Tag Archives: Greenpeace

Mongabay: COP25 — Self-serving G20 spites youth, humanity, world at climate talks

Two empty chairs on the set of a COP25 broadcast outlet seemed to symbolize the failing ambition and lack of integrity on display at the Madrid summit.

That’s not what hope looks like, is it? But those empty chairs, as soon as I saw them outside the main plenary hall at #COP25 in Madrid, I recognized a metaphor for this disturbing and deeply disappointing climate summit (story linked here).

Listen to Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, whom I interviewed after a panel discussion in which he participated:

“In the last 10 years following the climate talks, none have never been as bleak and disappointing as this conference. The science is staring us in the face and school children are taking to the streets in their millions, and yet at the global climate summit countries are blocking progress and watering down climate action. It’s disgraceful and politicians are simply not doing their job of protecting the planet.

“We need to see countries committing to new and improved climate plans next year. That regular review and ratchet mechanism was what made the Paris agreement an effective tool for reducing emissions, but countries are dragging their feet and they are putting us all in danger.”

My final story from my sixth climate summit details what happened and didn’t happen, and in the final section, explains why. It all comes down to leadership. And until the U.S. reengages in this process in a positive, not destructive way, hopes for the Paris Agreement coming close to achieving its climate mitigation goals will be remote.

*Seen here on a TV monitor in the media center, Ugandan activist Hilda Flavia Nakabuye pleads angrily with COP25 delegates: “Please listen: if you don’t know how to fix it, stop breaking it.”*

Mongabay @ COP25: Hopes dim as UN climate delegates dicker over Article 6 and world burns: critics

*Delegates have set a low bar at the COP25 climate summit, putting the world’s future at risk, according to critics.*

After arriving at the cavernous venue on the outskirts of Madrid, Spain, on Friday, December 6 (happy birthday, Dad) for my first day at the 25th UN Climate Summit, I wondered around in a jet lag haze until I received my credentials, got my bearings, and figured out the venue’s layout. Then I contacted a reliable source and said, “I’m ready to get started.” And he was ready to brief me and put me in touch with the exact sources I needed — including one (Bill Moomaw of Tufts) who I’ve been eager to talk with for nearly two years.

The story, linked here, is a follow up to my pre-COP25 story of a week ago, only this one is far more detailed, and in many ways far more accurate and realistic. It simply doesn’t seem to matter to the delegates and leaders of the world’s largest economies that they alone hold the fate of the planet in their hands. And they are utterly failing.

*Bill Moomaw, a leading expert on international climate policy and a former author of United Nations climate change reports.*

Mongabay: COP23: Trump, U.S. govt. seen as irrelevant to global climate action

Entrance to COP22 in Marrakesh, Morocco in November 2016. Photo by Justin Catanoso

When two major and startling studies on climate change were released a few days apart — one by US scientists and the other by the World Meteorological Organization — I pitched my Mongabay Editor Glenn Scherer as news story tied to the Nov. 6 opening of COP23 in Bonn, Germany. He recommended get some outside comments and after a flurry of emails, I had compelling comments from sources at World Wildlife Fund, Environmental Defense Fund, Greenpeace and Corporate Accountability International. From the story, linked here:

Both reports undermine the Trump administration’s hostile denialist stance on climate action and take a toll on the international credibility of the United States, at least at the federal level, at a moment of escalating environmental crisis on land, air and sea.

Delegate primary meeting hall at COP23 in Bonn, Germany. Photo by Justin Catanoso

Mongabay: Trump failure to lead on climate doesn’t faze UN policymakers in Bonn

Last year (May 2016), I was fortunate to cover the first week on the UN mid-year climate conference in Bonn, Germany. This year, under the specter of a US president threatening to pull out of the historic Paris Agreement, I produced a story for Mongabay from my home office in North Carolina. The story is here. Thanks to editor Glenn Scherer for his quick and thorough work. The story quickly hit Mongabay’s Best Read list at No. 5.

In my reporting:

Bonn negotiators remain unfazed by Trump’s climate change denialism or his threat to withdraw from Paris. Every signatory nation is going forward with meeting voluntary carbon reduction pledges. Some policymakers do worry how the parties to the Paris Agreement will make up the loss of billions of dollars in U.S. climate aid promised under Obama, but now denied by Trump.