Tuesday 23 July 2019
Australia attempts to "erase the science" on climate change at UN talks in Bonn?
BBC
News,
27 June 2019:
Oil
producing countries are trying to "erase the science" on
keeping the world's temperatures below 1.5C, say some delegates at UN
talks in Bonn.
The
chair of the Alliance of Small Island States said Saudi Arabia and
others were trying to pretend a key scientific report didn't exist.
Small
island states believe keeping temperatures below 1.5C this century is
critical to their survival.
A
key report in October said this was possible.
But
huge emissions cuts would be needed in the short term.
The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on 1.5C was
commissioned by the UN back in 2015.
But
when it was presented to climate negotiators in December in Poland,
four countries including the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Kuwait
refused to "welcome" it.
The
simmering battle over the report has re-emerged here at this meeting
in Bonn.
There
has been a serious battle over a text that would include reference to
the scientists' conclusion that carbon emissions would have to be
reduced by 45% by 2030.
Saudi
Arabia has been at the fore in wanting to include text that
underlined the uncertainties in the report.
For
the group of around 40 small island states, this has proved
inflammatory.
"The
report came out in in October of 2018 and now we see this move at the
negotiations to try and have it almost erased from existence, which
is impossible to do," Lois Young, the ambassador from Belize,
who is chairing the group, told the BBC.
"There's
this move to pretend as though it's not there, to not to refer to it
in documents. And it's been ongoing since we got here."
The
Saudis have gained some support in their arguments from an unlikely
alliance of countries, including the US, Australia and Iran.
"The
countries that are trying to downplay the importance of the document,
erase it from the records, not all of them are showing their faces,"
said Ambassador Young.
"It's
unreal, it's as though they're resigning our Aosis states to
collateral damage, I mean, it's like we have no importance doesn't
matter." [my
yellow highlighting]
Read
the full article here.
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