5°C world compare to a 2°C one?
High ambition
A collection of countries looking for an ambitious deal to curb warming at 1.5°C has emerged strongly during the Paris conference. Known as the “Coalition of the High Ambition”, the group spans small island states already feeling the effects of climate change through rising seas and extreme weather, to the big emitters such as the EU and the U.S..
That 1.5 °C is garnering so much support is a welcome surprise, says Prof. Joanna Haigh, co-director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and Environment:
“I suppose the whole idea that it’s actually being talked about is incredibly encouraging. Here we are coming into COP thinking how we are going to try and get everybody to go to 2°C, now they’re talking about 1.5°C. I never would have expected that. Of course, the realism of how it might be achieved is very, very difficult.”