Planet TIGER.

The United Nations’ climate chief is expressing optimism about the movement among various countries to discuss a global carbon-emissions treaty, less than two months after the Copenhagen conference failed to achieve such a deal. 

Gatherings of the European Union, the Group of Eight, the G20 and other international bodies discussing climate change will not sideline the U.N. effort for a sweeping global environmental agreement. That is what the world body’s climate chief, Yvo de Boer, has told reporters in New Delhi. 

“I’m very happy countries are meeting in different constellations, formally and informally, in order to find a way forward. But at the end of the day, if you want a U.N. treaty to be the framework for an advance on climate change then, that will have to have happen in a formal setting, at the end of this year in Mexico,” de Boer. 

The Cancun conference, set for December, hopes to achieve what the Copenhagen meeting failed to accomplish – international consensus on how to combat rising carbon emissions. 

The Danish conference attracted an unprecedented 120 heads of state and government.  But delegates did not go beyond “taking note” of recognizing the need to limit temperature rises to two degrees Celsius above the average recorded in the pre-industrial era. The bare-bones deal was criticized as being drafted by only a few countries – namely the United States, China and other emerging powers – and not taking into consideration developing countries that would be most affected by climate change. 

De Boer, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, is in India for an environmental conference beginning Friday that will include an informal, off-the-record meeting among some of the Copenhagen climate negotiators. 

The Delhi Sustainable Development Summit is being somewhat overshadowed by its founder and embattled patron, on the defensive.

Indian Nobel Peace prize-winning scientist Rajendra Pachauri heads The Energy Research Institute organizing the Delhi gathering.  He is also chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has come under attack for sloppy science. The Indian scientist recently admitted an IPCC claim the Himalayan glaciers would melt by the year 2035 was erroneous.

U.N. climate chief de Boer says, despite what he termed several “perceived errors” brought to light in IPCC documents, the basic facts remain the same, still compelling the world to act.  

“The scientific evidence that is provided by the IPCC has not been shaken, in spite of a very unfortunate mistake,” said de Boer. 

De Boer terms continual questioning of climate data “positive” because it makes the overall science more robust. 

The United Nations says about 80 countries met a January 31st deadline to unveil national plans on targets and actions to reduce carbon emissions. 

But some climate negotiators are pessimistic about a global pact being achieved any time soon because of a lack of consensus and the state of the world economy.

voanews.com

Planet TIGER

President Barack Obama wants the United States to move more quickly to increase its reliance on alternative fuels. A presidential panel advocates greater use of biofuels and clean coal technology.

President Obama says the U.S. should depend less on oil and more on so-called clean energy.

He says the country which builds a clean energy economy will own the 21st century global economy.  So far, the president says, that country is not the U.S., but China. “We can’t afford to spin our wheels while the rest of the world speeds ahead,” he said.

An energy task force tells Mr. Obama U.S. production of fuel from plants or animals is not likely to meet a goal set by Congress.  The current production is about one-third the level lawmakers have mandated by 2022.

The group wants more private and government money spent to help stimulate the production of fuel from sources like maize, sugar cane and wood chips.

The president is also encouraging increased production of coal, using environmentally friendly technology. “It has been said that the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal, and that is because, as I said, it is one of our most abundant energy resources.  If we can develop the technology to capture the carbon pollution released by coal, it can create jobs and provide energy well into the future,” he said.

As he met with governors from coal-producing states, Mr. Obama said he is working on a government strategy to put clean-coal technology into wide use within ten years.  

The president told the governors from both parties that politics will have to be put aside. “The bottom line is this:  I am convinced that America can win the race to build a clean-energy economy, but we are going to have to overcome the weight of our own politics.  We have to focus not so much on those narrow areas where we disagree but on the broad areas where we agree,” he said.

Creating jobs through the development of clean energy and related technology is an important part of President Obama’s strategy for boosting the U.S. economy.

voanews.com

Planet Tiger

The China Tiger has this story.

Planet Tiger.

Victoria Switzer and her husband, Jim, are building what they hoped would be their retirement home in the rural hamlet of Dimock, Pennsylvania, in the eastern U.S. When Cabot Oil & Gas offered a lease for the natural gas under their land a few years ago, saying that it might drill a single horizontal well nearby, they weren’t worried.

