Although the title of this blog is Climate Action in Montreal, the word ‘action’ can be interpreted in different ways. Will there be decisions that move the climate regime forward this year? I have no doubt about that. However, will this ‘action’ be enough to “prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference”, as called for Article 2 of the UNFCCC? This is the main question, and it seems to be forgotten oftentimes in the discussions in the COP and COPMOP. The reason why I’m contemplating about this is because of a couple of events yesterday. Yesterday in the morning and afternoon I spent most of my time at ‘Arctic Day’, where people from the Northern regions showed their culture, explained the threats and difficulties that they are already facing or will face in the near future, and basically are wondering why nothing is being done about this. Later that day, Bill Hare, climate scientist with Greenpeace provided a – for me familiar – presentation on dangerous climate impacts, and the massive scientific evidence on the wide range of impacts of climate change on humans and ecosystems. I asked him what kind of warming we are already committed to, as he showed that 2 degrees already has significant adverse impacts on certain sectors or biodiversity. He replied that even if we stopped emitting now, we would still have a warming of 1.4-1.7 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. Let me repeat that: even if we would cut down all our emissions, there would still be severe impacts! So logically speaking, there would be no need to discuss to what targets we should commit or what timeline needs to be set for negotiations on new commitments for developed countries, because any target less than 100% now would not be enough to prevent adverse impacts. This is a realisation that still needs to kick in with some of the decision-makers, and yesterday evening I got a small sign that this may indeed kick in. We had a meeting with a group of the Youth Delegation with Minister Elliot Morley of the UK. He was very kind and mostly agreed with our concerns (although it was difficult to see whether he was just giving lip service). However, he also mentioned a conference on dangerous climate change, which was held in Exeter, UK, earlier this year. The outcomes of this conference are very much in line with what Bill Hare has been saying for quite a while now, but the conference itself received more attention than, for example, a peer-reviewed article. The point were Morley sounded sincerely concerned is when he referred to the outcomes of this conference, and mentioned that he was afraid of what could happen. However, the actions of most, if not all, countries are not in conformity with this fear. I don’t want to sound to pessimistic or don’t want to suggest that doom-and-gloom talk is the way to go, but in the end there needs to be this realisation with all of us that what we are doing is not enough. I think this realisation on a personal level is the only way to bring about a paradigm shift that would actually help to achieve the ultimate objective of the UNFCCC. In that sense, perhaps the second most provision of the Climate Convention (next to Article 2) is Article 6 on education and awareness raising, because this holds the key to changing people on a personal level.

I hope to get back to the more practical ‘action’ points in one of my next points, but I just needed to write this down.