Category Archives: UN Climate Summits

Mongabay: COP24: Trumpers tout clean coal; protesters call it ‘climate suicide’

Protesters, for the second year in a row, bring the surreal Trump Administration’s fossil fuel message at the UN climate summit in Poland to a halt with a long, loud, boisterous outburst.

In November 2917 in Bonn, Germany at COP23, I managed to get into the Trump Administration’s only public event at the conference. I called it one of the strangest panel discussion in COP history. Trump representatives, heedless of the perils of climate change and its causes, urged the use of more fossil fuels and essentially advertised that the US has plenty to export. This year, as I report here, the administration held only one event again, and once again touted the use of fossil fuels. Both years, protesters interrupted the event, chanting loudly and then marching out, leaving the room half empty (as planned). My story here at COP24 in Katowice, Poland focuses on the outraged responses to Trump’s villainous attitude toward the environment.

Mongabay: COP24 – US, Russia, Saudis downplay IPCC report in display of disunity

Tom Steyer, one of the United States’ most influential environmental activists, at COP24 in Poland. Photo by Justin Catanoso

Reporting for my first story — linked here — at my fifth United Nations climate summit started shortly I arrived at the sprawling venue in Katowice, Poland. There was a reception at the US Climate Action Center, the unofficial hub of acitivity on the part of the United States in the age of Trump, who refuses to pay for a national pavilion like other countries.

I got to hear Tom Steyer speak, someone I’ve been reading about for years. A billionaire from his Wall Street days, he has turned his fortune into political and environmental activism that helped stop the XL Pipeline and promote a youth vote in the 2018 midterm elections that helped Democrats retake the US House of Representatives. Interviewing him one-on-one, and then hearing him speak the following night at a private event, gave me my story idea. The Trump negotiators obstructive pettiness, which emerged in a Saturday evening session, ended up leading the story. Great editing by Glenn Scherer of Mongabay.

Mongabay: COP24 – World’s nations gather to grapple with looming climate disaster

For the fifth consecutive year, I will attend and cover a United Nations climate summit, my fourth for Mongabay. The 24th climate meeting in Katowice, Poland — a coal city in the EU’s second-largest consumer of coal for energy (behind Germany) — is a paradoxical choice. It also highlights the challenges world leaders face in what is no question the most important climate meeting since Paris in 2015. The link to my story is here.

There has been precious-little urgency among nation’s since the Obama Administration led the drafting and signing of the Paris Agreement. Plenty of action is taking place at the non-state level among mayors, governors, and corporate leaders. That’s all good. But something important is missing, as one of my best sources told me for my story:

“It’s easy to blame these leaders, and they deserve some of the blame,” Phil Duffy, executive director of the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, U.S., said in an interview. “But at some level, there has to be popular support for action to be taken. And people aren’t clamoring for it.

“When I look at the properties of Hurricane Florence [which flooded the North Carolina coast], I see the signature of climate change. But somehow that doesn’t get through to the public. And leaders aren’t motivated to tell the truth, or to say that we really need to undertake radical, societal change. They believe correctly that it wouldn’t fly” with the public,” said Duffy.

Mongabay: A reflection on COP23: Incremental progress but no industrialized country’s top priority (commentary)

Fiji, the first truly vulnerable nation to host a COP, had hoped the motto of COP23 would be true. What it and other similar nations got was: wait til next year. Again. Photo by Justin Catanoso

My first commentary for Mongabay, written with the encouragement of reporter/editor Mike Gaworecki. I greatly appreciated the opportunity. An excerpt:

How many hurricanes the ferocity of Harvey, Irma, and Maria must be experienced in the US alone to stoke a greater sense of urgency? How many climate refugees need to be pushed from sub-Saharan Africa and Syria because of unrelenting drought? How much more Arctic ice needs to melt? How much sea-level rise can be tolerated in low-lying island nations — and Miami Beach, for goodness sake — before COP participants stop delaying greater ambitions prior to 2020, when a stronger Paris Agreement is to take effect?

Mongabay: @COP23 — Alliance pledges an end to coal; other key summit goals unmet

A protester outside the the entrance to COP23 in Bonn, Germany, holding up a simple, irrefutable truth. Photo by Justin Catanoso

Late Thursday morning, November 16, 2017, at a packed announcement in the European Union meeting room at COP23, environmental ministers from Canada and the UK offered perhaps the most promising news to come out of the 23rd UN climate summit. They announced a coalition of 19 countries and two US states pledging to phase out all coal burning by 2030. My editor Glenn Scherer agreed that it was a good idea to close out my coverage from COP23 with a more upbeat story. That’s what this is (link here). The story closes with a wrap-up of the work left undone.

Environmental ministers Claire Perry from the UK (left) and Catherine McKenna from Canada, discussing the Coalition to Power Past Coal. Photo by Justin Catanoso

Mongabay: @COP23 — Leaders vie for protection of ‘incredibly important’ African peatland

One of the largest peat formations in the world has been confirmed on the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo. It's the size of New York State and is perhaps the world's largest carbon sink. Map by Mongabay.

One of the largest peat formations in the world has been confirmed on the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo. It’s the size of New York State and is perhaps the world’s largest carbon sink. Map by Mongabay.

