COP25: Europe’s Green Deal opens door to global climate disaster politics / Geographical

Hope is the last to die, and the Paris Agreement created plenty of it. For the last four years, since COP21 in France, world nations have consoled themselves that the gulf between their intentions and the globally agreed target to limit warming to well below 2˚C was a temporary accounting challenge. To close the gap, a crank or ‘ratchet mechanism’ was added to the Paris Agreement in 2015, intended to tighten national commitments and deepen emission cuts every five years.

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The third in my three part series from the 2019 UN Conference of the Parties, where world representatives met this December to try to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees. 

COP25: Citizens and scientists unite behind climate injustice / Geographical

Indigenous activist Daiara Tukano of Brazil speaks to press during a demonstration against the slow pace of climate negotiations at COP25 (Image: Christine Thao Tyler)

Brandon Wu is director of campaigns and policy at Action Aid USA and he has just been reunited with his jacket. He’s spent a few chilly hours outside the COP25 United Nations climate summit in Madrid after being ejected from the venue. Earlier he had been part of an organised but extra-official protest in which youth, trade union, Indigenous, women and gender delegation groups beat empty pans and unfurled banners. ‘Police linked arms,’ he told Geographical, ‘forcibly marching people out of the door.’

Continue reading at Geographical

The second in my three part series from the 2019 UN Conference of the Parties, where world representatives met this December to try to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees. 

COP25: World leaders debate global carbon trading playbook / Geographical

Any good parent knows you should never make a rule that you can’t enforce. In the first week, however, of the UN COP25 climate change conference, the troublesome Article Six policy of the Paris Agreement was a 2015 promise some nations were perhaps beginning to regret. Article Six allows countries and companies to potentially leverage emissions savings they create overseas for continued or even increased emissions at home. The mechanism is currently as vague as it sounds….

Continue reading at Geographical

The first in my three part series from the 2019 UN Conference of the Parties, where world representatives met this December to try to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees.