Rich nations under pressure over climate finance at COP29 talks

Pressure mounted on wealthy nations Wednesday to put a figure on the table as time runs out at COP29 to strike a deal on climate assistance for poorer countries.


Issued on: 20/11/2024 
By:  FRANCE 24
Developing nations say rich historic polluters have a duty to help them face the challenges caused by the climate crisis. © Laurent Thomet, AFP


At the UN COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, rich nations have still not revealed how much they are ready to provide the developing world to fight climate change. UN agencies have said that developing nations, not counting China, will need $1 trillion a year by the end of the decade to meet the challenges caused by the climate crisis.

"We need a figure," said Adonia Ayebare, chair of the G77+China group of developing nations.

"Then the rest will follow. But we need a headline," the Ugandan negotiator told reporters.

Developing nations, from islands imperilled by rising seas to drought-afflicted states, contribute the least to global warming but have called for $1.3 trillion annually to prepare for its impacts.


They say rich historic polluters have a duty to help, and are clamouring for an existing commitment of $100 billion a year to be increased many times over at COP29.
 
Read more  How lending-based climate finance is pushing poor countries deeper into debt

Talks have gone around in circles for over a week but a slimmed-down draft is expected to land in the early hours of Thursday, ensuring a sleepless night for negotiators.

"I'm sure we will have some long days and hours ahead of us ... This will be a very steep climb," EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters.

Colombian Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said it was difficult to speed things up "when there's nothing to negotiate".

"The concern is that at this moment, nobody is putting a figure on the table," Muhamad said.

Rich countries on the hook for climate finance, including the European Union and United States, say they cannot show their hand until they know what they are agreeing to.

"Otherwise ... you will have a shopping basket with a price, but you don't know exactly what is in there," said Hoekstra.

"We don't just want to pluck a number from the sky," echoed Germany's climate envoy Jennifer Morgan.
China role

Developing countries, excluding China, will need $1 trillion a year in foreign assistance by 2030 to wean off fossil fuels and adapt to worsening disasters.

This number rises to $1.3 trillion annually by 2035, according to an expert economic assessment commissioned by the United Nations.

But many of the nations obligated to pay face political and fiscal pressures, and insist they cannot cover this cost on their balance sheets alone.

Developing countries want public grants from governments – not loans or private capital – to make up the majority of the new finance goal under negotiation.

Three figures – $440 billion, $600 billion and $900 billion – had been floated, said Australian climate minister Chris Bowen, one of the envoys leading the finance negotiations.

Delegates from several countries told AFP these numbers were not proposed by developed nations themselves.

"Many parties told us they need to see certain building blocks in place before they can put forward their suggested number," Bowen told COP29 delegates.

Chief among these is a demand for emerging economies such as China and Saudi Arabia, which have grown wealthy yet remain classified as developing nations, to chip into the pot.

"There are countries out in the world that have an income level that is close to or above the poorest European countries, and we think that it's only fair to ask them to contribute," Danish climate minister Lars Aagaard told AFP.
'Receding hope'

Bowen said some countries had drawn a "red line" over the type of money that could be included in any deal, insisting it come "from a wide range of sources and instruments".

Bolivia's chief negotiator, Diego Pacheco, said there was a "steadily receding hope of getting an ambitious" deal and cited $200 billion as one number in circulation.

"Only 200 billion," he told the conference. "This is unfathomable, we cannot accept this."

The lead negotiator of COP29 hosts Azerbaijan, Yalchin Rafiyev, urged countries to "pick up the pace".

"Let us embrace the spirit of collaboration, compromise and determination to ensure that we leave this conference with outcomes that make a real difference," he said.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and Reuters)

Thank You for Emitting: The Hypocrisies of COP29

by Binoy Kampmark / November 19th, 2024

COP29 was always going to be memorable, for no other reason than the hosting country, Azerbaijan, is a petrostate indifferent to the issue of emissions and scornful of ecological preachers.  It has seen its natural gas supply grow by 128% between 2000 and 2021.  Between 2006 and 2021, gas exports rose by a monumental 29,290%.  A dizzying 95% of the country’s exports are made up of oil and gas, with much of its wealth failing to trickle down to the rest of the populace.

The broadly described West, as stated by President Ilham Aliyev in his opening address to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was in no position to be lecturing his country about cutting back on the use of fossil fuels.  They were, he grandly claimed, “a gift from God”.  In this, he should have surprised no one.  In April 2024, he declared that, as a leader of a country “which is rich in fossil fuels, of course, we will defend the right of these countries to continue investments and to continue production.”

