How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 071: 195 Countries Come To An Agreement on Climate Change Reductions
It almost seemed impossible to believe, but 195 countries got together to discuss how to reduce climate change impacts through reduction of carbon emissions. In today's episode, I go over the major points of the agreement. Spoil alert, it's not perfect, but it's a great start. Action will be the big variable in the end.
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http://www.speakupforblue.com/session71
Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, session 71. I'm happy to announce that the climate change talks are over and an agreement has been reached. This episode we are going to go into some of the details of that 30 page agreement and talk about what that means for us. This and all and more on the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, he still puts his hands in the air because he doesn't care. Andrew Lewin. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. Your voice for the ocean. I am your host, Andrew Lewin, founder, speakupforblue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean printer. And today is a great, great day. It's Monday, I hope you had a great weekend. And we're going to talk all about the climate change agreement that was reached after an announced on Friday, December 11th. It's been, people have been touting it as an historical day where over 186 countries. I believe it was 195, it was the final country tally. All came to an agreement and it's documented into a 30 page agreement, which is available online. We're going to put that link up for you on the show notes, which will be today, which will be Speak Up For Blue.com/session71. And you can take a look at it. It's a 30 page agreement. There's a lot of verbiage in there, a lot of words, and it can be a little confusing. So what I plan to do today is to go through it and really look at an article that was done written by a Coral Damven port, Justin Gillis, Sewell Chan, and Melissa Eddy from the New York Times. And this was posted December 12th, 2015. We're going to link to that in the podcast or in the podcast show notes, which again, Speak Up For Blue.com/session71. Before we do that, I have a quick announcement. Today is Monday and I have activated and launched my crowdfunding project on patreon.com. And essentially, you can support this podcast. You can support the content that we do. Join the Speak Up For Blue community with a minimum or just, you can do so, sorry, I'm not doing this properly. You can do so by just pledging even a dollar or more if you want to join the Speak Up For Blue community to support this podcast and support, essentially putting in, me putting in the time to go into deeper details about a lot of these projects. As I said before, if you've been listening to this podcast, I do this as a part-time basis. It's really a hobby of mine. I'd like to go full-time on this. And I need the support from you guys. And then that's where it could be because this is a podcast for the people. I want it to be a podcast for the people, buy the people, and really go into ocean science and conservation, news, guidance, tips, all that sort of stuff and increases. So if you go to my Patreon page, it's SpeakUpForBlue.com/patreon, you can get all the details on the goals that I've set based on monetary goals. So things that I want to do if I get a certain amount of money per month, again, this support is per month. And then there's different incentives based on whichever level support you decide to do. And to be honest, any level support is great. If you don't feel like you want to support, that is completely fine. You can always listen to Speak Up For Blue podcast. But for those who think that I'm doing a great job, then love what I do and want to see it continue and get more in depth and more things involved, I would really appreciate your support. And you can do so through patreon.com, which is a very secure site. It's being used by a lot of podcast creators and YouTube creators and people are doing special projects. One of our guests and Speak Up For Blue friend, Andrew David Thaler, is also on patreon.com. And we've actually talked to him in our interview about how he does it in patreon, how he uses patreon to essentially help him do some of his research. So based on that conversation, I kind of looked into it and this is the product of it. I'm launching the show today. So like I said, you can go to speakupforblue.com/patreon. And if you look at the incentives and you support me at $5 per month, you will get your name set on the show and as a supporter. So once people start getting in on the support, I will be reading off some of their names depending on the level that they support on. And so you can do that by speakupforblue.com/patreon and get your name set on this. And maybe I'm working on an avenue where you can actually tell us why you supported speakupforblue.com and that will get played on the episodes as well. So thank you very much for your support and advance if you do decide support. If not, no worries. I appreciate the time and continue listening to this podcast because it will not stop. I continue. I always continue to do this as long as I have the time and energy to do so. So thank you very much. But let's get back into the episode. So what I'm going to do is there's been a great article laid out. It's called Inside the Paris Climate Deal. Of course, this is referring to the climate change talks that have happened in Paris. A lot of people know as COP or COP21. And it's an ongoing thing. It's been talked about for the past two weeks. We've talked about it with Nathan and myself. I've talked about it quite a bit. Sylvia, Dr. Sylvia Earle, Dr. Jane Goodall has been there. The Cousteau family has been there. All the ocean leaders have been at this conference discussing putting on panels, discussing different topics, why the ocean is so important when you talk about climate change. And I'm really happy to say that at the end of these talks, the purpose was to come up with an agreement with all, I believe it's 195 or 196 countries where an agreement will be reached and certain parts of the agreement will be put into action after this over a specific amount