Guardian UK
The rich developed nations are 'giving up' on getting a comprehensive climate treaty until 2020. Are you surprised? Not me. To me it's been apparent all along. You would have to be an ostrich not to notice that there is political and economic paralysis throughout the world.
Governments of the world's richest countries have given up on forging a new treaty on climate change to take effect this decade, with potentially disastrous consequences for the environment through global warming.
Ahead of critical talks starting next week, most of the world's leading economies now privately admit that no new global climate agreement will be reached before 2016 at the earliest, and that even if it were negotiated by then, they would stipulate it could not come into force until 2020.
This news comes at a horrible time and just when the news is that there is an Unprecedented Rise in CO2 in 2010, which is beyond IPCC's worst case scenario. And that we need to prepare for extreme weather due to climate change
Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA), and one of the world's foremost authorities on climate economics, told the Guardian: "If we do not have an international agreement whose effect is put in place by 2017, then the door to [holding temperatures below 2C] will be closed forever."
Lord Stern, author of a landmark review of the economics of climate change, said aiming for a 2020 deadline was "pessimistic and risks introducing lethargy" to the process: "It's not fast enough – this is a collective failure, and [leaving agreement to] 2020 is taking considerable risks with the planet."
I don't think this is political maneuvering ahead of the Durban, South Africa talks end of this month. I think it shows the reality that as the worlds largest GHG emitter the US is unable to forge any consensus domestically as to an energy program. Nothing can happen in the US until after the 2012 elections and that depends wholly on the outcome.
We are having to fight for everything from bottom up, from grassroots as our political and economic systems have failed us. Just as in the Occupy Movement and in the so far successful stopping of the XL pipeline the needed direction for change will come from us.
There is a simple, fast, no-cost solution to climate change. I hope we take it.
I think we waste precious time by blaming and pointing fingers. We just need to get started to be the change we need.