Switzer says they were told the drilling was an environmentally safe, low-impact process that would also help reduce U.S. dependence on imported fossil fuels. She and her husband didn’t know much about the new natural gas boom that was just then arriving in northeastern Pennsylvania, seeking to tap gas in the Marcellus Shale rock formation roughly two kilometers underground.

“In a short time, we realized that we were going to have 27 wells within a short walk from the house,” Switzer said in an interview. “And as of today, we have 63, with indications that will double in the next two years.” She said that the industrial nature of gas drilling, with heavy truck traffic and noise, and occasional wastewater and chemical spills, has transformed their peaceful country life. And now, she says, they are afraid to drink their water – or to let children and animals play in the creek.

The Switzers are among a group of 15 families around Carter Road in Dimock who sued Cabot in November. They allege that the company’s drilling polluted their water with chemicals, metals and methane, the main constituent of natural gas, causing explosions as well as gastrointestinal and neurological illness.

“The smell and rotten taste, you couldn’t take a shower in it because the smell stayed on your skin, you couldn’t wash clothes in it,” said Ron Carter, who lives with his wife, Jean, about 150 meters from a drilling operation.

Patricia Farnelli said her five children were sick for months, until the family stopped using tap water for drinking or cooking “They’re fine all day at school, they come home, they get a drink of water, and that’s when they got sick. They would have very, very severe stomach cramps, and double over, and throw up or have diarrhea.”

Monica Marta worried about her water when a relative showed her that her tap water could be ignited. “The flame from the jug of water was this high,” she said, indicating about half a meter, “and that’s what my kids and our family have been drinking.”

Several said they first realized something was seriously wrong when Norma Fiorentino’s water well blew up on New Year’s Day 2009, throwing cement slabs into the air. State investigators found Cabot’s drilling had caused gas to migrate into her well. Fiorentino, a widow in her 60s, began buying water or getting it at a natural spring 10 kilometers away.

Other families had similar scares. Sheila Ely was in her bathroom getting ready for church one morning last year. “The pipes started rattling, and it sounded like they were going to come through the wall,” she said. She called emergency numbers at the Pennsylvania Department of Environment Protection. “DEP told us to get out of the house immediately. They said the house could explode.” 

Ron and Jean Carter said their well was so full of gas at one point that they were warned to open windows before turning on a faucet. Like most of the other families who sued, they are now receiving drinking water deliveries from Cabot, as ordered by the state. 

Horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydro fracking, as it’s also called, shoots thousands of cubic meters of fresh water, mixed with sand and a proprietary blend of more than 200 chemicals, deep underground, first vertically, and then horizontally. The fluid is injected at such high pressure that it cracks open pores in gas-containing shale, freeing small pockets of gas.

Even some Dimock residents who didn’t own land or sign leases have been affected by the drilling. Landowners also had little choice, since land ownership often doesn’t cover the resources below. Ron Carter said he and his wife were reluctant to sign until Cabot representatives explained that not doing so would mean only that they would be paid a lesser royalty. “They told us that all of our neighbors had signed and if we didn’t, they would go under our land and take the gas anyway,” Carter said.

Cabot Oil & Gas declined requests for interviews. But in a statement responding to the lawsuit, Cabot said it saw no merit in the claims. Industry representatives defend hydro fracking as safe, and contend that methane contamination is a coincidence, since it can also occur naturally.  They say the drilling takes place too far underground to contaminate aquifers. The Dimock plaintiffs respond that there were no problems with their water until the drilling began. According to the DEP, four people have been killed and three injured by explosions caused by migrating gas in the last decade in Pennsylvania.

Director Josh Fox has documented the environmental effects of new drilling methods, including flammable tap water, across 24 states in his new film “Gasland.” He says reports of water contamination occur wherever there is hydro fracking, perhaps because the process uses such great pressure.

“That pressure’s got to go somewhere. It might be going back up the well bore,” he said, “contaminating the aquifer in that way, since they drill down through the aquifers. Or it could be causing fractures in the earth that go all the way to the surface. It could be hitting natural fractures that already exist.”