of time and eventually forever. So it starts 195 countries that just checked on the website. So this New York Times article does link to the Paris Climate Agreement, which we are going to link to as well. But what they've done, and I thought this was great. So I just kind of want to read out some of the quotes, but what they've done is they've taken out snippets of the agreement and then they've talked about what the implications are and what the advantages and disadvantage or the weaknesses. So I must tell you the agreement, although I haven't read it in full, the agreement is a great agreement. It's a great start. It does have some holes and we're going to talk about some of those holes and how they can be approved upon. But to be honest, it looks like countries are positive. They want to see change. They want to enact change. And I think we're going to see it. So I'm very happy from a scientific process, a science point of view. I'm very happy to see this happening and a conservationist point of view. I'm very happy to see countries really start to do this because to be honest, climate change, although if we can do things as a community, as an individual, and then as a community, we start to see changes, but we see governments, world leaders, China, the US, Canada, Russia, all these countries and of course all the developing countries really start to put an effort in there and then we have an agreement over all the developing and developed countries and the implications between those, which we're going to talk about. We see this almost like the world coming together, which is very difficult in the first place and agreeing on specific things. Why? Because everybody is feeling the effects of climate change and it's nice to see that it's been acknowledged and now people are trying to do something about it. And I think this is one of those things that we just, we are required to do as a world community and it's nice to see everybody getting together and doing this. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to read what page it's from. I'm just going to read the quote and what those implications are, which is fantastic. So here it is page 21, the first one, temperature increase. So the quote is holding, this is right from the climate change agreement, holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below two degrees above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts, limit the temperature and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks of an impacts of climate change. So essentially what they're saying is not only are we going to adopt a two degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but we're going to pursue efforts to limit the temperatures increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. So we're not, so the country said two degrees is great, but 1.5 degrees where we're really going to see the changes. And I think that is the specific thing. And then as an example of that, they say, although we don't know the exact temperature, this is quoting from Justin Yelis, who's a climate change, who's a climate science reporter. He says, for example, although we don't know the exact temperature, there's a trigger point at which the whole Greenland ice sheet and the Western and the West Antarctic ice sheet will melt. There is a chance of staying below two degrees Celsius would avoid that trigger point and an even better chance if we stay below 1.5 degrees. What that degree Celsius, what that means essentially is there's going to be a level that we reach in terms of temperature increase where these ice sheets are going to melt. And we're already probably at that level. It may happen over time, but we're going to see that level. If we decrease that level to 2%, there is a chance that we'll reduce that trigger point or the chance of hitting that trigger point. If we reduce even further to 0.5 degrees, and probably when you listen to this 0.5 degrees doesn't really seem like a lot, when you look at global average temperature, that is huge. That is huge. If we see that significant, if we see that decrease, we're going to see another even better chance of reducing that risk of seeing these ice sheets melt. What are the implications of these ice sheets melting? An increase in sea level rise. These ice sheets are massive and they hold this water that can actually increase global sea level rise by quite a bit. I'm not going to say the exact level, because it's predicted, it's estimated, and it can be difficult, but it could be between 0 and 1 meter. That's a huge increase, especially when a lot of countries, especially look at small island nations, are just maybe between half a meter and a meter above sea level as high as a point. We have to be careful how we treat the earth with temperature increase and sea level rise and ice sheets melting. And going to 1.5 degrees will significantly decrease that risk, which is awesome. Page 22, preservation of forests. Parties are encouraged to take action to implement and support, including through results-based payments the existing framework has set out in related guidance and decisions already agreed under the Convention for Policy Approaches and Positive Incentives for activities relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forests, carbon stocks, and developing countries. And alternative policy approaches such as joint mitigation and adaptation approaches for integral and sustainable management of forests, while reaffirming the importance of incentivizing as appropriate non-carbon benefits associated with such approaches. That is a really long statement, very confusing, if I've just read it out. I realize that as I'm reading it out to you. However, this is one of the biggest and most significant parts of the agreement, because the first time that forests and forest carbon stocks are really acknowledged in an international agreement, which is a huge, huge. So what this essentially this snippet means is there's going to be an incentivized program for developing countries and tropical countries who have large forests or there's a huge destruction of large forests going on of keeping those forests intact. There's actually going to be a monetary value gained to be that. So other countries will pay into keeping those