By Alaa Al Khourdajie, Chris Bataille & Lars J Nilsson*
The COP28 climate summit in Dubai has adjourned. The result is “The UAE consensus” on fossil fuels.
This text, agreed upon by delegates from nearly 200 countries, calls for the world to move “away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner”. Stronger demands to “phase out” fossil fuels were ultimately unsuccessful.
The agreement also acknowledges the need to phase down “unabated” coal burning and transition towards energy systems consistent with net zero emissions by 2050, while accelerating action in “the critical decade” of the 2020s.
As engineers and scientists who research the necessary changes to pull off this energy system transition, we believe this agreement falls short in addressing the use of fossil fuels at the heart of the climate crisis.
Such an approach is inconsistent with the scientific consensus on the urgency of drastically reducing fossil fuel consumption to limit global warming to 1.5°C.
‘Abated’ v ‘unabated’
The combustion of coal, oil and gas accounts for 75% of all global warming to date – and 90% of CO₂ emissions.
So what does the text actually ask countries to do with these fuels – and what loopholes might they exploit to continue using them well into the future?
Those countries advocating for the ongoing use of fossil fuels made every effort to add the term “unabated” whenever a fossil fuel phase-down or phase-out was proposed during negotiations.
“Abatement” in this context typically means using capture capture and storage technology to stop CO₂ emissions from engines and furnaces reaching the atmosphere.
However, there is no clear definition of what abatement would entail in the text. This ambiguity allows for a broad and and easily abused interpretation of what constitutes “abated” fossil fuel use.
Will capturing 30% or 60% of CO₂ emissions from burning a quantity of coal, oil or gas be sufficient? Or will fossil fuel use only be considered “abated” if 90% or more of these emissions are captured and stored permanently along with low leakage of “fugitive” emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane, which can escape from oil and gas infrastructure?
This is important. Despite the agreement supposedly honouring “the science” on climate change, low capture rates with high residual and fugitive emissions are inconsistent with what research has shown is necessary to limit global warming to the internationally agreed guardrails of 1.5°C and 2°C above pre-industrial temperatures.
In a 2022 report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicated that almost all coal emissions and 33%-66% of natural gas emissions must be captured to be compatible with the 2015 Paris agreement.
That’s assuming that the world will have substantial means of sucking carbon (at least several billion tonnes a year) from the air in future decades. If these miracle machines fail to materialise, our research indicates that carbon capture would need to be near total on all fuels.
The fact that the distinction between “abated” and “unabated” fossil fuels has not been clarified is a missed opportunity to ensure the effectiveness of the Dubai agreement. This lack of clarity can prolong fossil fuel dependence under the guise of “abated” usage.
This would cause wider harm to the transition by allowing continued investment in fossil fuel infrastructure – new coal plants, for instance, as long as some of the carbon they emit is captured (abated) – thereby diverting resources from more sustainable power sources. This could hobble COP28’s other goal: to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030.
By not explicitly defining these terms, COP28 missed the chance to set a firm, scientifically-backed benchmark for future fossil fuel use.
The coming age of carbon dioxide removal
Since the world is increasingly likely to overshoot the temperature goals of the Paris agreement, we must actively remove more CO₂ from the atmosphere – with reforestation and direct air capture (DAC), among other methods – than is emitted in future.
Some carbon removal technologies, such as DAC, are very early in their development and scaling them up to remove the necessary quantity of CO₂ will be difficult. And this effort should not detract from the urgent need to reduce emissions in the first place. This balanced approach is vital to not only halt but reverse the trajectory of warming, aligning with the ambitious goals of the Paris agreement.
There has only really been one unambiguously successful UN climate summit: Paris 2015, when negotiations for a top-down agreement were ended and the era of collectively and voluntarily raising emissions cuts began.
A common commitment to “phase down and then out” clearly defined unabated fossil fuels was not reached at COP28, but it came close with many parties strongly in favour of it. It would not be surprising if coalitions of like-minded governments proceed with climate clubs to implement it.
*Alaa Al Khourdajie, Research Fellow, Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London; Chris Bataille, Adjunct Research Fellow in Energy and Climate Policy, Columbia University, and Lars J Nilsson, Professor of Environmental and Energy Systems Studies, Lund University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
80 Comments
"COP28 missed the chance to set a firm, scientifically-backed benchmark for future fossil fuel use, Alaa Khourdajie, Chris Bataille & Lars Nilsson says"
I'll re-phrase that.
