Germany’s long-serving leader understands the threat posed by global warming, but her silence on the subject is deafening.
On 23 September 2014, world leaders converged on New York to pledge their support for a new climate deal, at a UN summit hosted by Ban Ki-moon.
While many heads of state were ramping up the rhetoric on a low carbon transition, Angela Merkel was going the other way. The German chancellor, arguably the most powerful person in Europe, was addressing chiefs of energy-hungry sectors from carmakers to chemical giants at German Industry Day.
It indicated a shift in priorities from Merkel’s days as environment minister, when she was instrumental in laying the foundations for the Kyoto Protocol – the original climate treaty.
On Monday, Merkel visits the White House, where climate change is on the agenda. Will US president Barack Obama meet an advocate for ambition, or a protector of heavy industry?
Observers have little doubt that Merkel, a scientist by training, understands the case for tackling climate change.
She is credited with brokering the 1995 Berlin Mandate, an essential precursor to Kyoto, and persuading climate sceptic leaders – notably former US president George W Bush – to take the matter seriously.
“Germany has played an amazing leadership role in the international climate regime and Merkel has been central to that,” says veteran climate negotiator Farhana Yamin, now CEO of Track 0.
“They have always reached out to be a bridge builder but also to place a vision of low carbon and low energy at the heart of the European economy. She has been a fantastic champion."
For the complete article, please see RTCC.
French environment minister Nicolas Hulot has resigned live on national radio in a surprise move that will come as a blow to president Emmanuel Macron’s green credentials. Nicolas Hulot had not made the French president aware of his decision to quit, he told radio presenters, adding his time in office had been an ‘accumulation of disappointments’.
Liberia’s largest palm oil producer, Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL) pulls out of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) – how can rural communities cope with the impacts? The forests near GVL’s Liberian plantations are not only sacred sites of the region's people but also heavily populated with chimpanzees, leopards, pygmy hippopotamus and forest elephants which are significant not only to the local ecosystem but globally.
Mine closures have caused social and political turmoil in many regions, for example in South Africa. But there are ways of planning and managing the phase-out so that when the inevitable happens, people are better prepared. A new study looks at opportunities beyond mining and finds that infrastructure that supports mining can also be put to new use.
Population pressure, a lack of economic opportunities, environmental degradation, and new forms of travel are contributing to human displacement and unsafe migration on an unprecedented scale. And as millions more people see climate change erode their livelihoods, the problem will get worse in the absence of visionary global leadership.