Human Rights and Climate Change

On Thursday December 10th it was Human Rights Day at COP21. It was super cool to see different people all over from the United States, to Burkina Faso, to Lithuania, to South Korea, and so on all unite under the banner of wanting human rights. The countries that will be most impacted are the ones who contributed less to climate change. I was talking to someone from the Marshall Islands and they were emphasizing how they will be underwater in fifty years minimum and to have people deny and even worse not do anything about it pained him. In our hostel I was talking to some students from Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and they were making a lot of Black Lives Matter signs for Human Rights Day but one caught my eye. One of the signs said "our health is NOT for sale." I pondered on this sign because I felt that as a human we know that life is valuable both my own and the people around me, and to have someone have to say because higher ups whether in politics or corporations don't care about my well being upsets me. Where is the empathy? Unfortunately this is a question where some might not like the answer.

As I wandered through the conference I heard singing. I stopped to see what it was about and I saw young women and men from Nigeria singing a traditional song that's about unity. They were asking for climate justice. I have seen a lot of protests during my two weeks here. I saw people yelling and screaming, people would hand out chocolate (it was really good) that say "we must act now on climate change." I have seen plays being acted out, even a flash mob. But there was something smooth about them singing instead of doing all those listed above. I saw some Nigerians including both observers and party members dance and sing along. 

Towards the end of the day Collin and I attended an event that Christiana Figueres the executive secretary of the UNFCCC started five years ago when she was first appointed. The event is called Momentum For Change UN Solutions Award. We attended and heard Ban Ki Moon speak. We unfortunately had to leave the event early because of prior arrangements. Ban Ki Moon mentioned how one of his favorite days at COP was Human Rights Day and its because he felt that is when he learns the a lot about situations in different countries from the people. 

Human rights is something I have noticed being emphasized at the conference. Third world countries and organizations are being listened to. I don't want to grow old and that their are  Climate Change refugee camps.  It was super fascinating to see different people from all over to unite for one moral cause, human rights. 

December 9th

At the conference, we met with Paul and Mindy from CCL’s midwest faction and had an interview with them that will be posted on their website within the next day or two. Next I attended a high level meeting with several ministers and bank owners on “Climate Change and the Role of Markets and Trade: Leveraging Co-Benefits”, giving me an idea of how this will actually be applied in our global markets. Essentially it said that we need to open up the global markets and take away subsidies, a common theme among presentations on finance and climate change. It also touched on the idea that policy and business must compliment each other. An idea that must be taken into consideration when any policy is drafted. If this were successfully achieved, then you could ensure a healthy market. An interesting note from one of the speakers, the only environmentalist on stage during this presentation was that these policies must support agriculture specifically at all times. Even during times of drought or poor growing conditions. Agriculture was touched on quite a bit due to the fact that they are going be the most adversely affected in a world where the temperature has risen above 2 degrees celsius. Sustainable standards are being put in place, although smaller farmers can’t live up to these on their own. Private land buyers won’t want to buy land that will not ensure a strong level of growth, so climate change very adversely affects this business. The next “meating” I sat in on dealt with policy surrounding meat, a subject that is very important as it alone contributes 15% of the world’s GHG output. It involves a push to eat less meat, something I see as a very unlikely proposition for America but people can surprise you sometimes. They covered the idea that we need more vegetarian options, something supported by the health care industry as it’s been said many times that we as Americans don’t eat enough vegetables. We also skyped with SES today, a very fun experience as I do miss home a little bit and it was very encouraging to see that people were taking interest in what we are over here learning.

- Robbie Proebstle

Fossil Fuel Subsidies

There has been a lot of excitement around everything going on here in Paris. After the weekend, some have given up hope of an agreement, but many remain optimistic and are fighting to make it happen. I have attended a few events about the importance of phasing out fossil fuels, and I believe they are worth sharing. Many things stand in the way of us turning from fossil fuels to low carbon and renewable sources of energy. The biggest challenge is fossil fuel subsidies.