A few days later, Aliyev played the other side of the climate change divide, suggesting at a meeting with island leaders that France and the Netherlands had been responsible for “brutally” suppressing the “voices” of communities in such overseas territories as Mayotte and Curaçao concerned with climate change.  (Aliyev himself is no stranger to suppressing, with dedicated brutality, voices of dissent within his own country.)  This proved too much for France’s Ecological Transition Minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, who cancelled her planned attendance to the summit while attacking Baku for “instrumentalising the fight against climate change for its undignified personal agenda.”

On the second day of the summit, the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, tried to turn the attention of delegates to the urgent matter at hand.  “The sound you hear is the ticking clock – we are in the final countdown to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, and time is not on our side.”  Others, however, heard the sound of money changing hands, with the fossil fuel industry lurking, fangs and pens at the ready, presided over by the good offices of a petrostate.

In the background lie assessments of gloomy inevitability.  The Climate Change Tracker’s November 2024 briefing notes this year was one characterised by “minimal progress, with almost no new national climate change targets (NDCs) or net zero pledges even though government have agreed to (urgently) strengthen their 2030 targets and to align them with the 1.5°C goal of the Paris Agreement.”

As easy as it is to rage against the opportunistic Aliyev, who crudely blends environmentalism with ethnic cleansing, few attending the summit in Baku come with clean hands.  As with previous COP events, Baku offers another enormous event of emitters and emission, featuring tens of thousands of officials, advisors and minders bloviating in conference.  That said, the 67,000 registrants at this conference is somewhat lower compared with the 83,000 who descended on Dubai at COP28.

The plane tracking website FlightRadar24 noted that 65 private jets landed in the Azerbaijani capital prior to the summit, prompting Alethea Warrington, the head of energy, aviation and heat at Possible, a climate action charity, to tut with heavy disapproval: “Travelling by private jet is a horrendous waste of the world’s scarce remaining carbon budget, with each journey producing more emissions in a few hours than the average person around the world emits in an entire year.”

COP29 is also another opportunity to strike deals that have little to do with reducing emissions and everything to do with advancing the interests of lobby groups and companies in the energy market, much of it of a fossil fuel nature.  In the spirit of Dubai, COP29 is set to follow in the footsteps of the wily Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who chaired COP28 in Dubai.  Prior to the arrival of the chatterati of climate change last year, the Sultan was shown in leaked briefing documents to the BBC and the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) to be an avid enthusiast for advancing the business of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc).  It was hard to avoid the glaring fact that Al Jaber is also the CEO of Adnoc.

The documents in question involve over 150 pages of briefings prepared by the COP28 team for meetings with Jaber and various interested parties held between July and October this year.  They point to plans to raise matters of commercial interest with as many as 30 countries.  The CCR confirms “that on at least one occasion a nation followed up on commercial discussions brought up in a meeting with Al Jaber; a source with knowledge of discussions also told CCR that Adnoc’s business interests were allegedly raised during a meeting with another country.”

The COP29 chairman, Samir Nuriyev, had already put out feelers as early as March this year that a “fair approach” was needed when approaching countries abundant with oil and natural gas, notably in light of their purported environmental policies.  He went so far as to argue that Azerbaijan was an ideal interlocutor between the Global South and Global North.  His colleague and chief executive of the COP29 team, Elnur Soltanov, showed exactly how that process would work in a secret recording ahead of the conference in which he discusses “investment opportunities” in the state oil and gas company with a person posing as a potential investor.  (The person in question purported to be representing a fictitious Hong Kong investment firm with a sharp line in energy.)  “We have a lot of gas fields that are to be developed,” Soltanov insists.  “We will have a certain amount of oil and gas being produced, perhaps forever.”

In many ways, the Baku gathering has all the hallmarks of a criminal syndicate meeting, held under more open conditions.  Fair play, then, to the Azerbaijani hosts for working out the climate change racket, taking the lead from Dubai last year.  Aliyev and company noted months in advance that this was less a case of being a theatre of the absurd than a forum for business.  And so, it is proving to be.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

 

The Planet Under Threat of Breakdown

by Robert Hunziker / November 19th, 2024

There’s a new trend in the world that’s working against the planet, you know, the one you’re standing on. This new trend, over the past year or so, spells “thumbs down” for planet Earth. It’s a disheartening, and fraught with danger, change in attitude, dismissing commitments, left and right.

