ByPaul Wallis
November 14, 2021
A participant walks past a COP26 UN Climate Change Conference' poster on the first day of the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference at the Scottish Event Campus (SEC) in Glasgow, Scotland, on October 31, 2021. — © ALAIN JOCARD/AFP via Getty Images
You get what you deserve. End of the Worlders and other useless humanity-hating vermin, rejoice. If COP26’s limp text is anything to go by, you’re in luck. No more pesky future generations, etc. the rich will die slightly later than the poor, maybe. The geniuses have struck again.
Nothing I’ve seen in this babbling waffle binds anyone to anything much if at all. G20 set the stage. COP26 simply proved nobody’s doing much about anything or has the slightest intention to do so anytime soon. “Blunder smugly onward” is the glorious message from the truly insane.
You’d think there wasn’t a problem, just “urging” and “requesting” people to do things. As the Amazon vanishes in a grave of debt and corruption, the air becomes unbreathable and the oceans fill with plastic, and toxins, the future is clear. It’s back to politics and regressive social genocide, those healthy pursuits.
Meanwhile, where is the full text of the actual agreement?
The actual agreement should be easily visible online. It isn’t. Not that there’s likely to be much to read. The phraseology in the Washington Post (link above) is pukeworthy at best. The little dears are being asked nicely to do something they all too obviously barely understand.
What I’ve seen so far proves humanity couldn’t run a dunghill. There’s not one single hard decision made or in progress.
No solid “end emissions now” provisions.
No hard targets.
No cohesive action plans.
Reafforestation – A day care level no-brainer, 30 – 50 years after the fact. Reafforestation will reboot the carbon and water cycles to some level, but nothing specific.
Water resources management and protection – Nothing visible.
Ocean management – Not mentioned as an issue in coverage.
Fossil fuels – Drive fossil thinking, and that’s about all to be said.
Carbon credits – Another financial market for the deranged and the greedy. Hallelujah. (See Leonard Cohen for context.)
America – China agreement. Awfully sweet of you, O mighty and adorable obstacle courses. Now back it up with something solid.
,,,And at the bottom of the stack, my own country, Australia, snivelling away like a spoiled brat and about as useful. If we fought bushfires and droughts like that, there wouldn’t be an Australia, just a set of excuses.
A house brick could have done a better, and far more credible, job to get this miserable pittance of an outcome. It’s a true indicator of the mediocrity of the people and intellects involved.
Leadership? None.
What COP26 has also proved, as though it needed doing, is that politics is basically for errand boys. Political authority goes as far as the paydays, and no further. A herd of subservient little yes-nobodies couldn’t be expected to get anything done without the OK from their owners. Politicians have no real power, and they prove it on an hourly basis. Nobody else causes such misery worldwide, every single day.
Their owners, in turn, are so well insulated that they seem to believe that a world with billions of displaced people without food and water will be fine. Their asset bases won’t dissolve in the rising tide of disasters. Really? A healthy percentage of property likely to be affected by rising sea levels will have no effect? Rising water tables go ever so well with high rise buildings? Sure they do, snookums. You just throw your petty tantrums and all will be well.
What, is the tooth fairy on holiday this century?
This is immediate danger, right now. None of this is guesswork. It’s happening. The total lack of urgency in the response is obvious. Presumably physical facts are now so unfashionable as to need the approval of mindless little PR companies before being released to the public.
Imagine an intellect which when confronted with facts produces nothing but irrelevance. In this case, the subject is survival. The response is endless self-righteous tomes about the “future” of a world which may not exist, based entirely on business needs and market perceptions.
Would you consider that response, which misses all possible issues, utterly incompetent? Because it is. That’s been the response to a world-changing situation.
Some parts of the world couldn’t handle lockdown. They couldn’t handle living in their own homes with their own families and acting responsibly. How do you think this useless rabble will react to no food, no water, perhaps no power?
You’re about to find out. Thanks, cretins.
COP26: Will the promised tree planting and Reforestation actually happen?
ByDr. Tim Sandle
ByDr. Tim Sandle
November 15, 2021
As deforestation and climate change ravage India's UNESCO heritage-listed Western Ghats mountain range, an all-female rainforest force is battling to protect one of the area's last enclaves of biodiversity - Copyright AFP Manjunath Kiran
The jury is out as to whether COP26 was a success. It certainly has not delivered everything that featured in the build-up to the event, although some impactful measures were announced from plans to phase out public finance for coal-fired power, to a pledge to end deforestation.
