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How to Read the Jargon at the Paris Climate Change Talks Print
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=37482"><span class="small">Eric Holthaus, Grist</span></a>   
Tuesday, 01 December 2015 08:52

Holthaus writes: "Maybe climate change tends to take a back seat because the talks themselves are a jargon-filled monstrosity of diplomatic protocol, which means no one - not even the diplomats themselves! - understands what's happening half of the time. Here is my attempt to translate diplomat-speak to commoner language, focusing on why everyone's in Paris, what the major sticking points are, and what it all means."

World leaders gathered in Paris for the COP21 climate talks. (photo: Reuters)
World leaders gathered in Paris for the COP21 climate talks. (photo: Reuters)

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How to Read the Jargon at the Paris Climate Change Talks

By Eric Holthaus, Grist

01 December 15

 

n Monday, more than 140 world leaders gathered in Paris to kick off tense two-week treaty negotiations over the fate of a planet in crisis. If this were about any topic other than climate change, it might even make the news.

Granted, there’s been a lot of other news out of France recently — a major climate-themed march in Paris will be canceled for security concerns. And there is going to be a lot of coverage of the Paris climate talks. But it will be nothing compared to the attention that would be paid to a last-ditch meeting to avoid a nuclear standoff — even though climate change is no less dangerous. As Climate Home previews, “a treaty at this scale has never been accomplished before, and the one under construction will affect the way the entire global economy operates.”

Maybe climate change tends to take a back seat because the talks themselves are a jargon-filled monstrosity of diplomatic protocol, which means no one — not even the diplomats themselves! — understands what’s happening half of the time.

Here we are, closing out what’s quite possibly the warmest year since the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago, with our atmosphere’s carbon dioxide at record levels and emissions still rising. But, alas, the most interesting drama and diplomatic wrangling are buried in a sea of legalese and acronyms.

Case in point: Peru’s environment minister, Manuel Pulgar Vidal — a key figure in recent years at international climate negotiations — recently tweeted a link to a document designed to provide a more-or-less official guide to the Paris talks. It’s titled: “Scenario note on the twelfth part of the second session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action.” Not exactly helpful or soul-stirring.

So, here is my attempt to translate diplomat-speak to commoner language, focusing on why everyone’s in Paris, what the major sticking points are, and what it all means:

“Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform,” often abbreviated ADP2, especially for hashtagging purposes, is the official title of the international climate talks. Over the last four years or so, representatives from nearly every nation on Earth have gathered about once every three months, primarily in Bonn, Germany. At these preliminary talks, ADP2 laid the framework for a draft agreement — an unwieldy 54-page document. It’s called the “Durban Platform” because back in 2011 in Durban, South Africa, world leaders agreed that the first global climate treaty would be agreed upon in 2015 — which brings us to today, in Paris. This mega-gathering is officially the 21st Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, or #COP21 for short.

The text of the Durban Platform contains 1,300 square brackets that provide different options for wording. For example, here’s what the section on the global temperature target currently looks like:


In Paris, it will be the delegates’ job to eliminate the square brackets in the text.

Among the major sticking points:

How much and how fast should countries reduce their emissions? The world’s first climate treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, was signed by 165 countries in 1992. Enshrined in the UNFCCC is the idea of “common but differentiated responsibility” that although all countries should reduce their emissions, developed countries with historically high emissions — like the United States, Japan, and Germany — should make steeper cuts. Negotiations leading up to Paris produced a series of voluntary pledges, or Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) designed to allow countries to set their own plans, and then be shamed by the international community into ramping them up. It’s worked, sort of, but since the INDCs alone are not enough, a major topic at Paris will be coming up with a method to keep increasing the rate at which countries cut emissions.

Finance: One way to encourage climate-friendly development is for rich countries to give poor countries lots of money. Developed countries have already committed to contributions of $100 billion per year by 2020, but there’s still no clear idea on where that kind of money would come from. Many poor countries, to their credit, have hard-coded their finance requirements into their INDC pledges, noting they’d be able to transition to renewable energy much more quickly with help from the international community.

Loss and damage: Even with rapid emissions reductions, there’s still a lot of warming in the pipeline thanks to thermal inertia in the ocean and the inherent lag in the global climate system. Basically, if we stopped all emissions now, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would quickly stabilize and then slowly decline — but elevated levels would remain for centuries, barring the widespread adoption of some sort of carbon-sucking geoengineering. That means that climate-linked disasters will continue to escalate over the coming decades, and like most disasters, they’ll hit poor and vulnerable countries the hardest. Understandably, these poor and vulnerable countries want a mechanism in place to appeal for aid and help in adapting to future weather extremes.

