Many of these leaders SAY they accept what scientists are telling us about the climate. Why then do they not ACT like it? Because climate scientists are not saying y’all can fiddle around for a few more decades before you move to deal with our situation. Oxford Dictionaries didn’t pick nothing-bad-will-really-happen-if-we-delay as its Word of the Year for 2019. It picked “climate emergency.” Saying you think it’s real and that humans are causing isn’t enough.
Delay IS denial.
Julia Conley at Common Dreams writes—US Denounced as 'Threat to Humanity' as COP25 Ends Without Deal on Big Polluters' Responsibility to Frontline Nations:
Climate action advocates who had spent two weeks demanding strong commitments from the COP 25 climate summit emerged from the conference Sunday stunned and angry over its conclusion, which was deemed a "lost opportunity" by the United Nations secretary-general.
Because of the refusal of some of the world's wealthiest countries to commit to more ambitious targets to reduce their climate-warming carbon emissions, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, "The international community lost an important opportunity to show increased ambition on mitigation, adaptation, and finance to tackle the climate crisis."
As Common Dreams reported Saturday, the summit was intended to wrap up Friday but negotiations lasted two extra days as delegations debated provisions for carbon markets.
The final deal acknowledged there was a "significant gap" between countries' pledges to reduce their carbon emissions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and government's ability to achieve that reduction.
Countries were urged in the final text to honor their emissions-reduction commitments, but high-polluting countries including China, India, and the U.S. argued they saw no need to set more ambitious reduction plans for themselves.
In the final hours of negotiations, Papus New Guinea's climate envoy, Kevin Conrad, told Euronews, "90% of the participants have not been involved in this process."
Developing countries especially took issue with a language that the U.S. successfully stonewalled, which would have addressed how the U.S. should be held liable to island nations for the damage the climate crisis has already caused to them, thanks in part to the activities of the world's biggest carbon emitter historically.
The Tuvalu delegation reportedly said Sunday that the United States' refusal to compensate other countries for loss and damage "could be considered a crime against humanity." [...]
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~~John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir (1938)
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2004—Another missile defense test fails:
Another failed test.
An attempt to launch an interceptor missile as part of the U.S. missile defence shield failed early Wednesday in the first test of the system in nearly two years.
The Missile Defense Agency said the ground-based interceptor automatically shutdown "due to an unknown anomaly" shortly before it was to be launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean [...]
The missile defense shield was meant to be in operation by the end of 2004.