The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission was on track to deliver deploy 20,000 MW of grid connected solar power by 2022 (“more than the current solar capacity of the world’s top five solar-producing countries combined”) but because India specified that the solar panels for it were to be domestically sourced, the USA sued it in WTO trade court and killed …
Vandana Shiva – Paris, Peace, and Humanity on the Precipice
Humanity stands at a precipice. Merely 200 years of the age of fossil fuel has driven species and biodiversity to extinction, destroyed our soils, depleted and polluted our water and destabilised our entire climate system. Five hundred years of colonialism have driven cultures, languages, peoples to extinction and left a legacy of violence as the basis of production and governance. …
Michael T. Klare – Why the Paris Climate Summit Will Be a Peace Conference
At the end of November, delegations from nearly 200 countries will convene in Paris for what is billed as the most important climate meeting ever held. Officially known as the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the 1992 treaty that designated that phenomenon a threat to planetary health and human survival), …
Paris Climate Talks A Failure Even Before It Starts
The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 21 to be held in Paris, from November 30 to December 11 is already a failure even before it starts. Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, or INDCs were submitted by 155 nations by the October 1 dealine. Analysis of the INDCs reveal that the pledges made by the nations can limit temperature increase …
May Boeve – Time for Feeling Powerless in the Face of Climate Chaos Is Over
The global climate justice movement, writes Boeve, must seize this moment in which “renewable energy is becoming a revolutionary economic force that could power a just transition away from fossil fuels.” (Image: via World Future Society) 2015 is on track to be the hottest year in recorded history, and this December hundreds of world governments will meet in Paris to …
Meet the Corporate Villains Sponsoring the COP21 Climate Talks – Sarah Lazare
Fresh revelations that yet another round of United Nations climate talks—this time the upcoming negotiations in Paris—will be sponsored by some of the very corporations driving global warming have been met with outrage and alarm that the global process continues to be “captured by big polluters.” Pierre-Henri Guignard, Secretary-General of the UN Conference of the Parties 21 (COP21), unveiled the …
US Climate Plan ‘Treats the Wound But Does Not Stop the Bleeding’
With bold language and take-charge rhetoric, the White House on Tuesday unveiled its plan to cut U.S. carbon emissions by roughly one third over the next decade, a goal that environmentalists say is commendable but is not enough to keep global warming beneath the critical 2°C threshold. Submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ahead of a midnight …