Archive for the 'Climate Change' Category
January 3rd, 2012 by Youth Envoy Coordinator
MORE WARNING SIGNALS ON CLIMATE CHANGE
While governments hesitate over how to deal with the reality of global warming, the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere continues at an alarming pace. Resulting weather disruptions like more frequent droughts, floods, and violent storms are already severe, and threaten to become far worse. Recent scientific findings indicate that the time window for effective action may be even shorter than we thought.
Rising temperatures are causing methane, a greenhouse gas even more powerful than carbon dioxide, to leak from the Arctic seabed and from thawing permafrost in the tundra. The New York Times has now reported on new evidence that the leakage is proceeding faster than scientists earlier believed, and that the amounts of carbon stored in the thawing permafrost are far greater than previous estimates. (“As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks,” New York Times, December 17, 2011, page A1) The Times quotes one climate scientist as saying the recent findings are “the fingerprint of a major disruption, and we aren’t going to be able to turn it off some day.” For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we need to initiate decisive action now.
Recommended action: Contact the White House, and leave a message that we need President Obama to take strong action on curbing greenhouse gas emissions and resisting polluters who seek to weaken environmental safeguards. Call 202-456-1111 and ask for the comment line, or send an email by going to the web page, www.whitehouse.gov, and click “Submit Questions and Comments.”
For more information, see the UU-UNO Climate Portal, www.climate.uu-uno.org, and enter “methane” in the Google search box.
December 13th, 2011 by bknotts
The Durban Platform and what we should do about it
An essay by Jan W. Dash, UU-UNO Climate Initiative Chair
Dec 12, 2011
The Durban Climate Conference (COP17), deadlocked, ran overtime with contentious debate. Youth spoke passionately about how climate change would affect them. Finally, all 194 countries approved a compromise “Durban Platform”. The Durban Platform calls for a legally binding climate agreement to be formulated by 2015 and ratified by all countries by 2020. Developed and developing countries are to be on the same footing for greenhouse gases emission reductions. Progress occurred for the framework of a fund to help developing countries adapt to climate change, the Kyoto Protocol was extended, and agreement was reached on other issues. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the deal represents “an important advance in our work on climate change.”
But is the Durban Platform a success or a failure? The answer is neither. The underlying problem is that human consumption of cheap fossil fuels enabled the development of modern society, but also produced the greenhouse gases (mostly CO2) resulting in global warming and increasingly severe climate change impacts. Developed countries used the most fossil fuels historically and so are responsible for most existing greenhouse gases (the point developing countries make), developing countries like China and India are rapidly increasing consumption of fossil fuels (the point developed countries make), but science says the planet’s atmosphere now contains nearly or possibly more than critical amounts of greenhouse gases – so fossil fuel consumption cannot long continue by anybody if we are to avoid disaster. Only a compromise was possible. The Durban Platform is not a success because it just outlines intent, but there was no failure. A real failure would have been no agreement at all, with a breakdown in the entire process of trying to deal with the underlying problem.
Continue reading ‘The Durban Platform and What We Should Do About It’
December 6th, 2011 by Youth Envoy Coordinator
News from the Durban Climate Conference
The Interfaith Declaration on Climate Change – endorsed by the UU-UNO – is presented to Christiana Figueres, UNFCCC Executive Secretary, at the 2011 Durban Climate Change Conference.
For a description of more climate action by the UU-UNO, visit our Climate Portal at http://climate.uu-uno.org/topics/view/24085/
Extreme Weather and Climate Change Report
An important report on extreme weather events and climate change has just appeared, called the Special Report for Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX). Over 80 authors contributed this report published by the UN’s Nobel-Prize winning IPCC.
“A hotter, moister atmosphere is an atmosphere primed to trigger disasters,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University climate scientist and a principal author of the new report. “As the world gets hotter, the risk gets higher.”
Visit the UU-UNO Climate Portal for more information including a presentation with photos:
http://climate.uu-uno.org/articles/view/171595/?topic=23687
November 28th, 2011 by aswaroop
“We recognize that religion, spirituality, and belief play a central role in the lives of millions of women and men, and the way they live and treat other persons. Religion, spirituality and belief may and can contribute to the promotion of the inherent dignity and worth of the human person and to the eradication of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, par. 8. on November 10, 2011, organizations came together for a meeting which compelled one to understand how spirituality, environment and human rights are all intertwined around one another. Among the speakers were Mr.
Ming Hwee Chong Representative to the UN, Baha’i International Community, Ms.
Martha Gallahue Representative to the UN, National Ethical Service of AAmerican Ethical Union, Mr.
Bruce Knotts Chair of Human Rights Committee for NGO and
Executive Director, Unitarian Universalist United Nations office, Rev. Joseph Oniyama Representative to the UN, Baptist World Alliance. Among the attendees were Anunay Swaroop and Jaqueline Sinclair.