Ratchet mechanism: Since the Paris talks on their own won’t fix climate change, a key negotiating point will be how often countries should announce bolder targets. Rich countries are generally advocating a ramp-up in targets once per decade, while poor countries say new targets should be agreed upon once every five years.

Since the U.N. climate talks operate by consensus, the strategy this time around, to avoid the failures of Kyoto and Copenhagen, is to make everything voluntary. Still, the European Union — especially host country France — wants the Paris deal to be legally binding. That would mean it would need to be approved by the Republican-controlled U.S. Congress, which is about as likely as a snowball’s chance in the Oklahoma summer. So, the U.S. is forcefully opposing strict legal language in Paris.

Some other key players to watch:

The G77 + China, which now contains 134 members (with China playing an increasingly minor role) is a major force for the interests of developing countries. China and India increasingly operate like heavyweight developed countries; they act as a sort of intermediary between the E.U./U.S. and the truly threatened countries like Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, and the Maldives. Among the groups advocating for the strongest possible climate deal are the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the Vulnerable Countries Forum (V20), and the Least Developed Countries (LDC). Major fossil fuel producing countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia will advocate for the weakest deal possible.

If you’d like to follow along with the negotiations on Twitter, I’ve put together a list that includes the best climate journalists, activists, and diplomats from the talks.

No matter what’s decided in Paris, it won’t immediately be enough to bend global emissions to a level consistent with the internationally agreed-upon goal of limiting warming to 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. But it probably will be enough to avoid the worst-case scenario. In the cards is a deal that will explicitly, for the first time, advocate for the eventual phase-out of fossil fuel use altogether — something that, absurdly, has never been enshrined in formal language at this high of a level. And that, if done in the next three decades or so, would be worth celebrating.


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Fiorina: I Will Not Be Bullied Into Telling Truth Print
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>   
Monday, 30 November 2015 14:17

Borowitz writes: "Appearing on 'Fox News Sunday,' the former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O. denied that spreading misinformation about Planned Parenthood was 'in any way incendiary,' but added, 'What is truly incendiary is demanding that someone who is seeking the highest office in the land stop lying.'"

Carly Fiorina. (photo: Getty Images)
Carly Fiorina. (photo: Getty Images)

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Fiorina: I Will Not Be Bullied Into Telling Truth

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

30 November 15

 

The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."

alling criticism of her misrepresentations about Planned Parenthood “typical left-wing tactics,” the Presidential candidate Carly Fiorina said, on Sunday, “I will not be bullied into telling the truth.”

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” the former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O. denied that spreading misinformation about Planned Parenthood was “in any way incendiary,” but added, “What is truly incendiary is demanding that someone who is seeking the highest office in the land stop lying.”

Fiorina noted that many of her rivals for the Republican nomination—including Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz—had successfully used lying as a key element of their campaign strategies. “All I am trying to do is level the playing field,” she said.

Additionally, she argued that she had not singled out Planned Parenthood as the subject of falsehoods during her campaign. “Look at the things I have said about my tenure at Hewlett-Packard,” she said. “I have steadfastly avoided facts from day one.”

Striking a defiant note, she said that she refused to allow a “tiny cabal of left-wing truth-fetishists” break her resolve. “Anyone who thinks I’m going to start suddenly telling the truth doesn’t know what Carly Fiorina is made of,” she said.


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The Planned Parenthood Shooting and the Republican Candidates' Responses Print
Monday, 30 November 2015 14:14

Davidson writes: "Do the Republican candidates think that nobody is listening to them? Are they even listening to themselves?"

On Sunday, passersby stops at the memorial for the victims attacked two days earlier at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (photo: Brent Lewis/The Denver Post/Getty Images)
On Sunday, passersby stops at the memorial for the victims attacked two days earlier at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado. (photo: Brent Lewis/The Denver Post/Getty Images)

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ALSO SEE: Republican Candidates Finally Comment on Shooting,
Continue False Attacks on Planned Parenthood

The Planned Parenthood Shooting and the Republican Candidates' Responses

By Amy Davidson, The New Yorker

30 November 15

 

here are so many mass shootings in this country—in a school or a church, a movie theatre or a mall—and so little is expected of American politicians in regard to them that, in the two days since Robert Dear began firing his gun at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, the Republican Presidential contenders have largely been able to hide from the tragedy. At midday on Friday, Dear initiated a gun battle that lasted five hours and took the lives of three people, including a police officer, and wounded nine others. Dear’s motives, and his mental state, are not yet fully known. But, of all the places he could have walked into, he chose a Planned Parenthood clinic, and, of all the fragments of deranged rhetoric he could have repeated, he chose, according to the Times and other press reports, to say something about “no more baby parts.” This is a reference to the false charge that Planned Parenthood has illegally trafficked in the sale of fetal organs—and that is the mildest way of framing the allegations that anyone listening to a Republican debate or rally would likely have heard. The loudness of the slurs against the organization is in telling contrast to the cautious silence that descended when it became a target of gun violence.