Fox notes that toxic gases like benzene, toluene and hexane also accompany natural gas extraction. But water is the first priority for the Carter Road plaintiffs. Without drinking water, Victoria Switzer says, the house she hoped her grandchildren would visit won’t be livable — or saleable.  “How would you advertise it?” she asks. “‘Beautiful house in the country. Bring your own water.’”

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection fined Cabot last year for chemical and fuel spills and wastewater discharges. It ordered the company to provide a permanent water solution for families whose wells are polluted. Cabot must also repair defective construction on its gas wells by the end of March or shut them down.

voa.gov

]]> http://www.planettiger.com/climate changs/2010/01/03/environmental-concerns-rise-in-northeastern-pennsylvania-as-natural-gas-drilling-spreads-post_id%/001/feed 0 http://www.planettiger.com/climate changs/2010/01/03/gas-drilling-plan-raises-water-contamination-fears-in-new-york-city-post_id%/001 http://www.planettiger.com/climate changs/2010/01/03/gas-drilling-plan-raises-water-contamination-fears-in-new-york-city-post_id%/001#comments Sun, 03 Jan 2010 18:57:25 +0000 admin http://www.planettiger.com/?p=96

Photo: Sabine Aronowsky

Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer speaking at an anti-gas-drilling rally in New York

Planet Tiger

Environmentalists claim the drilling could contaminate New York’s unfiltered drinking water sources with dangerous chemicals and radioactivity

New York City leaders and environmentalists from around the state are fighting a plan to permit a new method of drilling for natural gas in the city’s upstate watershed. They say the process, called horizontal hydraulic fracturing or hydro fracking, would contaminate New York’s unfiltered drinking water sources with dangerous chemicals and radioactivity. 

Drilling supporters reply that drilling can be done safely and that depressed rural areas need the money that gas drilling brings – and that the U.S.  needs the energy. The debate is a flashpoint in a modern gas rush sweeping New York and Pennsylvania that could transform formerly rural areas.

“We must kill this drill. Kill the drill!” Manhattan borough president Scott Stringer told supporters at a rally against New York State’s draft plan to permit horizontal hydro fracking of gas wells. The method blasts millions of gallons of water, sand and chemicals deep into the earth, first vertically, and then horizontally,to crack open an ancient gas-containing rock formation called the Marcellus Shale.  

Most of southern New York and all of neighboring Pennsylvania lies above Marcellus rock, including the pristine Catskill Mountains, which supply New York City’s nine million residents with gravity-fed drinking water so pure that it isn’t even filtered.  Further south, the Delaware River Basin is the source of drinking water for millions more in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 

Drilling opponents, who ranged from politicians to upstate environmentalists and landowners, vastly outnumbered supporters like Delaware River outfitter David Jones. Jones noted that gas burns more cleanly than other fossil fuels. “This is a good clean resource. It must be developed,” he said. “Let’s keep the dollars here in the U.S., reduce our dependence on foreign oil, keep our soils and water clean, and provide needed tax revenue and jobs.” 

“We understand the environmental concerns, but that being said, we know without a doubt we can drill safely in any watershed,” said another defender, Scott Rotruck, vice-president of the Texas-based Chesapeake Energy Corporation, the largest company poised to expand gas drilling in New York State. 

Nevertheless, Rotruck confirmed that following the public outcry, Chesapeake has decided not to seek to drill within New York City watershed. Other gas companies have made no such promise.  And Cathy Kenney of the New York State Petroleum Council, which represents the oil and gas industry, says that no ban within the watershed is needed. She disputes claims by some landowners in other states that their water wells were contaminated by toxic chemicals and migrating natural gas that caused explosions and tap water that can be ignited with a match.

“It could be coincidental. As of now, all of these state authorities are investigating this, as they should,” Kenney said in an interview. “But up till now there is no causal link between the hydro fracking that’s going on and some of these claims.”

However, Pennsylvania recently fined the Cabot Oil and Gas Corporation for drilling that contaminated the drinking water of at least 13 families, and for illegal discharges of toxic waste. Studies of gas drilling in western states have found similar problems, as well as air pollution with benzene, toluene, hexane and other carcinogens.

In New York State, where the bedrock is highly radioactive, scientists say hydro fracking will also return to the surface dangerously radioactive wastewater. Opponents like physician Vincent Pedre say a complete ban is necessary to protect human health. 

