Paris Climate Talks-- the PTB Are Letting Us Burn Our Way to Mass Death

PABLO SOLÓN: I have been in two very important summits, the one in Copenhagen and then one in Cancun. And here, what we’re going to have in Paris, is the third climate agreement. We have had two climate agreements, one was the Kyoto protocol and the other one was the Cancun agreement. The Cancun agreement is for 2012 until 2020. And now in Paris, we’re supposed to have a third agreement for 2020 until 2030. 

Now, the Paris agreement is going to be as bad as the Cancun agreement. Why? Because in reality, we’re not here to negotiate the emission cuts of any country. The way negotiations are is each country says, I’m going to do this, and that’s it. So the U.S. says, we’re going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions between 25 percent to 28 percent by 2025, and that is their pledge. That is not under discussion. 

So already, all of the countries have presented their pledges until the first of October. So we already know the result of Paris. There is an official document from the UNFCCC that says, OK, after receiving the contribution of emission cuts of all of the countries, where are we now? And that official document says, we are going to be, around, increasing the temperature between 2.7 to 3.9 degrees Celsius. 

So that is a almost twice what we had to limit because the target was we shouldn’t go beyond an increase of two degrees Celsius. And now to be speaking about four degrees or five degrees Celsius is, to put it in other terms, to burn the planet. So the Paris agreement is an agreement that will see the planet burn. I think this is a really bad agreement. And we are here in the show to try to sell the world a good outcome that is going to kill humans and life as we know it.

It's just sickening how we won't let go of our addiction to energy from coal, oil and gas, which causes so much carbon pollution.  It's cheap energy to produce, but it's dirty and it's fouling the atmosphere and warming the planet. Basically, we are burning carbon that was stored up in the earth by plants and animals over millions of years, and transferring it back into the atmosphere very rapidly-- over a matter of 100 years. It's a huge shock to the climate and to life on earth. Ocean life is also suffering from acidification due to CO2 dissolving in them.

To stop catastrophic warming, there needs to be a reduction in CO2 already in the atmosphere, not just a limitation of how much CO2 is produced over the next 15 years.

To really stop massive warming, we need to keep 80% of remaining fossil fuels in the ground. We also need to curtail the production of meat from animal agriculture--- another huge source of greenhouse gases.

To prevent planetary ecocide, we need massive changes in the way we live, in our economy and in our energy system and food systems. No leader seems willing to step up to the plate to do this.

We are screwed.