How About The Vulnerable Countries?

Many nations, especially European countries and the island nations that are most threatened by rising seas, will fight for a more ambitious agreement.

They want both a legally binding treaty and the major reductions in greenhouse gases necessary to put the world on track to stay below a 2°C (3.6°F) increase in temperature from industrial levels. That’s the goal nations agreed to in the 2009 Copenhagen Accord to prevent “dangerous” interference with the climate.

“It’s a tug-of-war right now,” said Ronny Jumeau, ambassador for climate change for the island nation of Seychelles and spokesman for a group of 43 small island nations. “We refuse to accept that someone says it cannot be legally binding and everybody has to live with it because they’re so powerful.”

Many island nations already struggle with impacts from climate change to their freshwater supplies, fisheries, and agriculture; over the long term, sea-level rise threatens to put many of them underwater.

“The voluntary stuff will never be enough,” Jumeau says. “We are still headed to destruction.”

Connie Hedegaard, European Union’s climate action commissioner, says voluntary commitments can be put aside in tough economic times or when new leaders take power. Europe, which understands the limitations President Obama is under because of the Senate, is pushing for a “hybrid” agreement that would include both mandatory and voluntary elements, she says.

“It matters when things are not just nice intentions but when it’s something you can count on will be done,” she says.

In April, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the best science shows that to limit global warming to 2°C would require reductions of greenhouse gas emissions of 40 to 70 percent by 2050.

Other recent scientific reports also make the case for bold action. Global emissions keep rising, and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere hit a new record high in 2013, according to a report this month from the World Meteorological Organization or WMO. The annual increase in concentration was the greatest since 1984, perhaps because the world’s oceans are no longer able to absorb as much carbon dioxide as they used to from the burning of fossil fuels.

“We must reverse this trend by cutting emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases across the board,” said Michel Jerraud, WMO’s secretary-general said in a statement accompanying the report. “We are running out of time.”

Just like the children’s book ‘The Lorax’ written by Dr. Seuss have said “unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It is not.”

There is a need to act fast on climate.

Catholic Bishops’ Conference
of the Philippines (CBCP)
EPISCOPAL COMMISSION
ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES (ECIP)