The first problem is that the funding that fossil fuel companies receive is not doing what it is intended for. The money is intended to help increase production, create jobs and make energy more affordable. Analysis shows that only 3% of the subsidies actually accomplish those goals. Instead, the money is put directly into the pockets of the fossil fuel companies. 

The second problem is that renewable energy cannot increase if we continue to give fossil fuel subsides. Subsidizing fossil fuels is giving them a head start over renewable energy, making them more affordable from the start and giving people the wrong impression. Renewable energy is going to play a large role in the future. Starting the transition from fossil fuels to less carbon intensive energy sources is going to be a challenge. However, without subsidization, fossil fuels and renewables are put on a level playing field. With this modification, renewable energy would quickly become more affordable than alternate sources of energy.

Commitments to increase energy from renewable sources are found in many countries' INDCs. This is not going to be possible if they continue to subsidize fossil fuels. Fossil fuel subsidies prevent the growth renewable energy. The countries' commitments and actions contradict each other. We would be weakening our own efforts of promoting renewable energy by continuing to subsidize fossil fuels. A few countries have indicated in their INDC's that eliminating fossil fuel subsidies is how they intend to increase renewable energy, as Sweden and Norway have successfully done. This needs to be done in all INDCs if they are really going to make a difference; otherwise, we are simply undermining our own efforts. 

Worldwide, billions of dollars are issued in fossil fuel subsidies annually. This number is many times more than the funds being given to developing countries for adaptation. There is no sense in putting so much money into something we no longer should be funding. The good news is that eliminating fossil fuel subsidies would free up a lot of funds. This money can go to many other things, like funding education, health care, and promoting sustainable development in the future. 

This can be a step in the right direction, but this issue will most likely not be addressed in the Paris Agreement. Each nation will need to take this into consideration in the process of meeting their emissions goals. Although this seems like a logical decision because of its economic and environmental benefits, it will not be easy to abandon fossil fuel subsidies.

Climate Change- Terminated.

   I was stting in a chair in the meeting rooms, working on this very blog, in fact, when something life-changing happened. I was busy typing away, and I noticed a large group of people walking down the hallway. Assuming this was some large delegation, or the crowd from a talk that had just finished. I continued to work, but as the group drew closer I caught snatches of their conversation. It was in English, but they had German accents. Given my interest in the German language, I quickly packed up and followed them. As I pushed my way towards them, I could hear them talking more clearly. I hesitated. I thought I recognized the voice that was speaking, but I couldn't see him. I reached the group, and standing right in the middle, energetically talking to his entourage, was my hero. The savior of Cimmeria, the slayer of The Predator, and the sometimes-hero, sometimes-enemy of future earth: Arnold Schwarzenegger. While he's saved the world many times on the silver screen, the Governator is now doing his best to save the real one. As Governor of California, he did his best to help the climate, proposing the creation of the Climate Action Board, raising emissions standards, and fighting deforestation. Now he is going international, urging world leaders to take immediate action.

   Arnold was moving quickly, and I only managed to wave and say hi before he was whisked into a restricted area, probably to "get to his choppa". My encounter, however brief, reminded me of the true scope of these negotiations, and the massive international effort underway to make sure it's successful. Arnold's visit could not come at a better time, as Negotiations are now in a very tenuous phase. The country negotiators have done their job, and a first draft agreement has been proposed. Now the big guns are stepping in, various Ministers, Secretaries, and other government officials will be fighting tooth and nail over every part of the agreement.

   As it stands, the current draft is not really serviceable. The negotiators who created it made sure to leave many options open, so the draft includes many potential targets, measurements, and binding mechanisms. The goal this week is to amend the agreement to set concrete targets, evaluative measures, and legal requirements. Up until now, there has been a general air of universal cooperation between countries, of common goals and ideas. But now differences are becoming clear; fearing rejection by a republican congress, the US desires a deal that won't include nationally binding sections. Threatened more than ant others by climate change, the Small Island Nations demand a 1.5 degree warming target, one that would require immediate and extreme efforts from the developing world. Others place emphasis on deforestation, and others focus on water use. It is clear that much is at stake, and hopefully a deal will be completed by Thursday (The agreement is translated and it's legal ramifications analyzed on Friday).