Even basic expressions of sympathy were delayed; none of the major Republican candidates said anything specific until Saturday. Then, Ted Cruz tweeted, “Praying for the loved ones of those killed, those injured & first responders who bravely got the situation under control in Colorado Springs”—a sentence that makes the objects of Cruz’s sympathy somewhat obscure. In the September G.O.P. debate, Cruz called Planned Parenthood a “criminal enterprise,” guilty of “multiple felonies.” He has signed a letter saying that one of the group’s founders, Margaret Sanger, sought the “extermination” of black Americans. (She did not.) “When millions of Americans rose up against Planned Parenthood, I was proud to lead that fight,” Cruz said, in a debate in October.

Also on Saturday, Jeb Bush—after sending out cheerful tweets about college football and the items available at his campaign store—said, “There is no acceptable explanation for this violence, and I will continue to pray for those who have been impacted.” Those are words that demand nothing, including of himself. (Bush has called Planned Parenthood’s practices “horrifying,” and has said that the group is “not actually doing women’s health issues. They are involved in something way different than that.”) John Kasich also tweeted Saturday—also without specifically mentioning Planned Parenthood. Marco Rubio, who seized on the shooting of Cecil the lion as a reason to ask where the outrage was over Planned Parenthood and “dead babies,” didn’t have anything to say about the victims in Colorado. Neither did Chris Christie, who, in one debate, talked about Planned Parenthood engaging in “the systematic murder of children in the womb to preserve their body parts.” (Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders put out statements saying that they stood by Planned Parenthood; President Obama also issued a statement in which he reiterated, once again, his frustration with gun violence.)

On Sunday, it was harder for the candidates to hide: they wanted to appear on the various morning talk shows. Ben Carson, asked about the heated words leading up to the shooting, spread the blame to supporters of reproductive rights: “There is no question that hateful rhetoric, no matter which side it comes from, right or left, is something that is detrimental to our society.” Then he somehow connected that thought to the Islamic State. When John Dickerson pressed him to return to the subject of Colorado Springs, and whether abortion opponents should “tone down their rhetoric,” Carson said, “I think both sides should tone down their rhetoric and engage in civil discussion.”

The other approach on Sunday morning was to bury all discussion of responsibility in more loudness. One candidate is particularly adept at that. “I think it’s terrible. I mean, terrible. It’s more of the same. And I think it’s a terrible thing. And he’s a maniac! He’s a maniac,” Donald Trump said of the shooter on “Meet the Press,” when Chuck Todd brought up the incident. Todd, attempting to focus the bluster, asked, “Do you think the rhetoric got out of hand on Planned Parenthood?”

“No. I think he’s a sick person. And I think he was probably a person ready to go,” Trump said. When he added that Dear hadn’t yet made “a statement,” Todd mentioned the reporting about his comments on baby parts. And off went Trump: “Well, I will tell you there is a tremendous group of people that think it’s terrible, all of the videos that they’ve seen with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you’re selling parts to a car. I mean, there are a lot of people that are very unhappy about that.” When Todd asked, again, if that unhappiness might lead to violence, Trump, after repeating that Dear was “mentally disturbed,” offered a couple of the self-reflective statements that he is prone to: “Well, there’s tremendous dislike. I can say that. Because I go to rallies. And I have by far, and you will admit that, I think, the biggest crowds, nobody even close”—here he paused for a tangent about how Sanders’s crowds were going “down, down, down like a rock”—“But I see a lot of anxiety and I see a lot of dislike for Planned Parenthood. There’s no question about that.” “Anxiety” may be the key word there in this election. The Trump vote—and he is the clear front-runner—clearly reflects a discontent that goes beyond the abortion issue. There is an unsettled antipathy that the G.O.P. establishment has fuelled without, it seems, fully understanding it.

Trump did grant that some of the discussion of sting videos purporting to demonstrate that Planned Parenthood was trafficking in organs was “not pertinent,” and that “I know that a couple of people that were running for office or are running for office on the Republican side were commenting on tapes that weren’t appropriate.” This reflected less a concession to reason, though, than his inability to pass up an opportunity to attack one of his opponents, Carly Fiorina. In a debate, Fiorina claimed that a video showed what sounded like infanticide—the killing of a “fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking”—for the stated sake of harvesting a marketable brain. This was false, and demonstrably so, but Fiorina just kept saying it. She was on television, on Sunday, too.