A figurative Planet Support Switch has been turned off by several key players. Proof of this agnostic attitude is found in every meeting of nations of the world over the past couple of years. They are turning their noses up on prior commitments. This is a new attitude. And it’s happening as climate change has turned into an ogre of destruction that’s impossible to ignore, featured on nightly news programs with automobiles tumbling as if children’s toys in torrential rivers of city streets (Paiporta).

Meanwhile, COP29, the UN Conference of the Parties on climate change, Nov 11^th-22^nd, is being held in oil-rich Azerbaijan. Such a strange coincidence: UN climate meetings have become an outgrowth of oil producer largess. After all, they do have spectacular venues, hmm. Gotta wonder what they’ll do to stave off all-time record heat, caused by fossil fuel emissions, Co2? The paradox is devastatingly inescapable.

A key data point exposes the challenge COP29 faces: Annual CO2 released into the atmosphere, 37.4 billion metric tons in 2023 vs. 9 billion metric tons in 1960.

According to Dr. Patrick McGuire, of the University of Reading and National Centre for Atmospheric Science: “The new Global Carbon Budget reveals a disturbing reality – global fossil CO2 emissions continue to climb, reaching 37.4 billion tonnes in 2024. Despite clear evidence of accelerating climate impacts, we’re still moving in the wrong direction. The need for rapid decarbonization has never been more urgent.” (Source: “Fossil Fuel Co2 Emissions Increase Again in 2024,” University of Reading, November 13, 2024)

Also, of more than passing interest at COP29, according to Victoria Cuming, head of global policy at BloombergNEF: “Donald Trump’s dramatic victory in the US election will drip poison into the climate talks.” (Source: Bloomberg Green Daily: COP29 Climate Money Fight)

The planet is losing key support. Yet, it doesn’t take a climate scientist to figure out the planet has already gone ballistic with (1) rampant wildfires (2) torrential rains (3) massive destructive floods (4) brutal scorching droughts (5) pounding hailstorms (6) frightening thunder/lighting all unprecedented and all on a regular schedule nowadays. There are no more once-in-100-year storms; they’re every other year.

Recent talks on protecting nature at the UN Biodiversity Conference d/d October 21-November 1st in Colombia collapsed when nations could not agree on key goals. This was the 16^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. It was a disaster: “Talks were overshadowed by a lack of progress on implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the landmark ‘Paris Agreement for nature’ deal made at COP15 in Montreal in 2022.” (Source: Carbon Brief Nov. 2, 2024) By summit’s end, only 44 out of 196 parties had come up with a new biodiversity plan. This is pitiful.

As for Net Zero prospects to halt global warming, forget it!

At the G20 summit September 9-10 countries demanded rolling back promises to cut back burning oil, coal, and gas (Source: “G20 Countries Turning Backs on Fossil Fuel Pledge, Say Campaigners,” The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2024).

“Over the last few months, we’ve seen everyone from major corporations to countries backpedaling on climate commitments made in the recent months and years. Despite growing, urgent evidence that climate change continues to accelerate, this is no real surprise.” (Source: Countries Are Rolling Back Their Climate Commitments, Climatebase, October 7, 2024)

Global corporations from Ford to J.P. Morgan Chase are all rolling back their commitments to climate change, which is all deeply intertwined with what played out ahead of COP29, now playing before bemused Middle Eastern oligarchs.

“Instead of indicating that the money required to green the economy is ready to flow, industry leaders now say their first priority is delivering financial returns for clients—and that means energy-transition investments will only be undertaken if they’re considered profitable,” (Source: “Wall Street Wants You to Know Profit Comes Before Net Zero,” Bloomberg, September 18, 2024.)

The bankers are pointing their fingers at the politicians and governments, who have been largely unwilling to make significant headway in fighting climate change globally.

Meanwhile, stating the obvious, which cannot be emphasized enough, climate warning signs have never been stronger than this year. Just for starters, a 2–3-foot sea level rise hangs by a cryosphere thread at the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. If it goes down for the count, and there’s reason to think it’ll happen during current generations, all bets are off for 8 of the world’s 10 largest megacities, nestled along coastlines. This is but one of several tipping points at the edge, and tipping. The protagonist is fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide (CO2) which makes up around 76% of total greenhouse gas emissions, making it the primary greenhouse gas responsible for the majority of climate change impacts.