COP28 missed the chance to set a flexible, pseudo scientifically-backed benchmark for future fossil fuel use, Alaa Khourdajie, Chris Bataille & Lars Nilsson says
Appeals to academic authority as validation of truth is not scientific. Especially when we now know beyond a doubt that these scientists rely on funding, grants and promotions which depend on them towing the accepted establishment line suggesting more than a little financial self-interest in the "science" that is published. So try thinking and reasoning for yourself for a change.
My point was that simply having trust and faith in science is in itself not a scientific approach. Perhaps "trust but verify" would be a better model. Also there is a strong distinction between those 'hard' sciences and engineering disciplines which can analyse and resolve real problems and explain real phenomena, contrasting with the 'soft' sciences and pseudo-sciences which struggle to demonstrate any ability to analyse and resolve real problems because the systems are too complex or there is more ideology and politics (or money) in the discipline than actual science.
My point was that simply having trust and faith in science is in itself not a scientific approach
Until someone comes up with a method for measuring thing better than the scientific method, it is.
The great thing about science is it invariably checks itself - it doesn't stop.
Climate science is a 'hard' science, the underlying physics were understood in the late 19th Century. Non-linearities made many of the equations hard to solve and highly sensitive to starting conditions, but modern computing power has changed that. Ideology and politics have no effect on the basic science, which is well understood. Global surface temperatures will rise if the concentration of greenhouse gas is increased; Fourier, Boyle, and Arrhenius proved this over 120 years ago.
I agree with your trust but verify approach, but that’s not your argument here. You’re denying that man made climate change could be a thing because scientists get paid and are therefore biased, and because doing anything to mitigate climate change seems all too hard.
Whats more likely? That there’s an international conspiracy of academics seeking grant funding, or a vested interest by oil companies to keep supplying billions of barrels of oil after 100 years of practice?
Furthermore, science does not know exactly how all this will play out. That doesn’t make it wrong, but it makes it cautious and scientific! We can see that Venus is a hothouse that melts lead because of CO2, even though it’s further away from the sun than Mercury. And we can see that sea level rise didn’t drown New York in 1995.
Colin Cameron in all his wisdom talked about the planet being hotter with higher ppm in the past. Indeed it was, but humans WERE NOT AROUND. Who knows what will happen if because of climate change we can’t grow wheat in North America, or if malaria thrives in Berlin, or if the UK loses the Gulf Stream. Hence the “No Planet B” argument.
As one chump to another. I'm not a climate change denier. The climate has been changing for the thousands of years. Skeptic on almost totally man made climate change, yes. You are one of the mob that infer climate change is just about all man made. I believe there is some contribution to man made climate change, not just anywhere as high as the pseudo scientists say and suitably re-gurgitated by MSM.
Try this website for an alternative view. It's anathema and sacrilegious to the climate alarmists. wattsupwiththat.com
Ok I looked at that and found an echo chamber of people who are anti-everything that was invented after 1980 or doesn’t emit smoke.
Apparently solar energy is woke, anything supported by a Democrat must be opposed, all good things from the past were 100% paid for by capitalists without communist state welfare, and all the best technology like the ICE has already been invented.
nigelh,
As one chump to another. I'm not a climate change denier. The climate has been changing for the thousands of years. Skeptic on almost totally man made climate change, yes.
In the generally accepted sense of the words, you are indeed a climate change denier. To fall back on the 'the climate has been changing for thousands of years' is simply pathetic. I fact, it's been changing for not thousands, but billions of years-BUT not at the pace it is currently changing. If you were prepared to do a little study on the subject, you would find it unanswerable. here are a few clues; look at the electro-magnetic spectrum and black body radiation. Look at the Keeling Curve. Get your head around the place of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and perhaps look at Venus and Mars. Then you might consider the findings of Fourier, Tyndall and Arhennius, all in the 19th century. You might even look at the Clausius-Clapeyron equation. Then you might take a short trip to the Tasman glacier ad the lake now in front of it. If you are going to Europe at any point, take a trip to Switzerland and ask those who live in the mountains what they think. then, when in France, talk to some vineyard owners. You could also do that in England which now has almost 800 commercial vineyards.
The sad thing is that i doubt if any of this would get you to change your mind.
"BUT not at the pace it is currently changing." What do you base that on? Have a read up on Dansgaard–Oeschger events. You are mistaken if you think you are living a period of rapid climate change. On a local level we don't even have our pre Little Ice Age historic kumara growing range back. Changes of 8-16 degrees, within decades, dwarf out 1.1 degrees of warming since the Little Ice Age.