“This stuff is toxic in our water supply,” he said. “It’s toxic in the water supply for upstate New York. It should be banned throughout the entire state.”

Alex Matthiessen is president of Riverkeeper, a private organization that works to protect fresh water sources. He notes that hydro fracking uses enormous quantities of fresh water – two to ten million gallons each time a gas-well is fracked – and says that local aquifers and lakes could be depleted. 

“It seems unsustainable to think that we’ve got enough water to lubricate this process in a way that’s not going to cause serious water deprivation for some of those communities,” he said. But he said Riverkeeper’s primary concern is contaminated wastewater created by hydro fracking: “How do you dispose of it, who oversees it, who oversees these contractors who are going to be trying to save a buck? This process will require more enforcement than any we’ve ever seen in New York State,” he said.

New York State currently has only 17 gas-well inspectors to monitor gas drilling, however. If state officials go ahead with hydro fracking permits next year, more than 40,000 new wells could be drilled in southern New York alone in the next few years.

voa.gov.

Photo: World Food Program/Natasha Scripture

Planet Tiger.

In the run-up to the Copenhagen climate conference, many experts said agriculture should be a central issue in the discussions. After all, farmers are directly affected by climate change, they contribute up to a third of all man-made greenhouse gases, and they can also mitigate their impact by capturing excess carbon dioxide in the soil. 

Many farmers worldwide hoped that negotiators in Copenhagen would devise a way to shield them from the heat waves, droughts, floods, and other unpredictable weather predicted under climate change, and reward them for activities that trap greenhouse gases. But agriculture wasn’t mentioned in the final accord signed December 18th by the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. 

“So it’s basically back to the drawing board as far as agriculture is concerned,” says Ajay Vashee, president of the International Federation of Agricultural Producers.

Vashee says at least negotiators agreed on a framework for a possible future agreement that could include farmers. 

Farms vs. forests?

Experts note that agriculture is a newcomer to climate negotiations. By comparison, it took several years of talks before reducing emissions from deforestation received a pledge of financial backing in Copenhagen.

The details of that deal — how countries can earn credit for preserving and restoring their forests — are still sketchy, however. And the American Farm Bureau Federation, the nation’s largest farmers’ organization, warns that incentives to grow trees could backfire if they lead farmers to plant fewer crops.

“People need to understand that there [are] going to be some trade-offs here,” says Russell Williams, the Farm Bureau’s director of regulatory relations. “If you’re taking this much land out of production, what’s that going to do to food prices? They really need to find a way, if they’re going to move forward with this stuff, to have these forestry and agriculture offsets harmonized so you don’t have a perverse incentive to forest land that’s going to feed people.”

Farms + forests?

David Waskow, climate change program director at the advocacy group Oxfam America, says there are circumstances in which the pro-forest and pro-farming camps could be in opposition. “But I think there are also ways in which they can be very mutually beneficial.” He says in some cases, introducing trees into cropping systems can improve yields while storing carbon. 

“We’ve seen that in areas like the Sahel where farmers have increased tree cover, that’s really been beneficial in terms of natural fertilizers, in terms of water retention,” he says. “So there’s actually quite a bit of synergy there.”

Philosophical rift

Waskow says Oxfam is one of several organizations that prefer these kinds of ecologically-based solutions to the Western model of intensive agriculture using pesticides and chemical fertilizers. 

There is a deep philosophical rift within the agriculture community on this issue. Those who say organic agriculture is the only way to go drew fire in Copenhagen from the Farm Bureau’s Russell Williams.

“You just have to stand up and say, ‘Hey, wait a second. It doesn’t do anybody any good to denigrate Western agriculture,’” he says. “And no matter what you think, and no matter what you say, Western agriculture has become the most efficient land use for food. The United States feeds a whole heck of a lot of people.”

And the world will have to feed a whole heck of a lot more people in the coming decades, experts say, even as a changing climate makes growing food more challenging. As climate change negotiations move forward, expect to see more sparks fly over the best way to reduce greenhouse gases while continuing to feed a hungry planet.

voa.gov

Planet Tiger.