And it is a fool’s errand that carbon capture/sequester will save the day; it’s too slow too unwieldy too expensive too inefficient takes too long and overwhelmed by the task at hand, sans super-duper-effective technology. “Despite its long history, carbon capture is a problematic technology. A new IEEFA study reviewed the capacity and performance of 13 flagship projects and found that 10 of the 13 failed or underperformed against their designed capacities, mostly by large margins.” (Source: “Carbon Capture Has a Long History of Failure,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 1, 2022)

Losing key support for the planet couldn’t come at a worse time. According to Perilous Times on Planet Earth: 2024 The State of the Climate Report, 25 of 35 planetary vital signs are at record extremes. Two-thirds with record-extremes is viewed by climate scientists as a clear mandate for a planet “on the edge.”

Alas, losing key support because of “concern over profits” is nonsensical and trivial at best, thinking small, not big. A report by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research contradicts that notion and exposes the silliness behind focus on “profit over planet,” to wit: “The analysis of data from 1,500 regions over the past 30 years showed that 30 percent have managed to lower their carbon emissions while continuing to thrive economically.” (Source: Green Growth: 30 percent of regions worldwide achieve economic growth while reducing carbon emissions, Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research, Oct. 29, 2024)

Beyond the insanity of profits at the expense of mitigation efforts for the planet, which exposes the underbelly of high-end capitalism, some good news: According to some climate experts, Trump’s re-election and his statements that green energy is a scam, and the likelihood that he withdraws the US from UN Climate agreements might drive a new sense of unity, even building a coalition that actually does something positive to stop fossil fuel emissions to support a parched planet. It’s possible, but here in America Wall Street prefers profits over planet. Umm, honestly, shouldn’t that be reversed?

Robert Hunziker (MA, economic history, DePaul University) is a freelance writer and environmental journalist whose articles have been translated into foreign languages and appeared in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He can be contacted at: rlhunziker@gmail.com. Read other articles by Robert.

The Planet Under Threat of Breakdown

Robert Hunziker

 November 15, 2024
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Image by Elena Mozhvilo.

There’s a new trend in the world that’s working against the planet, you know, the one you’re standing on. This new trend, over the past year or so, spells “thumbs down” for planet Earth. It’s a disheartening, and fraught with danger, change in attitude, dismissing commitments, left and right.

A figurative Planet Support Switch has been turned off by several key players. Proof of this agnostic attitude is found in every meeting of nations of the world over the past couple of years. They are turning their noses up on prior commitments. This is a new attitude. And it’s happening as climate change has turned into an ogre of destruction that’s impossible to ignore, featured on nightly news programs with automobiles tumbling as if children’s toys in torrential rivers of city streets (Paiporta).

Meanwhile, COP29, the UN Conference of the Parties on climate change, Nov 11^th-22^nd, is being held in oil-rich Azerbaijan. Such a strange coincidence: UN climate meetings have become an outgrowth of oil producer largess. After all, they do have spectacular venues, hmm. Gotta wonder what they’ll do to stave off all-time record heat, caused by fossil fuel emissions, Co2? The paradox is devastatingly inescapable.

A key data point exposes the challenge COP29 faces: Annual CO2 released into the atmosphere, 37.4 billion metric tons in 2023 vs. 9 billion metric tons in 1960.

According to Dr. Patrick McGuire, of the University of Reading and National Centre for Atmospheric Science: “The new Global Carbon Budget reveals a disturbing reality – global fossil CO2 emissions continue to climb, reaching 37.4 billion tonnes in 2024. Despite clear evidence of accelerating climate impacts, we’re still moving in the wrong direction. The need for rapid decarbonization has never been more urgent.” (Source: Fossil Fuel Co2 Emissions Increase Again in 2024, University of Reading, November 13, 2024)

Also, of more than passing interest at COP29, according to Victoria Cuming, head of global policy at BloombergNEF: “Donald Trump’s dramatic victory in the US election will drip poison into the climate talks.” (Source: Bloomberg Green Daily: COP29 Climate Money Fight)

The planet is losing key support. Yet, it doesn’t take a climate scientist to figure out the planet has already gone ballistic with (1) rampant wildfires (2) torrential rains (3) massive destructive floods (4) brutal scorching droughts (5) pounding hailstorms (6) frightening thunder/lighting all unprecedented and all on a regular schedule nowadays. There are no more once-in-100-year storms; they’re every other year.

