Earthbeat Radio

Image by Andrew Revkin, all rights reserved.

Friday in Copenhagen:

President Obama made his long-awaited speech here in Copenhagen just a few minutes ago and there was nothing encouraging about it. “The time for talk is over,” he said, and then failed to commit the U.S. to any new climate-saving actions.

“After months of talk, and two weeks of negotiations, I believe that the pieces of an accord are now clear… Mitigation. Transparency. And financing. It is a clear formula – one that embraces the principle of common but differentiated responses and respective capabilities.”

Unfortunately, there was nothing really clear or new about his speech. The President stuck to the previous U.S. weak commitment of a 4 percent reduction in carbon emissions below 1990 levels. This commitment practically assures climate collapse worldwide in coming years. He also simply repeated Hillary Clinton’s Thursday pledge that the US would “help secure” $100 billion per year by 2020 for poor nations coping with global warming.

The huge problem with Obama’s speech today was this: there was no commitment to a binding treaty leading the world to 350 parts per million carbon in the atmosphere. That’s the only level that Dr. James Hansen of NASA says is safe by the year 2100.

What Obama SHOULD have said is that the U.S. stands in solidarity with the 112 nations who on Thursday endorsed 350 ppm — or no more than 1.5 degrees warming by 2100 — as the goal for any meaningful climate treaty.

Here was the immediate reaction to Obama’s speech from 350.org founder Bill McKibben:

“In the face of leaked UN documents showing that this agreement is a sham, we were hoping for some movement from the President. Instead, his response was take it or leave it. 100 other nations are not making reasonable demands because they want to make the President’s life harder. It’s because they would like their countries to actually survive the century.”

Late Thursday I interviewed the prime minister of Tuvalu, a Pacific Island nation that will totally disappear with three feet of sea-level rise. Apisai Ielemia was fasting along with his entire diplomatic delegation here for 24 hours as part of the “International Climate Fast” called for by McKibben and others (I fasted too!). Ielemia made it clear that he would not sign a treaty that doesn’t commit to a pathway to 350 ppm. “Why sign something that guarantees my nation will drown?” he asked.

Exactly.

What will happen in the final hours of negotiating here? Rumors at the Bella Center are that there might be a “political agreement” for a goal of 2 degrees Celsius and a commitment to figure out the specifics of who will pay what toward the $100 billion-per-year goal for poor nations. But if that’s all that comes out of Copenhagen, then it’s basically nothing meaningful. We’ll just be kicking the can down the road to the COP 16 in Mexico City a year from now. That is UNACCEPTABLE. As President Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives said last night in Copenhagen, “We cannot keep moving the goal posts on a climate deal. We have to stick to a deadline and solve the problem. The deadline is now. The place is Copenhagen.”

Just before Obama’s speech I had the fascinating experience of interviewing a correspondent with the Greenlandic Broadcasting Corporation. Katja Nyborg lives in Nuuk, Greenland, and is here covering the talks. She told me the warming in southern Greenland is now so bad that hunters are killing their sled dogs because there is nothing to sled on. The snow and ice are vanishing.

Katja Nyborg is a radio journalist from Greenland. She tells Earthbeat Radio that hunters there are killing their sled dogs because of vanishing snow and ice. But the warming, perversely, is bringing a boom in tourists who want to witness the climate calamity first hand.

The prime minister of Tuvalu also told me that there were almost no major beaches left in his island nation. “When I was a child in the 1960s, there were wide, beautiful white beaches throughout my country. Now they are almost all gone due to sea-level rise from global warming. We’re now just asking the world to let us survive.”

With firsthand testimonials like this, and with the maddening lack of real progress from world leaders, it can get discouraging here in Copenhagen. One testimonial that gives me hope, however, is my conversation with Australian Anna Keenan. She is on day 42 of a “climate justice fast.” And despite losing 33 pounds, she is amazingly full of passion and energy. She said a lot of people have called her courageous for doing this fast, which will end Saturday. But she agrees it’s courageous only in the sense of the original French meaning of the word “courage.” It literally means “raging heart.” (Please see that video interview below)

She said her heart of was full of passion, of hopeful and loving rage, to solve the climate crisis as a matter of justice toward all living things and all future human generations.

Here in Copenhagen, it’s hard not to feel some rage toward the dysfunctional international process — with huge responsibility falling on the U.S. But despite the challenges and setbacks, it’s also hard not to have a full heart — full of love and abiding hope — as you see all the world’s countries here, all the races, all the languages.

Miracles happen. The world needs one here in Copenhagen today. Let’s hope our leaders have the courage it takes to make it happen.

Onward,
Mike Tidwell
Earthbeat Host & Director, Chesapeake Climate Action Network

Steve Kretzmann of Oil Change International says America must finance clean energy development in poor nations by phasing out U.S. taxpayer subsidies to Big Oil and Big Coal. Watch the Earthbeat Radio interview from COP15 in Copenhagen.