World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan says she is disappointed a deal on climate change was not struck in Copenhagen.  But she says important steps were taken that, she believes, will ultimately result in an agreement to stop or retard climate change.  

She says the relationship between climate change and health is obvious.  For example, she says millions of people will suffer from either too much water or too little water under climate change.

Chan says extensive flooding may lead to loss of life from drowning and disease.  She says contaminated floodwaters can cause fatal illnesses, such as diarrhea and cholera.  

On the other hand, she says some areas will have too little water and prolonged drought will affect the kind of crops people normally grow.

“The prediction is that in the next 20 years to 30 years, if the situation continues to get worse, the productivity from the agricultural sector and from subsistence farming in Africa, the production would reduce by as much as 50 percent,” she said.  “If there is any truth to that, can you imagine the impact on hunger, on acute and chronic malnutrition?”  

Scientists say the warming of the planet will be gradual, but that extreme weather events will increase in frequency and intensity.  
They say the effects of more storms, floods, droughts and heat waves will be abrupt and profound.  

The World Health Organization says the effects of so-called climate-sensitive diseases already are killing millions of people.  WHO reports more than three-and-a-half million people die every year from malnutrition-related causes.  It says diarrhea-related diseases kill nearly two million people and almost one million die from malaria.

WHO Chief Margaret Chan says such problems will be magnified under climate change. “With the changes in temperature – vectors – disease vectors like mosquitoes have been reported to cause malaria in places that had never reported malaria cases,” she said.

Chan says climate change is a global phenomenon.  While no country will be exempt, she says its consequences will not be evenly distributed.  The WHO chief says poor countries that already are struggling with huge problems will be most affected.  

Chan says fragile health systems in the developing world will come under increased stress.  She says they will have great difficulty coping with the increased burden of disease and other health problems.

voa.gov

Planet Tiger

Some Americans feel cost of climate change legislation is greater than benefit

Climate change legislation, passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, appears stalled in the Senate.  Many conservatives in America simply don’t want it.  

“No country is more important than the United States in resolving these climate change issues,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said.  

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee hosted an important guest some weeks back.  Moon is a strong voice on the need for mandated changes in greenhouse gas emissions. 

But climate change legislation, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives, appears stalled in the Senate, in line behind healthcare and financial services reform.  The bills would require cuts in U.S CO2 emissions.

Democratic Senator John Kerry says passage before Copenhagen won’t happen. “We hope to be headed to Copenhagen with an outline at least of where our legislation is going at least on the floor of the Senate,” he said.

Climate policy analyst Jake Schmidt says passing strong legislation promptly is crucial if the U.S. is to be a leader on the environment. “Well clearly before we are really credible players in international eyes, we have to have domestic legislation that enforces our commitments,” he said.

The White House says the president will propose at Copenhagen a U.S. emissions target of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. 

David Kreutzer is an economist who tracks climate change for the conservative Heritage Foundation. He says the Senate bill faces hurdles, much like the bill in the House did.

“One of the problems is that the Waxman-Markey bill, the one in the House, passed only by 7 votes after a lot of wheeling and dealing and horse-trading and so on and that was right before the 4th of July break and it turned out it was fairly unpopular when legislators went home,” he said.

Kreutzer and other conservatives insist that legislation curbing C02 emissions will cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars and do little to bring down global temperature. 

Kreutzer urges President Obama to just say no in Copenhagen to binding  mandates. “The real leadership that we should offer is to say this is a bad deal,” he said. “This cutting carbon imposes a cost on the world economy that far exceeds any benefits.”

Kreutzer is also against proposals for developed countries to help fund the clean up of developing nations.   “The citizens of the United States aren’t at all convinced that we have a global warming problem that is severe enough for a blank check solution,” he stated.

Environmentalists like the Earth Policy Institute’s Janet Larsen say this is dangerous talk. She’s attending the conference in Copenhagen.

“The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is at about 387 parts per million.  That’s a level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the world may not have seen in the last 50 million years, so we are clearly moving into un-charted territory,” she said.

One of the goals of Copenhagen is to lay the groundwork for an international treaty that binds nations in the area of climate change.  The Senate would have to ratify the treaty for it to take effect in the U.S.