Recent talks on protecting nature at the UN Biodiversity Conference d/d October 21-November 1st in Colombia collapsed when nations could not agree on key goals. This was the 16^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity. It was a disaster: “Talks were overshadowed by a lack of progress on implementing the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, the landmark ‘Paris Agreement for nature’ deal made at COP15 in Montreal in 2022.” (Source: Carbon Brief Nov. 2, 2024) By summit’s end, only 44 out of 196 parties had come up with a new biodiversity plan. This is pitiful.

As for Net Zero prospects to halt global warming, forget it!

At the G20 summit September 9^th-10th countries demanded rolling back promises to cut back burning oil, coal, and gas (Source: G20 Countries Turning Backs on Fossil Fuel Pledge, Say Campaigners, The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2024).

“Over the last few months, we’ve seen everyone from major corporations to countries backpedaling on climate commitments made in the recent months and years. Despite growing, urgent evidence that climate change continues to accelerate, this is no real surprise.” (Source: Countries Are Rolling Back Their Climate Commitments, Climatebase, October 7, 2024)

Global corporations from Ford to J.P. Morgan Chase are all rolling back their commitments to climate change, which is all deeply intertwined with what played out ahead of COP29, now playing before bemused Middle Eastern oligarchs.

“Instead of indicating that the money required to green the economy is ready to flow, industry leaders now say their first priority is delivering financial returns for clients—and that means energy-transition investments will only be undertaken if they’re considered profitable,” (Source: Wall Street Wants You to Know Profit Comes Before Net Zero, Bloomberg, September 18, 2024.)

The bankers are pointing their fingers at the politicians and governments, who have been largely unwilling to make significant headway in fighting climate change globally.

Meanwhile, stating the obvious, which cannot be emphasized enough, climate warning signs have never been stronger than this year. Just for starters, a 2–3-foot sea level rise hangs by a cryosphere thread at the Thwaites Glacier in West Antarctica. If it goes down for the count, and there’s reason to think it’ll happen during current generations, all bets are off for 8 of the world’s 10 largest megacities, nestled along coastlines. This is but one of several tipping points at the edge, and tipping. The protagonist is fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide (CO2) which makes up around 76% of total greenhouse gas emissions, making it the primary greenhouse gas responsible for the majority of climate change impacts.

And it is a fool’s errand that carbon capture/sequester will save the day; it’s too slow too unwieldy too expensive too inefficient takes too long and overwhelmed by the task at hand, sans super-duper-effective technology. “Despite its long history, carbon capture is a problematic technology. A new IEEFA study reviewed the capacity and performance of 13 flagship projects and found that 10 of the 13 failed or underperformed against their designed capacities, mostly by large margins.” (Source: Carbon Capture Has a Long History of Failure, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, September 1, 2022)

Losing key support for the planet couldn’t come at a worse time. According to Perilous Times on Planet Earth: 2024 The State of the Climate Report, 25 of 35 planetary vital signs are at record extremes. Two-thirds with record-extremes is viewed by climate scientists as a clear mandate for a planet “on the edge.”

Alas, losing key support because of “concern over profits” is nonsensical and trivial at best, thinking small, not big. A report by Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research contradicts that notion and exposes the silliness behind focus on “profit over planet,” to wit: “The analysis of data from 1,500 regions over the past 30 years showed that 30 percent have managed to lower their carbon emissions while continuing to thrive economically.” (Source: Green Growth: 30 percent of regions worldwide achieve economic growth while reducing carbon emissions, Potsdam Institute For Climate Impact Research, Oct. 29, 2024)

Beyond the insanity of profits at the expense of mitigation efforts for the planet, which exposes the underbelly of high-end capitalism, some good news: According to some climate experts, Trump’s re-election and his statements that green energy is a scam, and the likelihood that he withdraws the US from UN Climate agreements might drive a new sense of unity, even building a coalition that actually does something positive to stop fossil fuel emissions to support a parched planet. It’s possible, but here in America Wall Street prefers profits over planet. Umm, honestly, shouldn’t that be reversed?

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.

 UPDATE

Scale of microplastics in Antarctic revealed in preliminary survey results

By Alex Hunt

World Nuclear News, in Vienna

Wednesday, 18 September 2024

The first results of the pioneering scientific research project launched earlier this year have catalogued microplastic particles in the sea water, sediment and animals in Antarctica.

(Image: IAEA)

The preliminary results were outlined during an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference session focusing on the study, which is supported by Argentina and forms part of the wider IAEA NUTEC plastics initiative, which aims to use nuclear technologies to tackle plastic pollution.

