Does Climate Change Everything?

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  • Created by: sikemi__
  • Created on: 28-05-21 17:22

Carbon

  • Seen as key element of what is contributing to climate change
    • IPCC Assessment Reports focus on carbon - human Co2 production between 1975 and 1997 is equal to entire previous human output
    • Also other GHGs such as methane
    • Tutu, 2014, compared climate change to apartheid as our current global enemy
    • COVID 19 caused emissions to fall dramatically but this has only marginally slowed overall rise in concentrations (lockdown in 2020 cause 17% fall)
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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

  • Arguably first globalised effort focused around climate change
  • Set up by UN in 1988
  • To provide 'the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientiifc basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation'
  • Produces reports...
    • 1990 First Assessment Report etc
    • 2014 Fifth Assessment Report was a critical scientific input into creation for Paris Agreement - stated that it was 95-100% likely that human influence was the dominant cause of global warming between 1951 and 2010
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UN Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992

  • Used to agree certain actions around what the IPCC identifies is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
  • Initernational treaty addressing climate change, negotiated and signed by 165 countries and ratified by 197 parties
  • Objective: to stablise the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with climate system
  • Has numerous conferences of partes (COPs)
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COP3 Kyoto

  • 1997 - COP3 Kyoto.
  • Kyoto Protocol adopted here in 1997 and entered into force in 2005 which outlines GHG emission reduction obligations to certain countries, mostly industrialised ones - countries agreed to legally binding reductions of an avg of 6-8% below 1990 levels.
  • Certain allowances in certain countries e.g. Canada and Australia due to size.
  • Canada withdrew in 2012 and USA didn't submit to Senate for ratification - serious as they accounted for 36% of emissions in 1990.
  • Had flexibility mechanisms as it noticed that cost of reducing emissions differed between countries.
  • Encouraged private sectors to play a role.
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Mitigation and Adaptation for climate change

  • Mitigation - actions to limit the magnitude or rate of long term climate change
    • Largely about reducing climate change/GHGs as well as other aspects
  • Adaptation - adjustments in ecological, social or economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects/impacts
    • Changes in processes, practices and structures to moderate potential damages or benefit from opportunities associated with climate change
    • E.g, relocation, construction of sea walls etc
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Project based mechanisms linked to C markets

  • Clean development mechanism
    • Involved investment in emission reduction or carbon removal enhancement projects in developing countries that contribute to their sustainable development
    • e.g. emission reductions from energy efficiency, fuel switching or commercialisation of renewable energy
  • Joint implementation
    • Enabled developed countries to carry out emission reduction or carbon removal enhancement projects in other developed countries
    • Cooperation implemented
  • Emissions trading
    • Market based approach
    • Parties with commitments under Kyoto Protocol accepted targets for limiting or reducing emissions
    • Allows countries with emissions units to spare to sell excess capacity to countries that are over targets
    • A new commodity - carbon markets
      • European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS)
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COP15 Copenhagen

  • Attended by 192 countries, 2009
  • Plan for post-Kyoto global climate agreement from 2012 which was unresolved
    • Wanted to establish an ambitious global climate agreement from 2012 when Kyoto would expire
  • Copenhagen Accord was negotiated by 25 parties but only noted by the COP
    • Referred to long term goal of limiting max global average temp increase to no more than 2 degrees above pre industrial levels and referred to a collective commitment by developed countries for new and additional resources incl forestry BUT it was non binding
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COP21 Paris

  • 196 parties attended, 2015
  • Paris Agreement signed here - seen as the world's first real comprehensive climate agreement where the aim was to obtain a binding and universal agreement on climate from all nations worldwide
  • Wanted to hold global warming well below 2 degrees but limit to 1.5
  • Establishment of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) - contributions that each country should make to achieve worldwide goal
    • Peaking - aim to reach global peeking of GHG emissions as soon as possible to balance anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks from 2050 - will take longer in developing countries (sustainable development)
    • Global goal on adaptation looked to enhance adaptive capacity, strengthen resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate change through support and international cooperation
    • Finance, tech and capacity building support looked to reaffim obligations of developed countries to support efforts of developing countries parties to build clean, climate resilient futures
    • Loss and damage (Article 8) seeked to enhance Warsaw International Mechanism on loss and damage - approaches to help vulnerable countries cope with adverse effects of climate change including extreme weather events and slow onset events e.g. SLR
  • April 2016 - joint statement that USA and China (40% of global emissions) confirming they would sign (left in 2017 - Trump but joined again in 2021)
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Capitalism and Metabolism

  • Relationship between social processes/people and climate
  • Thought about through concept of metabolism
    • Marx argued that in 19th century we saw an agricultural intensification which brought about an 'irreparable rift' in social metabolism involving soil fertility decline with loss of nutrient cycling - problems of fertility were addressed by application of fertilisers etc
    • But the 'rift' in the 'metabolic interaction between man and the Earth' (Foster, 1999) involved in wider capitalism, industrialism and modernity deepened
    • The 'metabolic exchanges of matter, energy and capital required to feed the contemporary urban world have been distorted and upscaled to the point that they have now reached a hypertropic, global extent' (Arboleda, 2015)
    • 'At a world-ecological level, our modern lifestyles are likewise premised on the irrational consumption of the latest electronic gadget, cheap food and cheap clothing. The very existence and overabundance of commodities like these rely on the visual and ideological exclusion of extended forms of urbanisation, usually in the form of massive holes in the ground...whose geographies are often shaped by explosives, pollution, brutalisation of workers, state violence, enclosures and market volatility' (Arboldea, 2015)
  • The Limits to Growth by Meadows et al (1972) discusses how we are in a key moment where populations are exploding and there aren't enough resources for this
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Justice and sustainability

  • Need to think about it critically - global north uses far greater amount of ecological space but global south bears the greatest costs and impact
    • Pacific islands buying land in Queensland to move if sea level rises
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Degrowth

  • 'Turning the critique of growth into a positive transformation programme to redistribute wealth and restructure the scale of economic activities relative to global biocapacity' (Gomez-Baggethun & Naredo, 2015)
  • Growth is not longer possible due to the vast degradation and impact on the environment - so we need to consider shrinking it and working to redistribute resources e.g. how defunding the police occurred
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