Difference between revisions of "Mardi Gras"
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= | =2011 - 2013= | ||
Mostly driven by the public awareness and the pressure that came from this direction on the EU governments after the fiasco in Cancun, the region decided to put emission reduction limits for its region of 25% in the early stage of this timeperiod. Because the corporations realized that installation of emission reducing technology also increased the efficiency, they rapidly invested in this. This lead to the emissions target be reached soon after it came out as a EU wide regulation. <br> | |||
With this measure the region mainly tried to be a symbol to other countries around the world to also set reduction targets. It was also the green tech industry that pushed its governments to come to a global agreement. Moreover this should be another sign to the world that was going to be more unified. <br><br> | |||
In a second step the EU environment ministers decided upon a McKinsey report on climate change from 2009 to offer half of the amount needed to reduce GHG emissions to nations that use the money for this purpose. With a yearly GDP of around 15 trillion (EU) this would have amounted to a yearly spending of 3% (=EUR 415 bn) of its GDP. The other half, the EU expected, should come from the other part of the developed world, the USA. However, this did not happen in this period. The position of the USA in fighting global warming was not really progressive. <br> | |||
The money should be used for one or more of the three GHG abatement opportunity areas that were energy efficiency, low-carbon energy supply and/or forestry & agriculture. Obviously, the funding was related to strict reporting and compliance standards. <br><br> | |||
In the middle of this period several severe natural catastrophes occured in China. Furthermore its cities were constantly highly polluted and more and more people were suffering by this. The government found out that the death rate caused by air pollution has increased dramatically. Having a lot of green technology manufacturing in its own country, the government later on decided to reduce carbon emission using its own and technology mainly from EU companies and funding from the before mentioned EU funds. <br> | |||
Later on, China even decided to put a reduction limit and declared this also in the global climate change conferences. However at that point in time China and EU were the only countries or regions that had reduction limits. The developing countries were mainly concerned about their economic growth and saw it negatively affected, if they had put GHG reduction targets. Furthermore China was receiving the biggest part of the funds provided by the EU, so for them the EU could not provide enough financial support to enhance their technology for emission reduction. | |||
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=2019-2020= | =2014 - 2018= | ||
LCA was reworked in a shortest time and put with a realistic figures for the countries discussion. It took almost 2 years of regular conferences,meetings and debates to make countries agree on conditions. Process of moving from "paying out sins" LCA to the "saving the planet" LCA was not as long as for agreeing on the first one, but was not less painful as well. However, after India and | With the intention to push the other nations, EU put import duties on goods that had their origin in countries with a certain minimum per capita GDP without emission reduction targets. This was a surprising action for many at that time. However, it was also brought forward because EU was steering towards more unification and had now own EU ministers being responsible for each field on EU wide level. EU had even one minister called EU Ministry for Climate Change Issues. <br><br> | ||
This fact plus China becoming a more and more the trading partner number one (before US) for the EU, changed the negotiation behavior of EU and thus it also ignored the WTO, which abolished such trade barriers. <br> | |||
The idea was to give the money received by this import duties to developing countries for education and GHG reduction measures (James Hanson). During the end of this period the developing countries also started to employ it for the implementation of green technology and thus realized that could become realistic to agree upon reduction targets. <br> | |||
In another step the EU Minister for Climate Change issues raised the internal emissions reduction target even further. <br><br> | |||
In the past China had bought land in some parts of Africa, which it was using for farming to provive the Chinese population with food. An increasing number of droughts in Africa damaged the harvest on these lands. This added to the natural catastrophes still occurring in China. <br><br> | |||
Behind the curtains of the UN climate conferences China and EU were talking about the implementation of the import duties by EU. For China this was not a problem, since they had emission reduction targets in place. However, China was planning to implement such import duties on goods from countries without any reduction targets as well. This was good news for EU. Because since EU had this import duties its relation to US worsened slightly, which affected some EU exports to US. With China putting the same import duties towards the end of this period, US did not have much choice. The biggest trading partner for U.S. was China and EU. <br><br> | |||
In the climate negotiations, however, US was still concentrating on its own industry and thus was not willing to put any emission targets. The developing countries still had other problems, like fighting poverty and improving infrastructure. So the climate change would still negatively affect their growth. During this period they did not agree to put emission targets. Furthermore they were not affected by the import duties of China and EU, since their GDP/capita was under the threshold. | |||
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Additionally, more and more corporations world-wide recent years started moving towards AAA Green Rankings being put under the pressure of NGOs from one side and their "as green as you can be" business partners from the other. Leading countries governments being pushed by public to seal the deal met this corporations behavior as a relief and came back to the LCA discussion. In 2014 a number of countries ratified LCA, which was consolidated recently with some other Climate Change proposals, such as the REDD agreement (the last one became as part of the main document by demand from Brazil and some other countries, who faced huge forest fires in Amazonian earlier this year). Some were upset to realize that it was mainly the same countries who already ratified Kyoto Protocol before. But third started pointing to the fact that according to IPCC reports this document was already out of date even before being signed and has to be remade again to bring any real benefit.<br> | |||
Being put into the changing climate conditions some countries as US or Japan followed Russia's example and implemented new adaption plans in their Climate Change policies. While keeping some distance from other negotiators even after coming back to the table, China faced two consecutive years of droughts, which lead to the food supply crisis and even hunger in the Northern regions of the country. Hunger became a final chord that put country into the recession.<br> | |||
=2019 - 2020= | |||
LCA was reworked in a shortest time and put with a realistic figures for the countries discussion. It took almost 2 years of regular conferences,meetings and debates to make countries agree on conditions. Process of moving from "paying out sins" LCA to the "saving the planet" LCA was not as long as for agreeing on the first one, but was not less painful as well. However, after India, Brazil and US jumped on the boat it was finished.<br> | |||
USA agreed finally in the UN negotiations in 2018 to sign the LCA and reduce GHGs. This move required mainly the U.S. industry to improve efficiency. The country did this for two reasons: 1. To avoid the import duties from China and EU and 2. To be an example to developing countries to also set emission targets. USA observed the developing countries growing economically. The country believed to put with emission targets a brake on this growth, which was seen as a threat to USA. So they communicated it on the UNFCCC conference.<br><br> | |||
Almost in parallel also developing countries, like Brazil, Russia and India put emission reduction targets. This was driven by that they received during the years enough funds to finance such projects like reforestation in Brazil or renewable energy power generation in India. Russia additionally was ultimately affected by several natural catastrophes that were again devastating for their harvest and thus it drove them to reduce GHGs. <br><br> | |||
As a consequence of this news the outlook was that countries would find an agreement to further fight global warming and even further decrease GHG emissions. | |||