Cancùn: the aftermath

"Many commentators have called the Cancún accord a "step in the right direction." We disagree: it is a giant step backward. The text replaces binding mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions with voluntary pledges that are wholly insufficient. These pledges contradict the stated goal of capping the rise in temperature at 2C, instead guiding us to 4C or more. The text is full of loopholes for polluters, opportunities for expanding carbon markets and similar mechanisms – like the forestry scheme Redd – that reduce the obligation of developed countries to act."

- Pablo Solon, Bolivian Ambassador to the UN,
"Why Bolivia stood alone in opposing the Cancùn climate agreement".

Having read thousands of words of analysis of the recent Cancùn climate change conference (the next in the series of international meetings that met in Copenhagen last year), I am still undecided as to how to evaluate it. Was it a small step in the right direction, an incremental improvement in international diplomacy that will of necessity be slow or yet another catastrophic failure to act in the face of a worsening crisis? Or both?

Here are a few links to more positive evaluations: a necessary compromise; a good outcome; not the end but a new beginning. Or was it worse than Copenhagen ("Copenhagen without the sense of failure") and as such threatens the life of humankind?

If you have read any interesting analyses, post the links in the comments.
Image by Bree.

If the world is going to hell, why are humans doing so well?

Scientific American: If the world is going to hell, why are humans doing so well?. This is known as the environmentalist's paradox.

While the precise contribution of anthropocentric climate change to Pakistan's devastating floods continues to be debated, they were indeed made worse by human actions. And the toll continues to rise. You can give online here (or in many other places).

Oil Drum: Nine challenges for renewable energy.

Nature: Not all disruptions associated with climate change involve things getter hotter. A recent anomalous cold snap in Bolivia has contributed to what is possibly the largest short-term ecological disaster in its history.

Water stress in western USA.

New mega-dam in Brazil looks set to go ahead.

The archeological consolations of drought: hundreds of ancient sites revealed in England during a dry summer.

Ecopsychology: BP Gulf disaster and despair.

ABC: West Antarctic ice shelf may be "much less stable than previously thought".