Time Running Out for Deal on Global Warming

[villager]

Source: Reuters

Time Running Out for Deal on Global Warming

By Jon Herskovitz

(Reuters) - Time is quickly running out to strike a deal at global climate talks to save a Kyoto Protocol in its death throes and make major cuts in the greenhouse gas emissions that scientists blame for rising temperatures, wilder weather and crop failures.

Major parties have been at loggerheads for years, warnings of climate disaster are becoming more dire and diplomats worry whether host South Africa is up to the challenge of brokering the tough discussions among nearly 200 countries that run from November 28 to December 9 in the coastal city of Durban.

There are glimmers of hope a deal can be reached on a fund to finance projects for developing countries hardest hit by climate change, and that advanced economies responsible for most global emissions will take it on their own to make deeper cuts at the talks known as the Conference of the Parties, or COP 17.

There is also a chance of a political deal to keep Kyoto alive with a new set of binding targets, but only the European Union, New Zealand, Australia, Norway and Switzerland are likely to sign up at best. Any accord depends on China and the United States, the world's top emitters, agreeing binding action under a wider deal by 2015, something both have resisted for years.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/25/us-durban-climate-idUSTRE7AO0IQ20111125

[Vincardog]

1. Any deal that depends on the US agreeing to immediate large cuts in CO2 is as dead as the Koch

brothers souls

[kestrel91316]

2. IMHO "deals" are pointless now. I think we have passed the tipping point.

[alfredo]

3. I pity the younger generations. They will have to pay for

the treason by the right, and complacency of the left.

[Bragi]

5. Yep

I agree that it is young people who will eventually suffer the effects of our long-term failure to address climate change.

But I think you're unfair to the left. Frankly, who could have known back in the 90s that ultimately, a campaign based on science and facts wouldn't matter, let alone win the day. The anti-climate science campaign by the oil industry has arguably been the most heavily financed PR and influence campaign in modern times. Nothing else comes even close to it in terms of spending and influence peddling.

So I'm not sure how the left could have known about or countered this other than by ultimately doing what they did -- trying to sell climate science, and trying to elect politicians who were committed to acting on climate change. Like, say, Obama. And we know what happened there.

So I'm not prepared to claim that the left has been complacent. We were just outspent and outplayed politically on climate change.

The results of this defeat will indeed be catastrophic, but in retrospect, I'm not sure how things might have turned out differently.

[alfredo]

6. I include all who are not Republicans in the left because

they see us as left, no matter what. We just didn't work hard enough to combat the false propaganda. The churches are to blame too. They sat back and did nothing, some turned against us.

[certainot]

4. right wing radio is main denier, wouldn't last if our universities pulled sports from its stations

right wing radio, pumping denial from 1000 radio stations for the last 20 years has been a huge factor and wouldn't last if our universities pulled their sports from those radio stations

15 of the final 16 NCAA basketball teams last year endorse limbaugh, a main enabler of denial, by broadcasting on radio stations that play him. they get community standing and ad revenue because of it.

many more of his stations depend on university sports that way.

limbaugh stations, with few exceptions, are all RW, all 1%, all partisan republican. All are dedicated to global warming denial. All spread his racism and sexism and lies. All are licensed to operate in the public interest, use call screeners to protect their talkers, and take paid callers to prompt and reinforce their propaganda.

universities that endorse the 1% radio with their sports have mission statements that if taken literally would contradict their association with limbaugh and right wing radio.

can they argue they need the money from those stations so badly that they can ignore their mission statements so blatantly?

free speech? no, they are requiring students without high speed or TV to listen to their sports on right wing 1% republican radio.

global warming alone demands that all universities that want too call themselves institutions of higher learning break their current contracts and look for alternative radio stations ASAP, or demand balanced programming.

without those universities many of the biggest limbaugh stations would fold or have to adapt.