Nathalie Bernard, from the IAEA Marine Environment Laboratories and University of Buenos Aires, unveiling the results, said that "sadly we have found microplastics everywhere, on every sample, every matrix".  She said that the concentrations of microplastics varied by location and by day.

More than 250 samples were collected from the Almirante Irizer icebreaker, which sailed 27,209 kilometres over 125 days covering 84 sampling stations. Over the course of a week 166 samples were collected from Argentina's Carlini research station base as part of what was described as the first study of microplastics pollution from South America to Antarctica.

The samples were of water, of sediment and also of penguin droppings and shellfish. Bernard said: "All of these results were possible thanks to nuclear techniques, specifically vibrational microspectroscopy which allows us not only to count, but also identify polymers. We were able to analyse particles as small as 20 microns (WNN note: for comparison a human hair is about 100 microns) and this is important because we found out that almost 90% of the particles we analysed were smaller than 100 microns and ... most of the studies conducted before have focused on larger particles, larger than 300 microns, which clearly overlooks the larger majority."

The preliminary results - with 30% of the samples analysed so far, found that in terms of distribution in water, in Buenos Aires it was 256 microplastic particles per litre, compared with 5 microplastics particles per litre in the Antarctic Ocean and 21 microplastics particles per litre at Carlini Station in the Antarctic.

The Carlini samples found 6000-15,000 microplastic particles per kilogramme of sediment, 15 microplastic particles per square metre of sand and 200-4000 microplastic particles per biological sample of shellfish or penguin droppings.

The prevalence and type of microplastics was shown to the session (Image: WNN photo/IAEA/Bernard slide)

There were 11 different types of plastics found in the samples, 62% were "Teflon-like microplastics" and 29% were polyethylene-like. Examples of the types of products using the types of plastics found included frying pans, PVC pipes and plastic drinks bottles.

The early theories about the possible sources of the pollution in Antarctica include fisheries, local human activities and global sources, via the atmosphere or ocean currents.

Bernard said that the conclusions of the preliminary study was that "we know now that microplastics are everywhere, that we can find different levels and types between the sites and that the levels in Antarctica are relatively low if we compare them with highly populated industrial zones - but they are far away from zero, which is what it was thought to be until recently in Antarctica.".

The next steps are to finalise the analysis and do extra checks before sharing the results globally and using the figures as a baseline for future surveys, to assess possible pollution sources and inform policy makers for local and global actions in line with the Antarctic Treaty.

The meeting also heard progress reports on the United Nations actions to end plastics pollution and how the NUTEC initiative can help with plastics upcycling using irradiation to allow plastic waste to not just be traditionally recycled, but also used in cement or in wood/plastic composits - one of the examples given was Argentina using radiation-modified railway sleepers from plastic waste.

Argentina's Foreign Affairs Minister Diana Mondino said that the country was one of the original signatories of the Antarctic Treaty and said: "There's growing concern in understanding the impact in the Antarctic ecosystem from plastics and microplastics." She said the results had prompted the creation of a regional group in Latin America led by Argentina to focus on the issue.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said the NUTEC initiative had been well received because "we do have a serious problem with microplastics, nanoplastics and we did also have a scarcity of information, objective information". He said having the facts was important so people can take "informed decisions when it comes to the protection of this environment, which is so pristine and that we all care for".

"This is not a simple environmental endeavour that we take for the sake of knowing a little bit more - the idea is that we provide important information that is relevant for fisheries, relevant for very important economic activities in all our countries."

Australia's ambassador Ian Biggs said that Australia had a major stake in the international effort in Antarctica and he said that according to projections there could soon be a tonne of plastic in the ocean for every three tonnes of fish, saying this showed the necessity of action to tackle plastic pollution and he said Australia believed that the NUTEC programme was "making a real difference in helping countries address pressing global challenges on plastic pollution".

More than 400 samples were taken during the study (Image: Still from IAEA video)

The background

The IAEA's NUTEC plastics scheme was established in 2020 and uses a series of monitoring laboratories to use nuclear technology to sample and analyse microplastics - which are bits of plastic less than 5 millimetres in diameter - in the environment. There are more than 60 countries participating in monitoring of microplastics in the sea, and the goal is to equip more than 50 laboratories with the technology to form a global monitoring network.