"The best records of D-O events come from long ice-cores drilled from the Greenland ice sheet. Measurements made on the ice cores reveal that temperatures over the Greenland ice-sheet warmed by 8 to 16°C at each event, sometimes within decades.
...Based on data spanning the entire last glacial period, our results show that abrupt climate changes occurred synchronously (within decades in some cases) across Europe and both the South American and Asian Summer Monsoon regions. "
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-rapid-climate-changes-of-th…
Greenland and boreal regions experience much more rapid temperature and climate changes than the global mean. Greenland is currently warming 3 x faster than the rest of the world. https://berkeleyearth.org/temperature-region/greenland
Yeah, nah.
"The most spectacular aspect of the Younger Dryas is that it ended extremely abruptly (around 11,600 years ago), and although the date cannot be known exactly, it is estimated from the annually-banded Greenland ice-core that the annual-mean temperature increased by as much as 10°C in 10 years. " https://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/arch/examples.shtml
vs.
"Greenland warming reaches a peak in 2012, producing new record melt of the Greenland ice sheet, especially in the western coast7,24. However, despite ongoing anthropogenic greenhouse-gas emission, Greenland warming has abruptly slowed down since then (Fig. 1b) and is not evident during the last two decades (Fig. 1a), although ice loss in 2019 is comparable with 201225. This slowdown of warming over the last decade is observed in surface air temperature (SAT) at several stations along the west coast of Greenland than its east coast6, including station Summit located at 3200-m elevation in the centre of Greenland (Supplementary Figure 1).
...Considering the results of ECHAM5 model forced with observed SST, it seems that natural variability plays a more dominant role in Greenland temperature variability rather than anthropogenic forcing so far."
"Greenland warming and ice loss have slowed down since the early 2010s, in contrast to the rest of the Arctic region."
Slowed? So not stopped, or reversed then? "Contrast to the rest of the Arctic". I guess that's why it's called "Global Warming", not "Greenland Warming"?
"After the termination of the
glacial period, temperatures in our record in-
crease steadily, reaching a period 2.5 K warmer
than present during what is referred to as the
Climatic Optimum (CO), at 8 to 5 ka. Follow-
ing the CO, temperatures cool to a minimum of
0.5 K colder than the present at around 2 ka.
The record implies that the medieval period
around 1000 A.D. was 1 K warmer than present
in Greenland. Two cold periods, at 1550 and
1850 A.D., are observed during the Little Ice
Age (LIA) with temperatures 0.5 and 0.7 K
below the present. After the LIA, temperatures
reach a maximum a r o ~ d1930 A.D.; tempera-
tures have decreased during the last decades
(26). The climate history for the most recent
times is in agreement with direct measurements
in the Arctic regions (27). The climate history
for the last 500 years agrees with the general
understanding of the climate in the Arctic re-
gion (28) and can be used to verify the temper-
ature amplitudes. The results show that the
temperatures in general have decreased since
the CO and that no warming in Greenland is
observed in the most recent decades."
Paywall. I dont suppose you have a free reference of that material? Yet again you're using old material with content that's impossible to verify without the context of the full article.
"ice core data cannot be extended all the way through to present because, as Alley tells Carbon Brief, the snow that falls on the ice sheet needs time to form into solid ice. He explains that “it isn’t quite enough to measure the snow as it falls…because there is a bit of post-depositional isotopic exchange and smoothing, so you’d want cores”.
"Recent temperatures are clearly higher than any seen in Greenland over the past two millennia."
https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-what-greenland-ice-cores-say-abou…
Just a routine reminder that mammalian and plant life thrived on Earth at CO2 levels more than double that of today's. And on an economic basis, those countries which focus on continuing to use fossil fuels (and nuclear) in an effective, efficient fashion as part of their overall energy mix will do much better than western nations who are now ideologically bent on cutting out fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Our standard of living is going to go down. We cannot consume as much as we have been doing and as the rest of the world raises their consumption level we crash.
There is only so much cake (energy) to go round, us continuing to stuff out face does nothing to create more cake, it just means the cake will run out sooner.
How then would China fair if they ran out of coal to run their power stations that, in turn, feed their standard of living? What fuel would they use to build any alternatives would this happen? They could go to other countries for it, but then again the world will eventually run out of that too.
Te Kooti.