forests protected and keeping those forests and maybe even building upon those forests through re-plantation and so forth. That's going to be a huge effect because essentially trees and forests suck in CO2, right, which is a huge greenhouse gas. So if you can have nature and areas like forests actually sucking gas or sucking carbon dioxide gas and release oxygen, which is what they do on a regular basis, that's how they survive, if you make sure that the forests are sustainably managed, that their conservation is protected and that there's always going to be forests around and maybe even the increase of some forests, we're going to see a drastic reduction in CO2. So that's going to help in the climate change, in the fight against climate change. So having this snippet of information in this agreement is huge because it's never been an international agreement and it recognizes the importance of forests in reducing climate change. So that's awesome. All right. This the next quote here or snippet is they've titled it on the New York Times bearing the cost. So as a part of global effort, developed country parties should continue to take the lead in mobilizing climate finance from a wide variety of sources, instruments and channels, noting that significant role of public funds through a variety of actions, including supporting country driven strategies and taking into account the needs and priorities of developing country parties, such mobilization of climate finance should represent a progress beyond previous efforts. Essentially this is putting a monitor, well, this is saying that developed countries should be supporting developing countries in mitigating climate change effects. And it's basically acknowledging that a lot of developed countries are providing most of the climate change impacts through their use of fossil fuels and just the use of industrialization. And it recognizes that smaller countries developing countries need to be compensated for this because they're seeing the biggest effect. The one problem, Melissa Eddie of Berlin correspondent said, the one problem with this is that there hasn't been a specific number associated with this. There was at the beginning in the summary saying that a goal of at least $100 billion a year in contributions from rich countries is only mentioned in the preamble, which is not legally binding. So there hasn't really been a set amount that is legally binding that should go to these developing countries who are fighting, you know, sometimes for their lives to make sure that the effects of climate change are not affecting them. So we're really that's really going to be a sticky point with a lot of countries. And I think a lot of them want to see something more something more more tangible and something more legally binding and actual number associated with it because it's it's really not legally binding, as I said, because mentioned in the preamble, and apparently $100 billion just that number is not enough, apparently, according to some of these countries to actually, you know, go from a completely from a renewal base energy source or to a renewal base energy sources rather than using coal and oil. So the incentive is just not there. So that's going to be interesting to see what happens. Next snippets from page 27 is it's entitled transparency in order to build mutual trust and confidence and to promote effective implementation and enhance transparency framework for action and support with built in flexibility, which takes into account parties different capacities and builds on collective experience is hereby established. Now this was an issue that the United States wanted to put into place is transparency because it builds trust amongst the countries. And that was a big thing when you're dealing with 195 countries, all about some of the main trust other countries just because of their past, they want to make sure that everybody's doing the right thing, everybody's doing the best effort that they have in their capacity and is just being honest and truthful. They're having difficulties, they have difficulties, but they say it. So there's hopefully going to be some sort of framework, a transparency framework for action and support that will build this trust amongst all the countries. So that is fantastic. Okay, so now page 21 and next one is called absence of greenhouse gas emissions neutrality. So it says, in order to achieve the long term temperature goal set out in article two, which is essentially getting to 1.5 degrees per industrial, 1.5 degrees Celsius pre-industrial times, parties aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that peaking will take longer for developing country parties and to undertake rapid reductions thereafter in accordance with the best available science. So as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by resources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of the century on the basis of equity and the context of sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty. What this essentially does is this says that to achieve that it's basically that certain countries are going to peak faster than other countries. So what we're going to say is say, for instance, Canada, where I live, we're going to say tomorrow is our peak day. We are never going to go above the amount of carbon that we put into the world or into the atmosphere after today. We are never going to go above this level. And then once we hit that peak, we're going to decrease it as significantly as possible and as fast as possible. That's essentially what we're going to do. What the agreement does say that's different from other agreements is that in the second half of the century, we're not going to go to carbon neutrality. We're going to try and reach that. So I think essentially what Coral Dam important environmental policy reporter is saying that what does she say here? She says the current language suggests that at least some fossil fuels can continue to burn as long as the greenhouse gas emissions are absorbed by a larger number of greenhouse sinks like new force. So what this is saying is not saying that the oil industry is going to be gone forever right away. So this is saying that the oil and gas industry can continue on as long as the stuff that's