    This conference has been too long in the making to result in nothing, an hopefully the negotiating parties will realize that even a sub-optimal deal is better than no deal. And if they don't agree on something, we can say "Hasta la vista" to our hopes of ending climate change.

Robbie's week in the Green Zone

This week I was not with the other students, I was in what the UN calls the "green zone." The green zone is called Climat Generations by everyone else and is where the non delegate members or civil society meets. The security is about as strong as in the blue zone, a man dressed as Santa was forced to reveal the contents of his bag to security on the way. We have met some interesting people there, there was a man from Myanmar from the highlands. Apparently Myanmar is another destination that refugees have been fleeing to lately. We also came across a group called "Sustaining All Life" that specialized in peer to peer counseling for activists that also had an interest in stopping sexism and racism. To paraphrase their mission statement we can't work together to stop climate change if we don't address what divides us societally. We also met the ex mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts who has been to a few COPs before this. We (the mayor, my mom and I) met the official UN photographer, Marcel Crozet, who was an extremely humble man. He had portraits of many world leaders including Obama speaking at the opening events specifically for world leaders. He also had what he called natural abstraction, where he would take pictures but develop them on metal but the metal would not soak the light and then be imprinted rather it reflected the light. There is also an organization called Shamengo that works to make villas for engineers and others in the business of developing technology that had an 2 interesting concepts. One was a drone that planted trees with the use of pressurized force and the other was a Lavazza project set to launch in about a month that uses biodegradable coffee pods in Keurig like machine. The coffee pods are then sent back and turned into compost for a new crop of coffee beans or any other crop. . Creating a cycle for the company that reduces waste. 

Some quick little differences I’ve noticed on the culture here in Paris

- They have a much less commercialized version of Christmas (i.e. no Christmas music and almost no sales related to the holiday in stores)

- People tend not to talk to each other on the streets, even on the subway the most I’ve heard is a simple “excuse me”

Day 4

I'm reading the previous entries on this blog, and the work of my group members just drives home the fact that I am terrible at keeping up with all this policy. Filsan is open, assertive, and consistently in the right place at the right time. Collin is brave enough to try and speak German to Germans. Morgan's always ready to summarize the attitudes of the policymakers and actually understands what's going on at most of the plenary meetings. Who knows what Robbie will do when he has the chance to get into the Blue Zone? The best I can do is talk about the experience.

The conference is held on a giant plot of asphalt, and the building is beautifully designed, if a little obviously temporary--Collin joked that we were attending a fiberboard convention. There are thick wires with covers duct-taped to the ground snaking over the floors, and a couple of sections have tastefully draped plastic sheeting instead of roofs.

The grounds are divided into 4 main halls and one building with meeting rooms. The meeting rooms have carpeted floors, slightly dimmed lighting, and framed photos of landscapes--that area hosts all the plenary sessions. Each meeting room has rows of tables with microphones and a box of place cards. The place cards are printed with the names of the participating countries in big, block letters. Observers are allowed, but conditionally; usually, someone leading the session will ask the Party members if observers should be permitted to watch. It's much quieter in those rooms than any other place in the convention. Whenever I'm in that building (which requires a separate security check) I feel like I'm about to be kicked out.

The other halls are much more bright, large, and loud. Each Party has a designated pavilion. The Parties can boast their accomplishments with flashy displays, hold their own side events, and give out free stuff. (I got a really nice water bottle from South Korea.) There's a thrum of background noise and you're constantly dodging private security, cameramen, or people running late for something.