Helen Clark came back after signing the Kyoto agreement beaming saying little old NZ was going to make a fortune as with all our Native National Parks that encompasses 31 percent of our land mass we were in the money as no other developed country had that percentage of forest. Then the European Coutries ratified that (as only they can never mind they have been burning coal long before NZ was even westernized) to only include trees/forests planted after 1989. So to answer your question yes we sequester way more carbon than we produce.
An existing, unchanging, forest doesn't significantly affect the annual production/sequestration of carbon.
We could argue that some forests have a positive impact where removal of possums, deer, goats etc means that the forest is regrowing and taking up carbon to do so.
How many ever reach maximum growth?
What's the argument here - that the forests are recovering from some degradation and therefore sequestering carbon? I fully agree the forests have been seriously damaged by mammalian pests over the last couple of hundred years, I am less convinced that most are actually recovering and sequestering carbon in the process except in areas of intensive pest management (just as I have said in my previous posts).
Was there significant selective logging in what are now national parks? That could be another explanation for sequestration into the future. I'd assume the bulk of the parks were too inaccessible to have been exploited significantly but I could be wrong.
Pest control of existing native forest could probably store more carbon than what could be achieved planting more . i think forest and bird calculated that out .
Underplanting of permament exotic forest with natives would also allow for future carbon sinking. Eventually they would start to crowd the exotics out.
Photosynthesis is the process using up carbon dioxide - respiration releases CO2 by breaking down sugar.
In a mature forest, these processes pretty much cancel out. Some carbon goes into growing trees, while fallen trees and leaves release carbon. Net neutral.
If a forest is recovering or is newly planted, it will sequester carbon in doing so.
That was the theory until someone went out and did some observations.
“This amount of uptake from relatively undisturbed forest land is remarkable,” said Niwa’s Dr Sara Mikaloff-Fletcher in 2017.
At the time, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research had two atmospheric testing stations, one at Lauder in Central Otago and the other at Baring Head on Wellington’s south coast.
Niwa researchers could estimate how much carbon dioxide was arriving over the country. And they could measure how much CO2 was found at the two stations. The latter figure was between 30 and 60 per cent less than the former.
Given the prevailing winds arrive from the southwest, the mature native forests must be absorbing much of that carbon. They were, in the scientific lingo, “carbon sinks”."
"In an initial study based on the inversion system used in CarbonWatch-NZ, a significantly stronger (30-60 %) sink was found relative to the NIR (Steinkamp et al., 2017), suggesting a strong CO2 uptake in Fiordland, a region covered by indigenous temperate rainforest in New Zealand's South Island.
Our new results suggest that the strong sink observed in 2011-2013 did not diminish, but for recent years we have found an even stronger sink than for before. Additional measurements collected in the Fiordland region (i.e., mixing ratios, CO2 isotopes, carbonyl sulphide) also suggest a stronger CO2 uptake, supporting our inversion results. Both the measurements and inversion results show that the CO2 uptake does not seem to shut down completely during winter time, suggesting that there might be something about this ecosystem that we do not yet understand."
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU21/EGU21-14323.html
Interesting? Climax forest is usually considered as in stasis. If forests are sequestering more carbon than being released, I would suggest they are not in stasis. So what could be going on in these apparently undisturbed forests that indicates net carbon absorbtion? Pest control, pressure coming off heavily grazed species? Forested zones rising into alpine scrubland zones as temperatures rise? Absorbtion by peatlands? Permanant ice being replaced by alpine plants? CO2 fertilisation effect?
Whatever is going on, it doesn't alter the fact humans have created a massive global energy imbalance that is causing dramatic planetary heating. I'm sure you will agree with the NIWA position on this scientific fact, seeing as you are quoting their work.
The moa hunters burnt the crap out of the forests and then deer had a good crack pre helicopters so perhaps they are just recovering.
I have no problem with NIWA's data though there are plenty of ecotards in the organisation. It is good people like yourself, that know everything there is to know about climate change, that seem to have a problem with the fact New Zealand is already a significant carbon sink.
"...and New Zealand was a net CO2 sink of −38.6 ± 13.4 TgC yr−1."
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GB007845#gbc214…
Because it takes 600 yrs for a native to mature and 28 for a pine plus leaves are always using carbon. Wither 1 yr old or 600 another point leaves use more carbon than needles so all those conifers in the northern hemisphere don't sequester as much per tree as our natives. Just like our pines here
How long does it take a pine to mature - 33 years? How long does it take a Kauri to mature - 500? years. Conifer forests are different to broadleaf forests. Redwoods are a long lived (2000 years +) Conifer forest dependent on having the right microclimate. Tropical and temperate- subtropical forests operate with pioneer species (Kanuka) being replaced by Broadleaf trees (Kauri) and Conifers (Rimu) that live for several hundred years.
