TIMES.KY

Cayman Islands, Caribbeanand International News
Friday, Jun 02, 2023

Fossil fuels are the new nukes: Pacific island nations at risk from rising sea levels support a nonproliferation treaty for oil and gas

Fossil fuels are the new nukes: Pacific island nations at risk from rising sea levels support a nonproliferation treaty for oil and gas

Ministers from six Pacific island nations called for an end to new oil, gas, and coal projects and for a treaty that would govern their phaseout.
The destruction from back-to-back cyclones and an earthquake didn't stop the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu from hosting a climate meeting last week.

Ministers from six island nations gathered in Port Vila, Vanuatu's capital, even as it remained in a state of emergency due to power outages and displaced evacuees in need of food aid and shelter.

The natural disasters to hit the island, which lies some 1,100 miles east of Australia, were just the most recent example of "ongoing fossil fuel-induced loss and damage" suffered by their people, the ministers said in a statement. They called on the world to end the expansion of oil, gas, and coal projects and to start negotiating a treaty that would govern their phaseout in an equitable way.

Such an agreement, what supporters call a fossil-fuel nonproliferation treaty, could be the difference between the survival or extinction of places like Vanuatu, Tonga, Fiji, and the Solomon Islands. The United Nations has consistently ranked them among the most at risk of disasters, including sea-level rise, cyclones, and earthquakes, even though these countries' greenhouse-gas emissions are minuscule.

"This is one of the first examples of governments coming together and having the courage to call for a global phaseout of fossil fuels in line with climate science," Tzeporah Berman, the chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative and international program director at Stand.earth, said.

Countries must burn drastically less fossil fuel by 2030 to have any hope of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial levels, according to a landmark report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published Monday. Beyond that point, scientists said, the impacts of sea-level rise, tropical storms, heat waves, drought, biodiversity loss, and food insecurity become significantly harder to manage.

For Vanuatu, satellite images show the sea level has risen by about 6 mm per year since 1993, a rate that's nearly double the global average. And deaths from floods, drought, and storms were already 15 times greater in "highly vulnerable" regions over the last decade, the UN found.

The UN scientific body found the world was likely to surpass that 1.5-degree threshold between 2030 and 2035 because emissions continue to rise. They set another record in 2022, despite countries having agreed, under the Paris agreement, to tackle the climate crisis.

Existing fossil-fuel infrastructure alone, the report found, will blow through the world's carbon budget — the amount of emissions it can afford while being under catastrophic levels of global warming. Public and private financing for fossil fuels is also still greater than investment in climate adaptation and mitigation.

Berman, who spoke with Insider from Port Vila, said a fossil-fuel treaty could help solve the problem similar to how a nuclear nonproliferation treaty in 1968 created political and moral pressure against an arms race.

The treaty proposal includes has three main pillars: a commitment to stop expanding fossil fuels; a framework to wind down existing production; and measures to ensure the transition is equitable. Developing countries need financing to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, Berman said.

"A fossil-fuel treaty could shift the social norm and make expansion unacceptable within foreign policy," Berman said. "Our goal is to get a large group of ambitious countries to support this and make fossil-fuel expansion completely unacceptable in the climate era, rather than something that is about prosperity."

Some 3,000 scientists, 79 cities, and the World Health Organization, a UN body, support the initiative. Vanuatu and Tuvalu are the only two countries that have officially endorsed it, Berman said, but 10 others are considering it.
AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

