COP30 in Brazil ended without a mention of the need to phase out fossil fuels, in spite of growing damage from climate warming impacts. These UN negotiations have to be reshaped, the influence of the fossil fuel industry reduced while the transition to a low-carbon world speeds on elsewhere.
As we head into COP29 in oil-and-gas-rich Azerbaijan with the UN warning we are on course for up to 3°C of temperature rise, climate scientists are urging governments to focus on cryosphere. The frozen regions of our planet are warming several times faster than the global average. If the nations of the world cannot agree on measures to hold global warming to a maximum of 1.5°C, the experts warn of potentially devastating and irreversible impacts from cryosphere melt, not just for the icy north, but for the whole planet.
With record-breaking heat, unprecedented ice melt and widespread wildfires destroying the Arctic as we know it, eyes turn to the next UN climate conference in distant Azerbaijan. Can the world agree on urgent emissions cuts and climate justice in an authoritarian-ruled petrostate?
Six months after the last underwhelming UN climate conference COP28 in oil-rich Dubai, negotiators at the UN's climate headquarters in Bonn, Germany, have been trying to smooth the path to the next COP to be held in Baku, Azerbaijan in November. Another mega-gathering in another fossil-fuel capital - is there any hope of action to protect the world's rapidly melting ice and snow and avert the catastrophic consequences for the rest of the globe?
There has never been a more pressing need for the world to unite and take urgent, radical action to halt emissions, to avoid further changes to the frozen parts of the Earth with catastrophic consequences for people all round the globe.
“It's too late to stop Antarctic ice melt.” But “the Greenland ice sheet might be more resistant to warming than we thought”, according to various recent studies. So should we stop worrying? Or give up on climate action? As we speed towards this year's UN Climate Conference COP28, to be held in – of all places - oil-rich Dubai, while wars in the Middle East and in Ukraine are distracting attention from the planet-threatening climate crisis, what we need is not complacency or resignation but a heightened sense of urgency.
As temperatures spike, forests burn, oceans warm, ice melts in the Arctic, Antarctic and on the world's highest mountains, negotiators at the UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany are wrangling over documents to prepare for COP28 in oil-land Dubai at the end of the year. That meeting will tackle the "Global Stocktake" of climate efforts - and shortcomings.
It's now one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. There’s no sign of any end to the conflict. And we are not looking at a regional dispute. This war has become a major clash between systems, with repercussions for the whole planet. Putin’s invasion has plunged us into a time of multiple crises – war, an …
Continue reading Earth’s temperature rises as geopolitical climate cools
UN negotiators are discussing measures to tackle climate change in the German city of Bonn. Meanwhile, the Arctic has seen its first heatwave of the year and the Russian war on Ukraine appears to have sparked a fossil fuel revival.
My expectations for COP26 were not high. What we needed to come out of it was huge. But at the latest when the G20 leaders meeting in Rome ahead of the Glasgow conference failed to agree on a commitment to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050, it was looking highly unlikely that we would …
Continue reading Glasgow outcome: a COP-out for the Arctic – and the rest of the planet
The Ice Blog 