(voanews.com)

Planet Tiger

The international conference on climate change opens Monday in Copenhagen, Denmark, hosting thousands of participants and observers hoping to reach a deal to combat global warming. Initial expectations have been scaled back, but pressure remains for a substantive political agreement.

The international conference on climate change opens Monday in Copenhagen, Denmark, hosting thousands of participants and observers hoping to reach a deal to combat global warming. Initial expectations have been scaled back, but pressure remains for a substantive political agreement.

For the next two weeks this city plays host to experts, officials, activists and eventually world leaders as they try to clinch a deal.

Speaking to journalists on the eve of the conference, top U.N. climate official Yvo de Boer said it is time to act.

“Time is up,” said Yvo de Boer. “Over the next two weeks, governments have to deliver a strong and long-term response to the challenges of climate change.”

The goal was to reach a legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, blamed for heating up the atmosphere. But big questions remain over who cuts, by how much, who pays and what it will cost.

Initial expectations for Copenhagen have been scaled back to try to reach political agreement on a framework, with a detailed, binding treaty to follow.

More steps will be needed, said Yvo de Boer, but he remained confident.

“Never in the 17 years of climate change negotiations have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together,” he said.

That, said de Boer, makes this conference a turning point already. Certainly many Copenhagen residents hope that is true and they see climate change as a crucial issue.

MAN: “I think the most important thing we can politically is to force the leaders to take seriously the problems we are facing.”

MAN: “The issue is important for my future and my children’s future as well.”

COUPLE: “It is very important. Super important – it involves all of us whether we live here in Denmark or whether we live in Asia or in North America, for that matter.”

MAN: “I think it is very important for the people in the world that we do something about it right now.”

Copenhagen has embraced the conference – with posters and reminders of what is at stake at almost every corner. One exhibit has taken a different tack – with large posters of some of the world’s beauty spots – remaining wilderness and wildlife.

The exhibit is meant as a message to world leaders, when they come here, to make sure such beauty remains for future generations.

(voanews.com)

Planet Tiger

Two-week conference aims to achieve legally binding agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions and has been billed as last best chance to clinch a deal.

UN officials, climate experts, environmental activists, and more than 60 world leaders gather in Copenhagen for a two-week conference on climate change to begin December 7. Their aim is to achieve a legally binding agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions. But there are questions about how much can be achieved and how any agreement would be implemented.

The Copenhagen conference has been billed as the last best chance to clinch a deal, but doubts have been raised whether it can do that.

Environmental groups will press the case for urgent action, says Charlie Kronick, climate advisor at Greenpeace UK.

“We need to have a legally binding agreement to reduce carbon emission in developed countries as quickly as possible,” he urged.  “And what we need along with that is a significant commitment for funding from the developed countries to the developing countries – to fund technology transfer, to fund forest protection and also to fund adaptation to climate change, that we’re already committed to,” he said.

The goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions blamed for heating up the atmosphere.  And, since industrialized nations were the greatest polluters for years, they, more than others, are under pressure to cut emissions.  

But, many say developing countries also need to do more. They in turn want financial help to make the transition.

Both need to work together, says Nick Nuttall, spokesman for the UN Environment Program.

“What we’re looking for in Copenhagen is a global partnership between the North and the South, between the developed, industrialized nations and the rapidly developing ones with the other developing nations also a part of that cooperative partnership deal, which is the only way we’re going to deal with this,” he said.

Most scientists say human activity is behind global warming and that it’s up to humans to make changes to stem the tide.

But, politics and economics get in the way, says Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace.

“Governments in general and politicians all over the world are looking at a price tag that’s attached to their term of office,” he said.  “They always forget, and it’s rarely emphasized in public, that it’s better to spend the money now than in the future. The worse the problem gets, the more it costs to adapt.” 

Copenhagen is supposed to come up with a successor to the 1997 Kyoto agreement that mandated cuts in emissions.  It expires in 2012.  Some say Kyoto was doomed from the start because the United States never signed on.

But, President Obama will come to Copenhagen. And the United States has put emission cut proposals on the table.  

The conference is the moment of truth, says Nick Nuttall of the UN.

“This is the point at which governments really have to decide if they’re serious about climate and if so, what they’re going to do about it,” he said.

It now remains to be seen if politicians are listening

(voanews.com)