The Paris Agreement: Turning Point for a Climate Solution | World Resources Institute

Paris Agreement adopted. Photo credit WRI

WRI experts Yamide Dagnet, Eliza Northrop, Heather McGray, Athena Ballesteros, Joe Thwaites and Niranjali Amerasinghe contributed to this post.

Today marks an historic turning point in global action on climate change. At the UN Climate Conference in Paris, known as COP21, 196 countries joined together in the Paris Agreement, a universal pact that sets the world on a course to a zero-carbon, resilient, prosperous and fair future. While the Agreement is not enough by itself to solve the problem, it places us clearly on the path to a truly global solution.

Building on the foundation of national climate plans from 187 countries, the Paris Agreement is a reflection of the remarkable momentum from cities, companies, civil society groups and others that complement the global will to act that has grown over the years since the first international conference on climate change in 1992.

The Paris Agreement will maintain and accelerate that momentum. It offers clear direction with:

• long-term goals and signals,
• a commitment to return regularly to make climate action stronger,
• a response to the impact of extreme climate events on the most vulnerable,
• the transparency needed to ensure action takes place and
• finance, capacity building and technology to enable real change.

But the Agreement does even more: it marks a new type of international cooperation where developed and developing countries are united in a common framework, and all are involved, engaged contributors. It reflects the growing recognition that climate action offers tremendous opportunities and benefits, and that climate impacts can be tackled effectively, with the unity of purpose that has brought us to this moment.

…(read more).

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Noam Chomsky & Abby Martin: The Empire’s Election Extravaganza // Empire_File007

Empire Files

Published on Oct 25, 2015

In this episode of teleSUR’s The Empire Files, Abby Martin interviews world-renowned philosopher and linguist Professor Noam Chomsky. Prof. Chomsky comments on the presidential primary “extravaganza,” the movement for Bernie Sanders, the U.S.-Iran nuclear deal, the bombing of the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, modern-day libertarianism and the reality of “democracy” under capitalism.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict With a New Introduction by the Author: Michael Klare

From the oilfields of Saudi Arabia to the Nile delta, from the shipping lanes of the South China Sea to the pipelines of Central Asia, Resource Wars looks at the growing impact of resource scarcity on the military policies of nations.

International security expert Michael T. Klare argues that in the early decades of the new millennium, wars will be fought not over ideology but over access to dwindling supplies of precious natural commodities. The political divisions of the Cold War, Klare asserts, have given way to a global scramble for oil, natural gas, minerals, and water. And as armies throughout the world define resource security as a primary objective, widespread instability is bound to follow, especially in those areas where competition for essential materials overlaps with long-standing territorial and religious disputes.

In this clarifying view, the recent explosive conflict between the United States and Islamic extremism stands revealed as the predictable consequence of consumer nations seeking to protect the vital resources they depend on.

A much-needed assessment of a changed world, Resource Wars is a compelling look at warfare in an era of rampant globalization and intense economic competition.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

The Race for What’s Left: The Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources: Michael Klare

“As Michael Klare makes clear in this powerful book, the heads of our corporate empires have decided to rip apart the planet in one last burst of profiteering. If you want to understand the next decade, I fear you better read this book.”—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis of resource depletion—a crisis that encompasses shortages of oil and coal, copper and cobalt, water and arable land. With all of the Earth’s accessible areas already being exploited, the desperate hunt for supplies has now reached the final frontiers.

The Race for What’s Left takes us from the Arctic to war zones to deep ocean floors, from a Russian submarine planting the country’s flag under the North Pole to the large-scale buying up of African farmland by Saudi Arabia and other food-scarce nations. With resource extraction growing more difficult, the environmental risks are becoming increasingly severe—and the intense search for dwindling supplies is igniting new conflicts and territorial disputes. The only way out, Michael T. Klare argues, is to alter our consumption patterns altogether, a crucial task that will be the greatest challenge of the coming century.

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

A New String Of U.S. Military Bases Abroad? | On Point

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry fields an audience question after addressing a cross-service corps of U.S. service members stationed at Camp Lemonnier – the only U.S. military base in Africa – during a visit to Djibouti, Djibouti, on May 6, 2015. [State Department photo/
Public Domain]

December 15, 2015 at 10:00 AM
The Pentagon has proposed a new string of military bases in Africa and the Middle East. We’ll look at what’s on the table, and where it would take the U.S. Military.

The U.S. military has bases in a lot of places around the world. It wants more. It wants to build up a new string of bases in the Middle East, Southwest Asia, Africa. In part to go after ISIS. Americans know well that U.S. troops are in Germany, Japan, South Korea. They are well-beyond too, in Bulgaria, Djibouti, Kenya, Qatar. Now the Pentagon is proposing new light-footprint bases in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Kurdistan, Ethiopia and more. This hour On Point, we’ll look at the Pentagon’s new challenges and new dreams of more American military bases around the world.

— Tom Ashbrook

Guests

Mark Mazzetti, national security correspondent for the New York Times. Author of “The Way of the Knife.” (@MarkMazzettiNYT)

Vikram Singh, vice president of national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress. Former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia and former special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. (@VJS_Policy)

David Vine, professor of anthropology at American University. Author of “Base Nation.” (@davidsvine)

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice

2015 December 14 | Here & Now – Will The Climate Change Agreement Be As Effective As It Is Historical?

Global Climate Change
Environment Ethics
Environment Justice