“This is so typical of the left to immediately begin demonizing the messenger because they don’t agree with your message,” Fiorina said on “Fox News Sunday,” when she was asked about concerns that the attacks on Planned Parenthood might have encouraged the violence. What is her “message,” though? Do the Republican candidates think that nobody is listening to them? Are they even listening to themselves?


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FOCUS: Inequality and the City Print
Monday, 30 November 2015 11:49

Krugman writes: "New York, New York, a helluva town. The rents are up, but the crime rate is down. The food is better than ever, and the cultural scene is vibrant. Truly, it's a golden age for the town I recently moved to - if you can afford the housing. But more and more people can't."

Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)
Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)

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Inequality and the City

By Paul Krugman, The New York Times

30 November 15

 

ew York, New York, a helluva town. The rents are up, but the crime rate is down. The food is better than ever, and the cultural scene is vibrant. Truly, it’s a golden age for the town I recently moved to — if you can afford the housing. But more and more people can’t.

And it’s not just New York. The days when dystopian images of urban decline were pervasive in popular culture — remember the movie “Escape from New York”? — are long past. The story for many of our iconic cities is, instead, one of gentrification, a process that’s obvious to the naked eye, and increasingly visible in the data.

Specifically, urban America reached an inflection point around 15 years ago: after decades of decline, central cities began getting richer, more educated, and, yes, whiter. Today our urban cores are providing ever more amenities, but largely to a very affluent minority.

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FOCUS: Shoot the Kid 16 Times Print
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>   
Monday, 30 November 2015 11:00

Pierce writes: "If you're wondering what went through the mind of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke as he emptied his service piece into Laquan McDonald a year ago, it was confidence. The confidence that comes with being licensed to carry a gun as a defense against your fellow citizens."

Protesters rallied in Chicago on Nov. 28, 2015, in response to the release of video showing the police shooting death of teenager Laquan McDonald. (photo: Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)
Protesters rallied in Chicago on Nov. 28, 2015, in response to the release of video showing the police shooting death of teenager Laquan McDonald. (photo: Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

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Shoot the Kid 16 Times

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

30 November 15

 

Most of the time, when you're a white cop, you shoot the kid and nothing happens. Will that finally change?

hoot the kid.

Shoot the kid 16 times.

Shoot the kid 16 times, mostly when he's already down.

Shoot the kid 16 times.

Make the body bounce.

Shoot the kid 16 times.

Shoot the kid 16 times and know that your buddies have your back.

Shoot the kid 16 times.

Shoot the kid 16 times and know that your buddies will grab the tapes.

Shoot the kid 16 times.

Shoot the kid 16 times and know that your buddies will bully the witnesses.

Shoot the kid 16 times.

Shoot the kid 16 times and know that the city will settle quietly.

Shoot the kid 16 times.

Shoot the kid 16 times and know that the city will bury the case.

Shoot the kid 16 times and know that nobody ever will know that you did.

Shoot the kid.

Shoot the kid 16 times.

If you're wondering what went through the mind of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke as he emptied his service piece into Laquan McDonald a year ago, it was confidence. The confidence that comes with being licensed to carry a gun as a defense against your fellow citizens. The confidence that comes with the knowledge that almost every powerful institution in your city will come to your aid if every powerless individual in the city is outraged by what you've done. The confidence that comes with knowing that the tapes will always be taken care of, the autopsy buried, and the official story spread far and wide before the truth ever is known, assuming that it ever is. The confidence that comes with being a white police officer in a major city in a terrified country. That was the spirit in which Jason Van Dyke allegedly fired his last rounds into what soon became the dead body of Laquan McDonald.

But the rules changed on Van Dyke. They changed in Ferguson, and on Staten Island, and in Tulsa, and, most recently, in Minneapolis. Dogged local reporting dug out the autopsy report, which showed that Laquan McDonald had taken 16 bullets. Dogged local reporting, and an overwhelming public outcry, forced the release on Tuesday of the dashcam video. The videotape was proof enough. Jason Van Dyke stands charged with first-degree murder in the death of Laquan McDonald, whom he shot 16 times.

It's hard to know whether this story will end well or not. Truth be told, the first-degree murder charge may be very hard to sustain in this case against a Chicago police officer. At least one juror likely will have imbibed the line that Van Dyke's life was endangered by McDonald because that juror has been fed a steady diet of black criminality on the news, on the radio, and by his favorite television pundits. This is not an easy prosecution, but the fact that it is being brought at all is something of a small miracle. That is, of course, very easy for me to say. I am not the threat, walking down the street with my Skittles and my iced tea. I am not the threat, peddling my loosies on the sidewalk. I am not the threat, acting bizarrely outside the Burger King. I am not the threat.

Shoot the kid.

Shoot the kid 16 times.

Shoot the kid 16 times, and see what happens next.


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