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Living on Earth: UN Climate Summit Falters
https://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=24-P13-00048&segmentID=1UN Climate Summit Falters
Air Date: Week of November 29, 2024
…
https://megaphone.link/LOE2427128758
…
MEYER: Well, I think there's a lot of truth to that. If you look at the financing of these responses, you can make a very strong case that it is in our self-interest to be more generous in supporting these activities, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation. On mitigation, the developing country is now responsible for a majority of emissions, and that will continue to grow as their economies grow and they lift more people out of poverty. It matters tremendously to our ability to limit temperature increases and devastating impacts from climate change if we help them pursue that development model in a different way than we did, if we help them leapfrog over fossil fuels to clean energy technology. And also, of course, that can create markets for exports of technologies and creation of jobs at home in some of these sectors to help developing countries do that. On the impact side, on adaptation, it's obviously in our self-interest to avoid the kind of impacts, the food and the water crises and other things that drive instability, drive mass migration, create failed states and havens for terrorism, you know. And for example, it's pretty well understood now that the drought in Syria was a contributing factor to the instability there in the Civil War, which led to mass migration into Europe, which then destabilized a number of governments and led to the success of right-wing populist candidates. So these are issues that I think there needs to be more awareness of in the Global North. This is not charity. It's a matter of justice, and it's a matter of our own environmental security and economic self interest.
CURWOOD: And perhaps survival as well.
MEYER: Yeah, there's that, if you've got to be serious about it. We are currently experiencing devastating impacts of climate change at around 1.2 or 1.3 degrees Celsius, and right now, the latest predictions are that we're on route to either 2.5 to three degrees Celsius, and those would be truly terrifying impacts. And of course, what keeps a lot of scientists up at night is not knowing when we would cross thresholds, so called tipping points, that would lead to irreversible changes in the climate system and kind of accelerate those impacts. So there's a lot at play here, and certainly the world that we're leaving to our children and our grandchildren is something we ought to be thinking pretty deeply about.
…
MEYER: Well, I'm kind of a congenital optimist, I guess you would say. Others would call me a serial masochist for repeating the same thing and hoping for a different result. We do make incremental progress over the years, step by step. If we didn't have the Paris Agreement and the actions that countries have taken over the last decade, some of the predictions are we might be heading for four or five degrees Celsius. So, you can't say it's totally ineffective or doesn't matter. It does. The problem is, as we've discussed before, we're not moving at the pace and scale that the science requires. We are responding, but it's too incremental, it's too slow, and it's hard to get countries and leaders to focus on this when they're facing crises and conflicts in the Middle East or Ukraine, instability in their own countries because of inflation and poverty and inequality. This seems like something that's far off and far away, but of course, it's not, and it's happening now. It's being experienced all over the world, and it's compounding some of the political and economic crises that that leaders are facing. That is starting to sink in, and I'm hoping we can build on that and build more political will in Brazil and in future years to come, to come to grips with this crisis. But you would have to say, so far, there's been a lot of putting short term self-interests ahead of the global public good and what the citizens of the world expect and deserve and need.
…
Air Date: Week of November 29, 2024
…
https://megaphone.link/LOE2427128758
…
MEYER: Well, I think there's a lot of truth to that. If you look at the financing of these responses, you can make a very strong case that it is in our self-interest to be more generous in supporting these activities, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation. On mitigation, the developing country is now responsible for a majority of emissions, and that will continue to grow as their economies grow and they lift more people out of poverty. It matters tremendously to our ability to limit temperature increases and devastating impacts from climate change if we help them pursue that development model in a different way than we did, if we help them leapfrog over fossil fuels to clean energy technology. And also, of course, that can create markets for exports of technologies and creation of jobs at home in some of these sectors to help developing countries do that. On the impact side, on adaptation, it's obviously in our self-interest to avoid the kind of impacts, the food and the water crises and other things that drive instability, drive mass migration, create failed states and havens for terrorism, you know. And for example, it's pretty well understood now that the drought in Syria was a contributing factor to the instability there in the Civil War, which led to mass migration into Europe, which then destabilized a number of governments and led to the success of right-wing populist candidates. So these are issues that I think there needs to be more awareness of in the Global North. This is not charity. It's a matter of justice, and it's a matter of our own environmental security and economic self interest.
CURWOOD: And perhaps survival as well.
MEYER: Yeah, there's that, if you've got to be serious about it. We are currently experiencing devastating impacts of climate change at around 1.2 or 1.3 degrees Celsius, and right now, the latest predictions are that we're on route to either 2.5 to three degrees Celsius, and those would be truly terrifying impacts. And of course, what keeps a lot of scientists up at night is not knowing when we would cross thresholds, so called tipping points, that would lead to irreversible changes in the climate system and kind of accelerate those impacts. So there's a lot at play here, and certainly the world that we're leaving to our children and our grandchildren is something we ought to be thinking pretty deeply about.
…
MEYER: Well, I'm kind of a congenital optimist, I guess you would say. Others would call me a serial masochist for repeating the same thing and hoping for a different result. We do make incremental progress over the years, step by step. If we didn't have the Paris Agreement and the actions that countries have taken over the last decade, some of the predictions are we might be heading for four or five degrees Celsius. So, you can't say it's totally ineffective or doesn't matter. It does. The problem is, as we've discussed before, we're not moving at the pace and scale that the science requires. We are responding, but it's too incremental, it's too slow, and it's hard to get countries and leaders to focus on this when they're facing crises and conflicts in the Middle East or Ukraine, instability in their own countries because of inflation and poverty and inequality. This seems like something that's far off and far away, but of course, it's not, and it's happening now. It's being experienced all over the world, and it's compounding some of the political and economic crises that that leaders are facing. That is starting to sink in, and I'm hoping we can build on that and build more political will in Brazil and in future years to come, to come to grips with this crisis. But you would have to say, so far, there's been a lot of putting short term self-interests ahead of the global public good and what the citizens of the world expect and deserve and need.
…