Yes, yes there is, and it’s in New York City starting September 23rd. However our traditional media doesn’t expect much out will come of it. Here’s ABC News'(really the Associated Press) take on what’s likely to happen.
More than 120 world leaders convene Tuesday for a U.N. summit aimed at galvanizing political will for a new global climate treaty by the end of 2015.
Environmentalists will take to the streets Sunday in what is being billed as the largest march ever on global warming. Celebrities, CEOs and climatologists will appear at a string of events as part of New York’s annual climate week. “Titanic” star Leonardo DiCaprio will talk about what causes rising seas.
Yay! Leo, the Wolf of Wall Street DiCaprio will be leading the environmental hordes to victory over the Koch Brothers, BP, Exxon and those meanie utilities that burn nasty old coal instead of solar or wind power to generate electricity! Its sure to be a grand show on Sunday, if nothing else.
Unfortunately, the U.N. sponsored summit (not affiliated with Leo’s march to victory) is for one whole entire day, and only one day, and no serious negotiations are expected to take place. The Chinese official has already said it’s just a “political event” by which I assume he means a photo op to make it look like governmental leaders are doing something about climate change instead of virtually nothing, which the current status quo. But hey, at least the Obama administration is taking it seriously. You have John Podesta’s word on it.
“We are taking this summit seriously, both to show the world that the United States is committed to leading the fight about climate change and to call on the other leaders to step up to the plate and to raise their level of ambition to take on climate change,” John Podesta, the White House’s climate adviser, said in a conference call with reporters.
Good old John Podesta, another recycled Clinton official (he was Bill’s last Deputy Chief of Staff among other things). Oh and he once tried to get the US government to declassify all its files on UFO’s so there’s that, too. So hey, be happy people who want to save the planet, John Podesta has your back.
The human species is proving itself incapable of dealing with problems of this magnitude. We are witnessing the start of a mass extinction event yet and cannot stop it.
Its because the solution basically demands that we act contrary to the way evolution designed us. So its essentially a brutal self corrective. Its also the only event that would see me support abrogation of all human rights.
Actually I’m more inclined to applaud Podesta on his prior rather bold ufo effort (even if it was naive to think the US govt would release its alleged Above Top Secret files on that subject anytime in the foreseeable future) as opposed to the very mixed-bag Leonardo, producer and star of a silly film alleging the mafia, alone, might have been responsible for the JFK hit.
I’m even a little surprised that once he went public with that request, Podesta wasn’t completely blacklisted from future govt jobs. But maybe we’ve advanced a tad as far as talking seriously about that subject — or perhaps it’s just permitted to talk about opening up govt files as opposed to alleging actual alien visitation.
As for the environmental gathering, it probably is way too little way too late. But that doesn’t mean we can’t try to call attention to the situation and press for more official action to alleviate the global pain. I’m a pessimist about the issue, but I don’t believe in just throwing in the towel.
You undermined your case with the UFO reference, its good that he wanted all the files declassified.
Until all of the right people are able to make more money going green, we’ll keep on chugging along burning coal and oil and gas.
It’s not just fossil fuels, you know. Burning gargantuan amounts of fossil fuels is only one of many, many uncontrolled experiments we are conducting on the planet, none of which has any contingency or mitigation plan. The human population surges toward 11 billion at the end of the century and almost every one of them will consume thousands of times more resources than humans did just 150 years ago.
Even if you somehow find a way to enable the energy czars to continue to make trillions from non-fossil fuel energy you won’t solve the problem. At the rate of increase in demands for electricity if you converted all generation to solar that, too, would be such a massive change in the global solar balance that unintended consequences on a global scale would be inevitably massive.
Naomi Klein is partly right that the enemy is not fossil fuels, it’s capitalism. But it’s also fundamentalistic religion, which blocks education, encourages rapid breeding, and discounts protection of the society in favor of benefits for the few.
Capitalism is pretty much the root problem of humanity.
Fossil fuels are just a visible symptom of it.
Capitalism tends to preserve wealth as it by definition allows capital to accrue to individuals. This creates a continual status quo that is hard to break, because breaking it would also break capitalism (and vice versa).
It’s unfortunate that we’ve allowed the oligarchs who own and operate our planet to pretend like history should end and we should just continue what we’ve been doing. Technology continues, and yet progress has virtually halted, at least in terms of economics. And the Republican party wants to go regressive, which is disgusting.
People won’t be consuming energy like today if we follow trends. Ever heard of Peak Oil?
It’ll be business as usual, because Profit.
I don’t feel good enough to get in depth with this and don’t know how to do HTML. Cynicism gets us nowhere. The UN meeting is a prelude to the Paris meeting in 2015. Pres Obama is doing what he can w/o congress on climate change and there are a lot of groups/countries working with him and making commitments before the Tues UN meeting. I give you just one example of many. If I feel good tomorrow I might try my hand at a diary, but it would probably look like crap if I don’t know how to use html.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/nyregion/new-york-city-plans-major-energy-efficiency-improvements-
in-its-buildings.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes In Overhaul, New York Vows to Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Its Buildings
“….In a sweeping effort to reduce its environmental impact, New York City is planning to overhaul the energy-efficiency standards of all its public buildings and to pressure private landlords to make similar improvements.
The initiative is part of a pledge, to be announced before the start of the United Nations Climate Summit on Tuesday , to decrease greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 from 2005 levels. The United Nations has pointed to that rate of decrease as a desired target for developed countries to mitigate the effects of climate change.
New York would become the largest city in the world to make the commitment, according to the city’s leaders….”
If you can generate a comment (and you just did) you can do a diary. They’re really very similar. The HTML is not important until you’re ready to add enhancements like blockquotes, images, links, etc. Here’s a blockquote:
Here’s an HTML primer for you from back in the dawn of BooMan Tribune when you’re ready.
Why not give it a try? Obviously the need for diarists is great right now while BooMan is away.