I've been learning so much so rapidly that it wouldn't be fair to condense everything into one post. I've had to cut out a lot, even from my second personal blog, and I'd rather take the time to let it stew than serve you the information raw. If you have specific questions, please comment, and I'd be happy to answer them.

I hope this is okay, Mr. Johnson--right now, I'm exhausted. Maybe I can add more later, but I wanted to get this out of the way. See you all when it's my turn again.

Day 3

As you walk into a building and see different people from all over the world in one area is truly amazing. I have truly been blessed to see people all around with a common goal, to combat climate change.  The security procedures at the confrence can be overwhelming. The security consists UN peacekeepers,police officers, and military. Security starts as you leave the train station to enter the shuttle bus to take you to the conference. As I near the actual center the more security I see. As I enter the site you would show your badge to one guard and then walk down a few steps to another guard I show him my badge. I then walk through this big building and see another security person direct me to an area where I unload all my belongings in a box. This procedure is similar to one done in the airport. On the first day I made a mistake of bringing a water bottle. The UN personel made me drink it in front of her to make sure there was no poison or acid in the water bottle.

So far my time at the conference in getting into meetings has really been based on luck. Originally I had an idea of focosing on small island nations, but once I got to the conference I just went in with the intention of being open to different things. Today I happened to stumble on annual financial reports. I heard the Green Climate Fun (GCF) deliver there fourth annual report to the Vice President of COP21. They were presenting what they have been up to for the past year with Mali. A lot of rumors have been going around about which country will host COP22, and at the annual financial report Morocco offically announced that they will be hosting COP22. A delegate from Morocco did not hesitate to mention that Morocco had been one of the first countries to put out a plan to combat climate change and has supported COP for the past few years. Also Morocco will be investing a lot of money into renewable energy. It is extremley fascinating to see all the delegates around the world hear the annual reports on what their or other countries are doing.

Today around 1pm our group used Skype to talk to a school in Sweden. The students in Sweden were very passionate about climate change. We discussed what is currently happening in COP21, what the climate change movement is in Minnesota and what a great job Sweden is doing to help neogioate. After that Lily and I decided to have some down time and get some lunch. I went to this empty room afterwards just to find out what I should do next when I hear that the President of COP21 and the President of COP20 were coming to answer questions from the NGOs. So I stayed to hear what the COP21 & 22 had to say. I was really inspired by the intellegence of these presidents. They had an answer for everything. One of the questions that hit close to home was "Some of the NGOs have little to no say in what goes on in the conference or in negotiations. How can we be heard?" The former President of COP gave out where he his office would be in the conferrence. He mentioned how essential NGOs are, and that that NGOs should be heard. He hoped to get all of the NGOs input and to relay it to the current President of COP

Overall my time here in this beautiful city has been surreal. I have been given this blessing to meet people from every walks of life. It could be someone from the Sierra Club staying in the same hostel as me, sleeping on the same floor. Or someone from Chad that runs the delegation office at COP. It has truly been an amazing time

Day 2

Many have waited for this conference, hoping to see it as a turning point in the climate crisis. It is the place that we as a world can stand up and overcome the climate crisis. With such an important agreement in the works, there is a lot of discussion of what will be in the agreement. Climate Action Network (CAN) International held a presentation called: “The Paris Agreement: Springboard for Transformative Change.” The presentation broke down many of the controversial pieces in the way of coming to a climate agreement in Paris.

Beginning with a financial perspective, funding for adaptation and mitigation is still far behind where it should be to prevent further warming. The source of funding this is another thing that needs to be decided, whether it is voluntary, a percentage of a nation’s GDP, or some other method. No matter the methods to finance these projects, the panelists agreed that there needs to be transparency in financial flows, a transition from this into adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damages. A representative from Nicaragua explained that the funding received has to be split between both mitigation and adaptation. We cannot focus on just one and ignore the other. With that in mind, she stated that mitigation is inversely related to loss and damages. As more money is spent on mitigation than adaptation, the loss and damages decrease. As less money is spent on mitigation than adaptation loss and damage increases. To decrease the additional amount spent on loss and damages more funding should be placed in mitigation, while not completely ignoring adaptation.

