TIMES.KY

Cayman Islands, Caribbeanand International News
Saturday, Dec 14, 2024

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.
Newsletter

Related Articles

TIMES.KY
0:00
0:00
Close
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Israel: Unprecedented Civil Disobedience Looms as IDF Reservists Protest Judiciary Reform
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Italian Court's Controversial Ruling on Sexual Harassment Ignites Uproar
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
BBC Personalities Rebuke Accusations Amidst Scandal Involving Teen Exploitation
A Swift Disappointment: Why Is Taylor Swift Bypassing Canada on Her Global Tour?
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
Unilever Plummets in a $2.5 Billion Free Fall, to begin with: A Reckoning for Misuse of Corporate Power Against National Interest
Beyond the Blame Game: The Need for Nuanced Perspectives on America's Complex Reality
Twitter Targets Meta: A Tangle of Trade Secrets and Copycat Culture
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
×