coming out is being absorbed by a greenhouse gas sink, which is forests, maybe oceans and things like that. We got to make sure that that carbon is not sitting in the atmosphere contributing more to climate change because of the burning of fossil fuels. So now this is a sustainable part. It's almost like an equity part right where the amount going in has to equal the amount coming being absorbed back into the atmosphere into the greenhouse gas sinks like forests and oceans. Very important part I think because what it does is it puts a more realistic goal into the second half of the century. Now a lot of people I have a feeling are not going to be happy about this. I'm not completely happy about this. But let's be honest, a realistic goal. We can't just say bye bye gas like you know tomorrow even though we'd love to. We can't right we have to do this slowly we have to do this sustainably we have to make sure that it's realistic and we have to make sure that everybody agrees on it. And to do that you make these changes slow but you put them in action. I like this wording because it says that it has to equate. You can't have anything that's overpowering can't have more carbon going in the atmosphere as worse as then we can take in right. That's very important. All right so the next one loss and damage on page 25 there's a snippet saying parties recognize the importance of averting minimizing and addressing loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change including extreme weather events and slow onset events. And the role of sustainable development in reducing the risk of loss and damage. So this is the first time according to Melissa Eddie Berlin correspondent this is the first time in an international agreement that loss and damage has been included. Okay so this what this does is this meets the demand from smaller island countries for acknowledging that they are suffering from the effects of climate change. And I think you know we see bigger countries richer countries develop countries who are contributing to the problem more but we're not we're like you know from Canada and the US perspective we're not seeing the effects as much as smaller poorer countries and they can't they can't change they don't have the infrastructure they don't have the money to actually put into that fact. So I think it's important that we actually see this in international agreement and says a step you know the first step is to admit that something is a problem right getting rid of that denial and this is a huge problem okay. The last snippet page of page 22 is five year contributions and I believe this is one of the best parts and some countries are not too happy about this but I think this is one of the most important parts of the agreement is called five year contributions. Here's a snippet. Each party shall communicate a nationally determined contribution every five years in accordance with the decision one slash CP point two one and any relevant decisions of the conference of the party serving as as the meeting of the parties to the Paris agreement and be informed by the outcomes of the global stock take referred to in article 14 of course there's a lot of referrals in these types of agreements referring to section one decision one article 14 blah blah blah. What this essentially means is that there is a legally binding agreement by all countries that every five years each country will communicate their contribution to the agreement. They're going to start evaluating what their reduction is they're going to start evaluating what their strategies are they're going to acknowledge setbacks they're going to acknowledge successes and what's going to happen is they're going to be able to share all that with each other again that transparency that trust will be built plus you can use it as a support mechanism between these countries. Once you start sharing that among the other parties that have agreed to this you are building that trust you are building that support system and they can and other countries can build off that they can say okay Canada and the US they're trying to do something about it but they came back with these setbacks because of some policy but they've acknowledged that it was a setback and this is how they're this is how they're going to fix it this is the solution that they're going to implement. I think it's a great way of doing things we're not going to see perfect harmony with all countries we're not going to see a perfect strategy we're going to see a lot of experimentation we're going to see some setbacks we're going to see some successes and I think it's important to see and share within all the agreement. So that's to me is one of the most important parts I was reading an article just before I recorded the show where China one of the major you know I guess developing or developed countries I don't know what you would call it I guess it would be a developed country but it's also I think it's the second worst major polluter in the world. Acknowledge that this this whole agreement is great as a great start there were some holes in it in terms of the money contribution by countries like I like I mentioned before that hundred million dollar amount they said wasn't enough plus it wasn't legally binding so that could be a sticky point but they also had a problem with the five year contributions they said it should be volunteer which can basically means that countries can or they don't have to actually put it forth I don't like that I like the fact that it's legally binding you have to put a report forward I think it's important for the national community to see what other countries are doing the efforts they're putting in and like I said it builds trust it builds transparency and to be honest that's how we're gonna see progress it's an accountability framework really and because what happened with the Kyoto protocol I mentioned this in a couple of podcasts ago we had a huge you know Canada you not the US but a lot of major countries ratified this agreement they all agreed with this agreement but then when they went back home changes in parties changes in leadership just people decide you know what this is too expensive it was a different time back then there were more climate change than ours or climate