If our native forests are healthy they will continue to sequester carbon for a few hundred years to come, given that many of them are regenerating forests that had the large standing trees removed in the 1800-1900's.
Mfd also if mature forests didn't still sequester carbon how come big companies are buying up farms and permantly planting them into pine. And the reason you plant pine over native is that you can't just walk out into a paddock and plant a rimu/kauri were a pine will grow natives need cover to grow hence old native forests have plenty of new replacement growth coming on
You are confusing stock and flow. A forest sitting there sequesters no net carbon. Growing a new forest sequesters carbon.
Hence, having large national parks that are in a steady state (debatable, as above) would count for nothing and wouldn't generate any carbon credits.
Planting a new pine (or any other) forest will suck CO2 out the air and turn it into new wood, generating carbon credits.
The new trees growing in a mature forest are merely replacing old trees that fall, decompose and release CO2 as they do so. The process is broadly CO2 neutral.
Having a large national park that is actively degrading as possums and deer eat it would be a source of CO2.
Then by your argument the large emitters of carbon will continue to buy land and continue planting pine trees as after 28 yrs when a pine is mature in these permanent forests that then don't sequester any carbon they will need more forests to soak up. Again that is pine trees wereby natives taking alot longer and slower to mature would be the obvious way bit no they go to pine. Disagree with you on it as every article I have read about it points that our native estates even at maturity still sequester. And considering a third of our land mass is in parks and we are such a small economy then we are not as bad an emitter as what some would have us believe
Te Kooti - It has been answered. Just not publicised. Seashell deposition in our EEZ alone sequests all of our hydrocarbon consumption annually. As a country we are already net zero.
"Results from Beata Bukosa's research from @niwa_nz confirm New Zealand as a carbon sink. Interesting and encouraging preliminary results of inverse modeling and new measurements in New Zealand #CarbonWatchNZ #ICOS2020SC"
• Recent flux NZ picture: 2017-2019 CO2 sink still present
• New measurements suggest even larger sink"
https://gml.noaa.gov/publications/annual_meetings/2020/pdfs/eGMAC_Beata…
Thanks for the Carbonwatch reference. Great work they are doing. Sure looks encouraging for our ecenomy if we are a carbon sink overall. Next thing will be convincing the UN that this is a legitimate way of carbon accounting. Not sure when the 5 year project time line started. Can’t be too far away.
There has certainly be evolution occurring over tens of millions of years just like there have been multiple glacial and interglacial periods in that time. My main point is that even substantially higher CO2 levels have not created any kind of life-ending cataclysm on Earth like the climate change lobby is presenting.
Have we had much trouble as a civilisation adapting to the change from 280ppm CO2 to now over 420ppm CO2? Apparently there is a "tipping point" or "hockey stick" or "domino effect" that we are going to run into any time now but it always seems like the cleverly drafted PR language of a lobby group to me.
Sure, anything that contradicts the establishment narrative is seen by some as "controversial" but I prefer to think for myself as opposed to being told by Stuff and the NZ Herald what to think. I also notice that you completely avoided addressing my point that mammal and plant life thrived on Earth at double current CO2 levels i.e. at 700 to 1000ppm CO2 - and also neglected to mention that geologically, sea levels have regularly been both 30m higher and 30m lower than now. All without the influence of my neighbour's HSV V8.
Colonial the biggest threat to the world use to be desertification were by the desert was growing and killing of land and species quicker than anything else the world could do. But over the last decade in Africa they have turned that around and actually the planet is getting greener by about 5 to 8 percent because of more carbon in the atmosphere. And yes you are right nuclear is the way to go look at Japan just commissioned the largest nuclear plant in the world only for a short time as France will commission one bigger than that shortly. But NZ confuses nuclear power with nuclear bombs a big difference.
Also most people think of nuclear power as the plants that were designed and built in the 1950s and 1960s. The Gen 3+ and new Gen 4 reactors are a completely different level of technology and safety. However the safe storage of radioactive spent fuel for 10,000+ year periods is still a challenge.
You have evidence of that? Were you there? Did they have a civilization of 8 billion relying on a complex chain of systems with a foundation of a stable climate?
That's the problem, you cast doubt on people doing the science now as paid hacks, but hark back to mysterious times as "evidence" we will be OK with a warmer planet because our ancestors made it through these times, therefore everything must be OK.