The aim is to then be able to take action to bring in measures designed to reduce the sources of the pollution - at least 30 countries are involved in developing innovative recycling technology, including using irradiation to treat plastics and make them fit for reuse, or for a wider range of reuses. This process uses gamma and electron beam radiation technologies to modify certain types of plastic waste, breaking down plastic polymers judged not to be of sufficient quality into smaller components and then allowing them to be used to generate new plastic products.

The IAEA cites studies suggesting that only around 10% of plastic produced between 1950 and 2015 has been recycled, with the majority (about 60%) going to landfill, meaning action is imperative given estimates that there will be one tonne of plastic for every three tonnes of fish within a few years.

Grossi visited an IAEA mission in Antarctica in January with Argentina's president to see the start of work for the project, with the IAEA explaining that "there is still almost no information available on where and how much microplastics arrive in the Antarctic and how much is taken up by Antarctic organisms. There is also very little data existing on the types of microplastics reaching this pristine area through ocean currents, atmospheric deposition and the presence of humans in the Antarctic".

It also said the "presence of microplastics can contribute to accelerating the ice-loss in Antarctica by reducing ice reflectivity, altering surface roughness, promoting microbial activity, acting as thermal insulators, and contributing to mechanical weakening of the ice structure".

Antarctica’s Deep Vulnerability Exposed at 11th Scientific Conference

by Robert HunzikerFacebook

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Image by James Rathmell.

The 11^th Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research conference was held in Pucón, Chile August 19-23, 2024. Fifteen-hundred academics, researchers, and scientists specializing in Antarctica met to share cutting-edge research. Reports at the conference exposed new dimensions of the Antarctic risk profile that should move the world’s leadership posthaste to mitigate society’s self-destructive dependence on fossil fuels.

Antarctica is starting to carry the brunt of too much CO2 leading to too much heat, leading to unstable ice sheets. And it’s happening much, much faster than anybody thought possible. This is a relatively new development that could have far-reaching consequences.

For example, Gino Casassa, glaciologist, head of Chilean Antarctica Institute commented: “Current estimates show sea levels rising by 4 meters (13 feet) by 2100 and more if emissions continue to grow.” (Source: Scientists in Chile Question if Antarctica Has Hit a Point of No Return, Reuters, August 28, 2024)

Thirteen feet higher won’t suddenly appear in 2100. It builds up over decades. Assuming emissions “continue to grow”, as warned by Dr. Casassa, you’ve gotta wonder, with 13 feet by 2100, what will 2035, or 2050, look like? That’s right around the corner.

Sea level rise is one of the most challenging fields in science and thus produces the most complex results. For example, in comparison to Casassa’s estimate of 13 feet by 2100, a recent study: What Are the Best – and Worst – Case Scenarios for Sea Level Rise? MIT Climate Portal, June 12, 2024: “By 2100, we could see as little as 8 inches of additional sea level rise, or over 6 feet—based partly on how much we continue to pollute the climate, and partly on how the oceans respond to climate change that’s already baked in… despite the enormous stakes for the future of humanity, it remains frustratingly difficult to know how much sea level rise is in store for us. All we know for sure is that taking strong and immediate action to control our greenhouse gas emissions gives us the best chance to avoid meters of sea level rise. ‘The difference between the low-end projections and the high-end projections is many trillions of dollars in infrastructure, and hundreds of millions of people losing their homes,’ Minchew says (Brent Minchew, MIT geophysicist) ‘But we don’t have a good answer to which one of those scenarios is more likely.”

The biggest concern echoed throughout the conference hall: “Antarctica is changing faster than expected.” For example: “Extreme weather events in the ice-covered continent were no longer hypothetical presentations, but first-hand accounts from researchers about heavy rainfall, intense heat waves and sudden Foehn (strong dry winds) events at research stations that led to mass melting, giant glacier breakoffs and dangerous weather conditions with global implications,” Ibid.

A hot topic was whether Antarctica has reached a tipping point, a point of accelerated, irreversible sea ice loss, especially West Antarctica where the Thwaites Doomsday Glacier is located. But scientists have yet to determine whether current observations indicate a ‘temporary blip” or a “downward plunge of sea ice.” Nevertheless, by all appearances, it’s advanced far enough for “plunging sea ice” to raise very serious concerns.

What is clear is the rate of change, unprecedented, nothing compares. According to Liz Keller, a paleoclimate specialist at Victoria University of Wellington/New Zealand; ‘”You might see the same rise in CO2 over thousands of years, and now it’s happened in 100 years,” Ibid. Which is a prime example of today’s human-generated climate change working >10 times faster than nature on its own.