change this is I guess back in 99 wasn't really a big issue as it is now and we weren't seeing a lot of the effects right away it wasn't really being publicized worldwide a lot of the effects that other countries were feeling or even your own countries were feeling because they didn't necessarily attribute it to climate change so that was a big problem is a big sticky point so Kyoto protocol basically just fell through by the wayside and a lot of countries didn't even have it I know Canada for instance you know that the liberal government that was in power ratified the agreement then they got ousted from from leadership and the conservative government came in and basically just said no we're not going to agree to the Kyoto protocol it wasn't realistic it wasn't this it wasn't that and they just decided let's go let's just forget about it and of course you know the rest where a lot of them forgot the lot of that leadership that government for the conservative government decided you know what we're going to forget about science and climate change altogether we're going to go full full breath on oil and gas and as you know recent events that is completely taken a 180 and the government in power now the liberal government is now basically going all forth and they were one of the first countries to come out at this of these agreements and said let's go for 1.5 degrees Celsius pre-industrialized levels so you know it all depends on the party that's in power you know it depends on the leadership it depends on the countries it depends on the people whether they believe in climate change or not or whether they think it's a it's a big enough effect to actually address and spend all this time and money and effort on it's you know it there's a lot of things that go on but this accountability of five year contributions where you have to put in essentially a progress report allows other countries to kind of say hey you know what Canada or you know what the US or you know what Singapore or whatever country it is you need to step up right you need to step up and you need to put on you know your best effort because everybody else is right and I hope I hope that's what we see I'm an optimist I always look at glass half full so I wish that you know I have a lot of hope for this agreement I think we're in a different time than we were in 1999 climate change is more of a topic that's discussed there's less climate change deniers people are seeing the results the science is being communicated better from from results based perspective reports and all that kind of stuff you can find a lot of information on climate change science and just on oceans how the oceans are changing how the earth is changing just in general I think that people are more accepting that climate change is happening and that needs to be addressed this agreement I think people going into this this conference before this agreement was created a lot of countries were very positive that they were coming in with their own strategies and I think that helped with coming up with this agreement and of course it's not going to be perfect but this is a great first step you know this is a great umpteenth attempt and I think it's going to just get built upon if the countries go home and put it into action and of course that is up to the citizens of these countries to make sure that their government is putting this into action if this is important to you which it should be should be important to everybody we need to put pressure on our government positive pressure saying this is what we want if you don't provide it to us we're not voting for you right this is should be with one of the main issues in you know when we vote for we vote for parties into power right if you can vote for parties into power if you're in a country that's a democratic and you can you have the ability to vote then vote for climate change reductions right that should be one of the highest highest impact highest related issues and and to be honest it's an economic issue as well we pay out a lot of money for damages caused by climate change impacts and it should be one of the top it should be the top topic in any kind of political race okay and I think that would drastically change the u.s. race that's going to happen for 2016 so anyway that's the episode for today I really appreciate you guys listening to me I know I had a lot of jargon and a lot of quotes that I want that I read out and I know that could be a little difficult to understand especially over audio but I appreciate it I'm going to put that link to not only the article in the New York Times which I think is great it's a great read but also the we're going to put in on the show notes we're going to put in the link to the report that's only a 30 page report you can read through it pretty quickly even if you just have to skim it I think it's important for everybody to read it comes in English Arabic Chinese French Russian and Spanish which is awesome so you can pick which one you want depending on your on your first or second language or third language or whatever but I think it's important that everybody take a read and everybody see what this agreement is all about and if you can find holes in it find holes in it let people know that's what we're here to see we're here to make sure all of these countries put into place put into action this agreement so I think it's very important to acknowledge this agreement yes it has holes but it's the first great step now we need action we definitely need action talk is over let's put this stuff into action so I don't know when this is supposed to go to action for each country I'm going to check it out with for Canada but hopefully as soon as possible well anyway that's it for the show today if you want to support this podcast you can go over to SpeakUpForBlue.com/patreon and you can support this podcast at various levels I really appreciate if you do if not no worries you can still listen to the podcast but if you want to be a part of this SpeakUpForBlue community go in put in a support of monetary support I really appreciate it and support this podcast that's at SpeakUpForBlue.com/patreon that's it for the show today you've been listening to SpeakUpForBlue podcast my name is Andrew Lewin happy conservation