Next, there was a discussion on the gigatonne gap. With the INDCs submitted, simulations can show the atmospheric CO2 levels and resulting temperature increases. Business as usual leads to high CO2 emissions and increasing temperatures. Many other scenarios and their outcomes were shown. With the INDCs submitted so far, we are still far above the levels needed to keep warming at or below 1.5˚C or even 2.0˚C of warming. If current pledges are met, we would still be emitting 12-14 gigatonnes more carbon than what we can emit to meet the 1.5 to 2.0˚ goal. With this in mind, the panelists encouraged giving nations the annual opportunity to update their INDCs, allowing countries to set new goals as they pass previously set ones. This would gain positive momentum and encourage more positive change.

Lastly, there was a discussion of conditional emission reductions in some of the submitted INDCs. This raises the question of how goals would be defined in a legal binding agreement and whether or not those goals would have to be met. Not all countries are on the same page in regards to their willingness or ability to take action. Whatever the outcome comes from this conference, there needs to be clear and ambitious goals involving all nations.

So far there has been an overwhelmingly positive outlook on this conference. Many details still have to be worked out in order to make this agreement a reality. Some are motivated by hope of leaving a better world. Some are motivated by the fear of disaster to come. All know that if we are going to tackle this issue it has to be now. There is a lot of hope that an agreement can and will be made in Paris.

Day 1 at COP

   The first day of the COP21 conference hit the ground running. With less than two weeks to change the world, time is of the essence. The meeting was officially called to order at 10:00 AM, when outgoing COP20 president Manuel Pulgar-Vidal handed the reins to Laurent Fabius, and the 21st Conference of the Parties was called to order. Key members of the UNFCCC gave speeches, including Prince Charles of Wales and Christina Figueres. Following the inauguration ceremony, over 150 world leaders took the stage to pledge their support in stopping climate change. Highlights included President Obama's call for "A world that is worthy of our children. A World that is marked not by conflict, but by cooperation; and not by human suffering, but by human progress". Numerous other leaders echoed these sentiments and others. One thing was abundantly clear: The world is ready to stop climate change. The leaders of nearly every country in the world agree.

   One group of countries more acutely aware of this than any others are the Nordic Countries, whose sensitivity to climate change made them recognize the risks early on, and whose abundance of renewable resources allowed them to get ahead of the curve when it came to the climate. As of 2015, the Nordic countries (Finland, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway) already meet the expected emissions reduction to keep warming below 2 degrees. According to the Nordic Council of Ministers, the sole goal of the Nordic countries at the COP21 is to provide a real life example of practical sustainability, and to further increase their dedication to the environment.

    Of course, it's not only the Nordic countries that are leading the way, numerous countries are showcasing their programs; South Korea's innovative carbon sequestration program, Germany's massive $2.4 billion investment in developing countries, and Morocco's creation of the world's largest solar farm are all examples of the ways countries are battling climate change. One of the major challenges in a global response to climate change is that in many of the world's developing countries, growing the economy requires expanding access to infrastructure, and many of these countries lack the resources to provide sustainable infrastructure. In India, for example, more than half the population lacks access to electricity, and their solution is wide-scale construction of dirty coal power plants. This is where the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDC) steps in to prevent this from happening, providing funding to help developing countries use clean, sustainable energy sources as their economy expands. Germany, the UK, and the US are the largest contributors to the LDCF, together providing more than $500 million. The LDCF is a perfect example of how international cooperation can overcome individual barriers to progress, and this same approach is being used on a wider scale for the entire negotiation process.

   Even though the conference is just getting started, the potential for real progress is evident, and as the week continues, the potential only grows. We have a long way to go, but the dedication shown by so many countries makes the outlook for the conference optimistic; perhaps we can make a change.