It has become a predictable pattern at the annual UN climate conferences for participants to describe the outcome in widely divergent ways. This was first apparent after the high-profile Copenhagen conference in 2009, when a four-page non-agreement was praised by diplomats, but denounced by well-known critics as a “sham,” a “farce,” and a mere face-saver. UN insiders proclaimed the divisive 2013 Warsaw climate conference a success, even though global South delegates and most civil society observers had staged an angry walk-out a day prior to its scheduled conclusion.
Last week, after a great deal of debate, the passengers aboard the Titanic voted to impose modest limits sometime soon on the rate at which water is pouring into the doomed ship’s hull. Despite the torrents of self-congratulatory rhetoric currently flooding into the media from the White House and an assortment of groups on the domesticated end of the environmental movement, that’s the sum of what happened at the COP-21 conference in Paris.
As residents of North Texas surveyed the destruction from deadly weekend tornadoes, the storm system that spawned the twisters brought winter storm woes to the Midwest on Monday and amplified flooding that's blamed for more than a dozen deaths.
At least 11 people died and dozens were injured in the tornadoes that swept through the Dallas area on Saturday and caused substantial damage. That, plus the flooding in Missouri and Illinois, was the latest in a succession of severe weather events across the country in the last week that led to at least 43 deaths.
Britain’s ability to cope with the “unprecedented” flood crises that hit several urban centres simultaneously over the weekend has been called into question after the failure of key flood defences in the north led to thousands of homes being put at risk.
It was the day the floodwaters inexorably advanced across the Pennines, leaving much of the north of England sodden and beleaguered. From Greater Manchester in the north-west to parts of North Yorkshire some 50 miles to the east, Boxing Day 2015 will be remembered as the day the rains came.
The struggle for climate justice did not end in Paris after 196 nations voted to adopt an agreement curbing global warming on Dec. 13, according to environmental activists in the Philippines.
"The Paris agreement is not the climate solution nor the justice we hoped and fought for," said Rep. Neri Colmenares, senior deputy minority leader of the Philippine House of Representatives.
The emission cuts promised in the deal are "neither equitable nor even scientifically viable," the legislator said.
The Philippine government, however, welcomed the deal.
The terrifying deadlines approached by climate change tempt us to despair. But the face of the movement stirs us to courage.
Two certainties existed entering the Paris climate talks. They hold as true coming out. The first was that the world’s heads of state were not prepared to act as is necessary. The second is that it was never going to be up to them anyway.