November 8th, 2011 by Youth Envoy Coordinator
The following post was written by Guy Quinlan. He is a member of UU-UNO Climate Change Task Force and attends All Souls Church in New York City.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND FORCED MIGRATION
In February 2010 the US Defense Department reported that “climate-related changes are already being observed in every region of the world” and “will contribute to food and water scarcity, will increase the spread of disease, and may spur or exacerbate mass migration.” The United Nations Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that in 2008 “climate-related catastrophes” drove more than 20 million people from their homes. A study by scientists at Columbia University suggests that, if present trends continue unchecked until mid-century, the figure could rise to 200 million or higher.
Climate changes resulting from global warming can have disastrous effects on the livelihood of people in the developing world:
- Changes in seasonality of river flow, resulting from glacier shrinkage and diminished winter snowpack, threaten agricultural systems in Asia on which almost one quarter of the world’s inhabitants depend.
- Disruptions of rainfall patterns resulting from rising temperatures are projected to produce more prolonged dry spells, punctuated by fewer but more intense downpours, a pattern already being observed in Southeast Asia, Mexico and Central America, and sub-Saharan Africa. Agricultural lands in the developing world are currently being lost both to desertification, resulting from droughts, and to increased frequency and severity of flooding.
- Dangers from rising sea levels are not limited to small island nations. In India alone, a rise of one meter would displace more than 40 million people.
Some of these effects could be mitigated by adaptive measures, e.g. promoting more climate-resilient agricultural practices, but the developing countries most directly threatened also have the fewest resources to support adaptation. Preventing a major humanitarian disaster will require a serious reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
For more information:
DeSherbinin et al., “Casualties of Climate Change,” Scientific American January 2011, Vol. 304 No.1, www.ScientificAmerican.com/jan2011/migrations
Warner et al., “In Search of Shelter: Mapping the Effects of Climate Change on Human Migration and Displacement,” www.ciesin.columbia.edu/documents/ClimMigr-rpt-june09.pdf
U.S. Department of Defense, 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, www.defense.gov/qdr
European Commission, Environmental Change and Forced Migration Scenarios Project, www.each-for.eu
CARE International Climate Change Information Center, www.careclimatechange.org
October 24th, 2011 by rarnold
“Environmental refugees” refers to the people who are forced to migrate from or flee their home region due to sudden or long-term changes to their local environment. These conditions can include increased
droughts,
desertification,
sea level rise, and disruption of seasonal
weather patterns such as
monsoons.
The term ‘environmental refugee’ is used somewhat interchangeably with a range of similar terms, such as ‘environmental migrant’, ‘climate refugee’, ’climate migrant’, although the distinction between these terms is contested. Despite problems of definition and an absence of clear-cut evidence, ‘environmental migration’ has increased in currency as an issue of concern in 2011 as policy-makers, environmental and social scientists attempt to conceptualize the potential societal ramifications of climate change and general
environmental degradation.
Continue reading ‘Climate Change and their Refugees’
September 7th, 2011 by rarnold
The next United Nations climate change conference COP17 will be held soon in Durban, South Africa. Read about this important event on the UU-UNO Climate Portal:
http://climate.uu-uno.org/events/view/2138/ . Useful background information is included about the previous climate conferences at Copenhagen and Cancun, as well as in-dept analyses and the climate paper from the UN Committee on Sustainable Development (
CoNGO-NY).
August 29th, 2011 by rarnold
On August 17th, 2011, the climate change work group held a session to discuss preparation for the COP-17 meeting (17th Conference of the Parties), which will be held from November 28 – December 9, 2011 in Durban, South Africa.
Continue reading ‘UU-UNO for Climate Change’
July 27th, 2011 by bknotts
Climate Risk and UU Issues
An essay on why we might lose the future
Jan Dash, PhD
UU-UNO Climate Initiative
I wake up every morning around 5:30 a.m. and go straight to my email to get the latest bad news on climate change. Current actual and future projected increasing negative climate impacts are laid out. Climate impacts will increasingly dominate human activities globally if we continue business as usual without mitigation. There is no safe haven. We must do what we can to mitigate the damage we are doing to the planet. If we do not deal effectively with the climate problem, we may indeed lose the future. Dealing effectively with climate will be hard, but will have positive future aspects, including large-scale renewable energy and green jobs.
Continue reading ‘Climate Risk and UU Issues’
March 21st, 2011 by bknotts
This year’s Greeley Award winning sermon is something special not to be missed. It is a joint sermon delivered by Rev. Craig Schwalenberg and Sarah Summers (Senior Minister and member respectively of the Unitarian Universalist Society of Oneonta, NY). The UU-UNO received over 200 great sermons this year. Our panel of international clergy led by Rev. Charles Stephens had an especially tough time this year picking a winner from the many excellent submissions. The winning sermon is an unusual joint sermon on the Ethical Aspects of Climate Change where Rev. Craig Schwalenberg and Sarah Summers have a conversation from the pulpit about the work of the UU-UNO. The sermon covers the ethical aspects of climate change, but goes on to discuss all the other work that the UU-UNO does. Sarah Summers brings her own experience as a former intern at the UU-UNO to add personal touches this especially delightful sermon. You have a chance to hear this sermon at General Assembly on Saturday, June 25th at 1:00-2:15 PM in the Convention Center, Ballroom B.