That one factor is what confuses those who argue “oh yeah, the climate always changes, so what?” However, there’s regular climate change in nature, like they allude to, which takes centuries to develop and then, there’s turbo-charged climate change, like we’ve got now that takes decades, not centuries, thanks to human-generated excessive CO2 thrusts from burning fossil fuels.

Climate change has become a straight-forward function of human activity.

Hopefulness

According to some reports at the conference, “the worst-case scenarios can be avoided by dramatically reducing fossil fuel emissions.” Specifically, regarding mitigation, Mike Weber, a paleoceanographer, University of Bonn, who specializes in Antarctic ice sheet stability: “If we keep emissions low, we can stop this eventually. If we keep them high, we have a runaway situation and we cannot do anything.”

On the other hand, there is evidence that ecosystems may already be exceeding boundaries, e.g., Mathieu Casado, a paleoclimate and polar meteorologist at France’s Climate and Environment Sciences Laboratory claims dozens of ice core collected throughout the ice sheet have allowed him to reconstruct temperature patterns in Antarctica dating back 800,000 years. The last time the planet was as warm as today, 125,000 years ago, sea levels were 6-to-9 meters (20-to-30 feet) higher with a large contribution coming from West Antarctica. Ipso facto, with temperatures today as warm as 125,000 years ago causing seas to be 20-30 feet higher, then every coastal megacity should be/will be flooded, which begs the obvious question of “how long do these things take to playout?” And, more importantly, how do we get CO2 and temperatures back down?

Speakers at the conference made special note of the extraordinary speed and amount of carbon -CO2- being pumped into the atmosphere, unprecedented, causing rapid global warming. There’s no previous paleoclimate record of CO2 hitting the planet with such ferocity and large scale and so suddenly. This recalls Michael Mann’s Hockey Stick that famously said it all with one vertical image.

The hockey stick graph is a visualization of the average temperature of the Northern Hemisphere over the past 500 to 2000 years. Because of the spectacular hockey stick concept, Professor Mann became an overnight target of right-wing charlatans and fossil fuel attempts to destroy him. They failed: A Jury in February 2024 awarded Mann more than US$1 million in a lawsuit that accused two conservative commentators of defamation for challenging his research and comparing him to a convicted child molester.

“The Hockey Stick achieved prominence in a 2001 UN report on climate change and quickly became a central icon in the ‘climate wars.’ The real issue has never been the graph’s data but rather its implied threat to those who oppose governmental regulation and other restraints to protect the environment and planet.” (Foreword by Bill Nye, The Hockey Stick and The Climate Wars by Michael E. Mann)

In that regard, with parts of West Antarctica hanging by a very big thread, timing couldn’t be worse as the climate wars heat up once again: Bloomberg News headline: Right-Wing Populist Backlash Is Threatening Climate Fight d/d June 20, 2024: “The green revolution is in trouble. The rise of the nationalist right in much of the Western world has placed huge question marks over commitments to transition out of fossil fuels to fight climate change. Donald Trump in the US and other populist politicians have vowed to jettison low-carbon policies and downplayed the impact of global warming.”

Antarctica has rapidly become a dangerous climate change symbol of major concern and nail-biting as it serves to verify Mann’s early warnings. Global warming has become humanity’s number one challenge for survival of the species. Mann’s Hockey Stick is an amazing analog of 8 billion people sucking up oil from the planet, belching out CO2 in hockey stick fashion, vertically, up, up, and away into an increasingly overloaded CO2 atmosphere that weighs on planetary heat.

Reality

Meanwhile, as stated numerous times in articles like this one, the oil and gas industry has publicly brushed aside concerns about climate change. Looking ahead to the future, it’s full bore, full speed ahead with record-setting fossil fuel production and record-setting CO2 on a very full agenda of oil and gas production to 2030 and beyond.

“The world’s fossil-fuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted oil and gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to blow apart agreed climate goals.” (The Guardian, March 28, 2024). Questioning whether West Antarctica, especially the Doomsday Glacier, can survive the onslaught of fossil fuel interests looking the other way as right-wing interests threaten anything and everything green.

According to Mike Weber, paleoceanographer, University of Bonn, who specializes in Antarctic ice sheet stability, regarding fossil fuel CO2 emissions: “If we keep them high, we have a runaway situation, and we cannot do anything.”

We’re keeping ’em high.

Robert Hunziker lives in Los Angeles and can be reached at rlhunziker@gmail.com.