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The Paris Climate Talks: Negotiating With the Atmosphere

Posted by Soulskill on from the won't-even-sit-at-the-table-with-us dept.

Lasrick writes: The Paris climate change talks are in December, but what negotiators plan to propose will only be part of non-legally-binding pledges—and they represent only what is achievable without too much difficulty. 2009's Copenhagen Accord say 114 countries agree that global temperature increases should be held below 2 degrees Celsius. "Paradoxically, an accord that should have spurred the world to immediate action instead seemed to offer some breathing room. Two degrees was meant to be a ceiling, but repeated references to an internationally agreed-upon “threshold” led many people to believe that nothing really bad could happen below 2 degrees—or worse yet, that the number itself was negotiable." Dawn Stover writes about alternatives to the meaningless numbers and endless talks: 'The very idea that the Paris conference is a negotiation is ridiculous. You can't negotiate with the atmosphere."

9 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. What is there to 'negotiate'? by fustakrakich · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Nobody cares about the climate, aside from the opportunities each disaster presents. In business, profit is the prime, if not the only, motive to be in business at all. Just make it more profitable to be clean.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:What is there to 'negotiate'? by umafuckit · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nobody cares about the climate, aside from the opportunities each disaster presents. In business, profit is the prime, if not the only, motive to be in business at all. Just make it more profitable to be clean.

      This will only happen by appropriately regulating businesses. Unfortunately our governments at best don't have balls to do it and at worst are in the pockets of the businesses they're supposed to be regulating. So instead they give us bullshit arguments about how regulation hurts our freedoms and nothing is done.

      --
      soylentnews.org
    2. Re:What is there to 'negotiate'? by Crashmarik · · Score: 1, Insightful

      This will only happen by appropriately regulating businesses.

      If anybody actually wanted to live in a state where success and failure were decided by the government, who your friends were in government we could have just not fought the cold war.

      Here's a little hint for the past 25 years "appropriate government" regulation has done nothing but increase.

      The result smaller middle class, wage stagnation, greater concentration of wealth, and greater income inequality.

      Good job

  2. Re: It doesn't matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think everyone does in fact believe it - of course belief is irrelevent when AGW is a fact.

    There is so much inertia with the World's economy and the fact that people do not want to change their lifestyles and others want an overconsumption Western lifestyle.
    The only way humanity is going to change is when there is a catastrophic climate change. When crops fail en mass. When coastal cities are flooded.

    A person is smart. People are stupid.
    So, I agree; it doesn't matter.
    I am doing what I can. Lowering one's environmental and consumptive footprint saves A LOT of money. And I feel a part of the solution instead of an entitled bald ape.

  3. Re: It doesn't matter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    You aren't doing what you can. You are using a computer and the Internet for entertainment purposes. The Internet is a huge energy sink. What a joke. You are probably some suburban dweller who has a car and a big house.

  4. Re: It doesn't matter by Ferretman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And he's right....which you seem to accept since you offered no counter arguments.

    Ferret

    --
    Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
  5. Re:Politics Feh by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And people have always complained about it and wished it didn't happen.

    Some people complain. Others have figured out that if an article doesn't interest them, they can NOT CLICK ON IT. Others, including me, think it is interesting to read about politics from a nerdy point of view.

    it's not uncommon to have 20-50 comments when there used to be 150-300.

    Slashdot is dying, but I am not sure that is because of "politics". Political stories tend to have the most comments.

  6. Why is this crap on slashdot all the time? by bhlowe · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The last thing I want to read about on a technology web site is politics and global warming nonsense. I personally am carbon negative with my solar panels and electric car. That doesn't mean I want to read about every idiot's plan to tax and spend and go technologically backwards to "fix" an already paused state of global warming. Lets keep slashdot to nerd-worthy stories...

  7. Re:The reality of the situation... by cbeaudry · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Its simple.

    They don't actually believe its a problem.
    Not many people do.
    They just follow the bandwagon, because its the IN thing to do now, and say "Oh that climate change thing, baaaaad! We should do something about it."

    No one likes being the odd one out at the table, so they lie.