Following COP26, a new environment act comes into force in the UK, with similar measures being adopted in many countries (these that attended and took the conference seriously). The UK legislation sets out to improve air and water quality, tackle waste, increase recycling, halt the decline of species, and improve the natural environment.
The legislation has been treated cautiously by climate experts. For example, Dr Veronica Edmonds-Brown, Aquatic Ecologist, University of Hertfordshire states: “It’s certainly better than the original, mostly due to active lobbying from wildlife organisations such as the Wildlife Trusts. Having legally-binding 2030 species abundance targets may help reduce our losses and is very much welcomed.”
However, there are some downsides, as the academic points out: “On the negative side, the Office for Environmental Protection was promised to be completely independent and this has been undermined.” In particular, the measure presented provide “no indication that the Environment Agency or Natural England will have the funding to ensure they can deliver on the Act.”
As an example of one of the positive features, the BBC reports on a woodland of 13,000 trees to be planted on Exmoor, located in the south-west of England. The first 300 of 13,000 trees have been planted at a site near Winsford in Somerset by volunteers. This help lock away about 2,600 tonnes of carbon during the first 100 years.
The UK was one of 130 countries pledging to reverse forest-loss and land degradation by 2030 (the “Declaration on Forests and Land Use”). While this will be welcomed by environmentalists, the science publication Nature points out that all previous commitments remain unfulfilled and “latest target is unlikely to be met without an enforcement mechanism.”
Furthermore, without changes to lifestyle the goals may be unrealizable. This is the message from Greenpeace UK. The environmental organization indicates that the pledge is futile because the causes of deforestation have not been addressed. The organization states in a Tweet: “It’s simple. World leaders can’t commit to ‘end deforestation by 2030’ if we don’t cut down one of the main drivers of #deforestation: meat and dairy consumption.”
In addition, Louis Verchot, who is head of research for landscape restoration for the Bioversity International Alliance, in conversation with the website SciDev.Net, expressed a concern that the agreement lacks any clear and verifiable methods for reaching the new 2030 goal.
As deforestation and climate change ravage India's UNESCO heritage-listed Western Ghats mountain range, an all-female rainforest force is battling to protect one of the area's last enclaves of biodiversity - Copyright AFP Manjunath Kiran
The jury is out as to whether COP26 was a success. It certainly has not delivered everything that featured in the build-up to the event, although some impactful measures were announced from plans to phase out public finance for coal-fired power, to a pledge to end deforestation.
Following COP26, a new environment act comes into force in the UK, with similar measures being adopted in many countries (these that attended and took the conference seriously). The UK legislation sets out to improve air and water quality, tackle waste, increase recycling, halt the decline of species, and improve the natural environment.
The legislation has been treated cautiously by climate experts. For example, Dr Veronica Edmonds-Brown, Aquatic Ecologist, University of Hertfordshire states: “It’s certainly better than the original, mostly due to active lobbying from wildlife organisations such as the Wildlife Trusts. Having legally-binding 2030 species abundance targets may help reduce our losses and is very much welcomed.”
However, there are some downsides, as the academic points out: “On the negative side, the Office for Environmental Protection was promised to be completely independent and this has been undermined.” In particular, the measure presented provide “no indication that the Environment Agency or Natural England will have the funding to ensure they can deliver on the Act.”
As an example of one of the positive features, the BBC reports on a woodland of 13,000 trees to be planted on Exmoor, located in the south-west of England. The first 300 of 13,000 trees have been planted at a site near Winsford in Somerset by volunteers. This help lock away about 2,600 tonnes of carbon during the first 100 years.
The UK was one of 130 countries pledging to reverse forest-loss and land degradation by 2030 (the “Declaration on Forests and Land Use”). While this will be welcomed by environmentalists, the science publication Nature points out that all previous commitments remain unfulfilled and “latest target is unlikely to be met without an enforcement mechanism.”
Furthermore, without changes to lifestyle the goals may be unrealizable. This is the message from Greenpeace UK. The environmental organization indicates that the pledge is futile because the causes of deforestation have not been addressed. The organization states in a Tweet: “It’s simple. World leaders can’t commit to ‘end deforestation by 2030’ if we don’t cut down one of the main drivers of #deforestation: meat and dairy consumption.”
In addition, Louis Verchot, who is head of research for landscape restoration for the Bioversity International Alliance, in conversation with the website SciDev.Net, expressed a concern that the agreement lacks any clear and verifiable methods for reaching the new 2030 goal.
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