Its an utterly ridiculous proposition founded on 2 completely different eras of history, one which we know a LOT about (now) and one we know very little about (then). How much pain was suffered by our ancestors when earth was a hothouse? Can you tell me? Was it a garden of eden? Do you know, or are you making up a story?
Odd, a chemist that's clueless about chemistry?
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-cha….
Maybe these guys are scientists - although a Phd in Climate change economics doesnt really fit the classification - they do appear to be giving other scientists a bad rap using emotion rather than facts to frame an argument - regardless of its merits.
The targets in the Paris agreement were 2 degrees of warming and net zero by the turn of the century. It appears that these do not suit their agenda.
I recall clearly scientists telling the US Congress in the 1980s that we were on the verge of a climate catastrophe. Four decades later, 70ppm CO2 higher, maybe one inch of sea level rise on and Russia announcing yet another record year of grain production - I'm just not seeing it. I think of the old climate change lobby group 350.org who insisted that 350ppm CO2 was too high but anything higher would be far too dangerous. And now we are regularly over 420ppm CO2 and those types are still screaming that the sky is about to fall down.
What kind of idiot believes the Earths climate system instantaneously responds to greenhouse gas climate forcing?
"The last time that CO2 hit 400 parts per million (ppm) Greenland was ice free and trees grew at the edge of Antarctica."
https://phys.org/news/2019-04-dire-future-etched-co2-million.html
What I want recognized but very rarely spoken about is the military contribution to Carbon. From my understanding the global military contribute 10 percent of the global emissions yet all the big military countries got that consumption removed from their targets. Yet NZ with hardly a military (so service men and women) to speak of has to cut down on cows and sheep as that will save the world. Haven't the greens learnt anything look at houses supply and demand up the supply helps keep prices in check works with food to cut supply what happens to food prices we think food is exspensive now just wait. Especially with all these FTD the govt wants. Then our Joe average had got to compete with above average world citizen for our produce
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/409209-it-s-better-to-keep-your-mouth-shut-and-appear-stupid
Dunning-Kruger effect is strong in the comments section
Palmtree what does reality look like?
We are greedy, selfish, immoral, self serving etc etc as a species - so a most probable outcome is that we will use all the fossil fuel accessible until its gone in 30, 50, 100 some years - then it will get messy and lots of people will die - unless we have discovered another energy source we can exploit which will continue the merry go round until some other resource becomes the defining limitation. Not a great outlook but based on our track record over the last few thousand years an entirely possible scenario.
Doesnt mean that we should be unethical or not seek to do better but the odds are stacked on it ending messily
calls for the world to move “away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner”
Oh dear. What pathetically soft and ambiguous language... basically an excuse to make zero progress for any government that chooses to disregard the climate. They can still argue they've followed the above 'goals' while still achieving zero change.
Sadly there are practically no reputable sources. It is the whole self regulating issue. When we poorly define the conditions around it we can do more damage to an ecosystem. It is like sales of sandcastles on the beach; complete with digging out the crab, sealife and birds nests in an effort to get more sand castle sales. Eventually we will start grinding up the coral & natural environment ourselves to speed up the process.
It is the eventual outcome for all the poorer nations to sacrifice more of the natural ecosystem in a bid to keep up with artificial rules they cannot afford, especially those in pacific islands with poorer land mass and transport systems forced into more expensive logistics. Because no country anywhere is going to stop increasing the human demand numbers of the population. Just start preparing for the Make Room Make Room scenario. NZ is most of the way there already, we just need that final step when we look at reprocessing dead animal waste *cough humans* into "food".
The nightmare proportion of people in the book was when the population was 7 billion people on the earth... yeah we smashed that target, congrats people. Here is your housing, cost of living and food crisis for those on the bottom. Just keep cramming new migrants in 4 to a room, with limited support for food and poorer income and I am sure we will work it all out in the future.
I'd probably be classified a global warming 'denier'.
Where I live it's been much colder than last year, and many of the extravagant predictions made by alleged 'scientists' over the years have been disregarded.
I'd classify global warming as a 'mania', something humans get wrapped up in and are easily led. I'm not saying it's a bad to clean up the planet, because it's a good idea, but hark back to the loonies in the 1980's that had demonstrations, wrecked and vandalised gas guzzling cars because we were "running out of oil".
There is a solution...stop breeding like flies, but if you told the Pope that, he'd write a contrary, condescending reply that it was a very bad idea.
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