Mongabay has been covering the story of his enormous new finding of peatland in central Africa all year. Editor Morgan Erickson-Davis, who has been coordinating coverage, asked if I could get a follow-up story from COP23. With assistance from Dave McGlinchey, the communications director at Woods Hole Research Center, and Melanie Gade, a communications specialist with World Wildlife Fund, they both pointed me to the exact sources I needed. Morgan added in some insightful context.

WUNC/The State of Things — At UN Climate Summit, The US Takes A Different Position

Protesters gather before the Trump panel discussion on fossil fuels at COP23 in Bonn, Germany. Photo by Justin Catanoso

Here’s the link to my live interview from Bonn and the venue of COP23 with host Frank Stasio of WUNC’s The State of Things, broadcast from Durham, North Carolina. This is the third time the program has had me on regarding my coverage of these UN climate summits — live from Paris in 2015, just before leaving for Marrakesh in 2016 and live from Bonn in 2017.

The tech folks in the media center found the only land line in the entire area, pulled it out of a broadcast studio and set it up on an empty room between two busy newsrooms. At 6:05 pm German time (12:05 pm back in North Carolina), Frank welcomed me to the program. We talked for just under 12 minutes. From what others tell me, it turned out pretty well. Special shout out to my friend Jill Drzewiecki, who listened to the live feed on her phone while commuting home after work in Rome, Italy.

Mongabay: @COP23 — U.S., wealthy nations curtail climate aid for developing world

A reminder to COP23 delegates, observers and negotiators as to what’s at stake in these annual talks: the fate of human life on earth. Photo by Justin Catanoso

This story, which I spent an entire day reporting — from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. — came from the newest member of the Mongabay editorial leadership team, Willie Shubert. An experienced environmental journalist, Willie wondered whether the ever-present clash between developed countries (G-20) and developing countries (G-77) was being exasperated by the United States’ fundamentally different role at COP23. Good question.

Initially, it wasn’t a story I was sure I could pull off. My sources tend to be scientists, environmentalists and NGOs, not national delegates and negotiators. But I told my editor, Glenn Scherer, I would get an early start and work it and see what I came up with. Dean Scott, Bloomberg BNA’s lead climate change reporter, offered some great perspective before I started my reporting and recommended several sources. I attended a press conference early that was exactly the premise of my story. I lucked into some mid-afternoon interviews with a former president of a Pacific island nation and a member of the Australian national government, and finally, I found Harjeet Singh, an insider with ActionAid of London, who helped me pull all the pieces together. I started writing around 10:30 p.m. and finished around 2:30 a.m. I got the story.

Harjeet Singh of ActionAid, a key sources in this story. Photo by Justin Catanoso

Mongabay podcast featuring legend Jane Goodall (and me @COP23)

Mongabay founder Rhett Butler interviews primate legend Jane Goodall for the site’s podcast. I am included as well, offering insights from COP23 in a conversation with editor Mike Gaworecki from Bonn, Germany.

Mongabay reporter and editor Mike Gaworecki also handles the twice-monthly podcast for the news organization that began about a year ago. I made by third podcast appearance on November 15 from Bonn, Germany and the 23rd Climate Summit. By shear luck and good fortune, the podcast also includes a fascinating interview by Mongabay founder Rhett Butler with primate legend Jane Goodall (who is on the Mongabay board). Pretty good company to be in all around. The link to the podcast is here.

It’s not easy to impress my three grown daughters. But when I told them I was on the same podcast as this living legend, they were pleasantly surprised and glad to hear it.

Mongabay: @COP23 — Trump team leads ‘surreal’ coal-gas-nuke climate summit panel

These spirited young people disrupted the on Trump event at COP23 — a surreal panel discussion that promoted the use of coal and gas as a part of the long-term solution, not to climate change, but to energy security and economic prosperity. To hell with the earth, let’s reward investors and make money while we can! Photo by Justin Catanoso

Here’s the link to my story about one of the most widely covered events at COP23. There is a YouTube video in my story that shows the protesters in action.

This was one of the weirdest, most bizarre and completely out-of-touch panel discussions I’ve ever covered or attended. It may have been the strangest in COP history. It was a circus of the surreal, from the two West Coast governors who denounced Trump in the room right before the president’s panelists took their seats, to the young people who stopped the event cold for seven long minutes with a song they revised, to the panel’s not once uttering the word global warming in an event that stretched nearly two hours, to the hostile questions and lack of answers during the brief Q&A. Oh yeah, there were hundreds of protesters chanting outside the room the entire time, denouncing the US president for making the US the only nation on earth to announce its intention to withdraw from the historic Paris Agreement.

The panelists at representing the Trump Administration view that fossil fuels really don't need to phased out after all, and that there is such a thing as clean coal. Of the three men on the left, their collective duplicity was breathtaking. To the others, it was clear they were not comfortable being a part of this charade. Photo by Justin Catanoso

The panelists representing the Trump Administration view that fossil fuels really don’t need to phased out any time soon and that there is such a thing as clean coal. Of the three men on the left, their collective duplicity was breathtaking. To the others, it was clear they were not comfortable being a part of this charade. Photo by Justin Catanoso