TIMES.KY
Close
0:00
0:00
Nvidia Joins Tech Giants as First Chipmaker to Reach $1 Trillion Valuation
Drone Attack on Moscow's Wealthiest Neighborhoods Suspected to be Launched by Ukraine
Elon Musk Meets Chinese Finance Minister in Beijing
AI ‘extinction’ should be same priority as nuclear war – experts
Prominent Hacker Forum RaidForums Suffers Substantial Data Breach
Nvidia CEO Huang says firms, individuals without AI expertise will be left behind
WPP Revolutionizes Advertising with NVIDIA's AI Powerhouse
Two US Employees Fired For Chasing Robbers Out Of Store As They Broke ''Company Policy''
If you donated to BLM, you got played
Pfizer, the EU, and disappearing ink - Smoke, Mirrors, and the Billion-Dose Pfizer Vaccine Deal: EU's 'Open Secret
Actor Tom Hanks told Harvard University graduates to be superheroes in their defense of truth and American ideals, and to resist those who twist the truth for their own gain
The Sussexes' Royal Rebound: Could Harry and Meghan Markle Return to the UK?
A provocative study suggests: Left-Wing Extremism and its Unsettling Connection to Psychopathy and Narcissism
France Arrests 10 on Suspicion of Failing to Respond in Time to Migrant Drowning
Neuralink Receives FDA Approval for First-in-Human Clinical Study
Is Saudi Arabia the holiest place in the world? Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions from "The Mount Sinai Stand" Discovered in Saudi Arabia
Ukrainian Intelligence Official Admits to Assassination Attempts on Putin
Bernard Arnault Loses $11.2 Billion in One Day as Investors Fear Slowdown in US Growth Will Reduce Demand for Luxury Products
Russian’s Wagner Group leader: “I am not a chef, I am a butcher. Russia is in danger of a revolution like in 1917.”
TikTok Sues Montana Over Law Banning the App
Ron DeSantis Jumps Into 2024 Presidential Race, Setting Up Showdown With Trump
Last Walmart in North Portland Closing Down
Florida's DeSantis seeks to disqualify judge in Disney case
Talks between US House Republicans and President Biden's Democratic administration on raising the federal government's $31.4tn debt ceiling have paused
Biden Administration Eyeing High-Profile Visits to China: The Biden Administration is heating things up by looking into setting up a series of top-level visits to Beijing by top officials in the coming months
New evidence in special counsel probe may undercut Trump’s claim documents he took were automatically declassified
A French court of appeals confirmed former President Nicolas Sarkozy's three-year jail term for corruption and influence peddling
Debt Ceiling Crises Have Unleashed Political Chaos
Weibao Wang, a former software engineer at Apple, was charged with stealing trade secrets related to autonomous systems, including self-driving cars
Mobile phone giant Vodafone to cut 11,000 jobs globally over three years as new boss says its performance not good enough
Elon Musk compares George Soros to Magneto, the supervillain from the Marvel Comics series.
Warren Buffett Sells TSMC Shares Over Concerns About Taiwan's Stability
New Study Finds That Secondary Bacterial Pneumonia Is a Major Cause of Death in COVID-19 Patients Who Require Ventilator Assistance
The Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines calls the British monarchy "an absurdity" he wants to remove in his lifetime
King Charles III being crowned.
'Godfather Of AI' Geoffrey Hinton Quits Google To Warn Of The Tech's Dangers
A Real woman
Vermont Man Charged with Stalking After Secretly Tracking Woman with Apple AirTag
Elon Musk Statements About Tesla Autopilot Could Be 'Deepfakes,' Lawyers Claim. Judge Evette Pennypacker Does Not Understand How Far and Advanced This Technology Became
Ukraine More Prepared for Counterattack as Reinforcements Arrive
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Discuss Migration, Defence, and Ukraine
AT&T's Successful Test of Satellite-Based Phone Call Raises Possibility of Widespread Coverage
CNN: "Joe Biden is asking for four more years — when 74% of Americans think the country is heading the wrong way“
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Cuts Short Live TV Interview Due to Health Issue
US Congresswoman threaten Twitter Files journalist with arrest
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh slams New York Times' pro-government stance and treatment of sources
Enough is enough: it's time to end the war in Ukraine. While Russia may be to blame for starting it, Russia is not the one refusing to stop it
Fox News Settles their case with Dominion Voting Systems for a staggering $787.5 MILLION
AG decries scapegoating and rushed lawmaking by government
The land of the free violence
×