Cara Augustenborg
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The day the world turned upside down at the UN Climate Summit: COP22 meets the U.S. presidential election. 

11/9/2016

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The COP22 globe in Marrkesh following US Presidential elections.
While heartbroken for America and the horrible presidential election that so many endured, I wasn’t surprised by the outcome. The same forces at play in Brexit and in the rise of the extreme right in other parts of Europe have been playing out in the USA for a while too and that all feeds into the ISIL agenda swimmingly. I saw the writing on the wall back in July when I read this apocalyptic blog by Tobias Stone: ‘History tells us what may happen next with Brexit & Trump’.
I half-joked with colleagues over the past few months that if Trump won the presidential election, I would move my career from climate education and activism to apocalypse preparation. It’s always been a closeted interest of mine and I would probably fair a lot better financially with such a career move. Now, here I am, sitting in the United Nations 22nd climate negotiations (COP22) in Marrakesh and the optimist in me isn’t quite ready to throw in the towel. 
Maybe it’s a blessing that I am surrounded by over 20,000 people working in climate as the news comes in that America has elected a denialist whose plan for his first 100-days includes pulling out of all UN climate agreements and climate funding commitments. Today, we encourage each other to stay focused on the important work at hand. Many of the younger attendees give each other long consolatory hugs in the hallways, reminding me of how I reacted in my early twenties when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore. I thought it was the end of the world at the time. -Similarly, that outcome had grave implications for our climate. 
At a Demand Climate Justice press conference this morning in the COP, 18-year-old Asian-American Becky Chung of SustainUS spoke impassionedly about her first voting experience and how disenfranchised she felt by the outcome, but her optimism stole the show as she explained to wild applause “Donald Trump is not as powerful a man as he thinks he is” and called for more engagement on the ground in implementing climate solutions.  
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Demand Climate Justice briefing at COP22 Nov. 9, 2016. Watch here: http://unfccc.cloud.streamworld.de/webcast/friends-of-the-earth-international
Generally, the opinion from COP today is, while the election outcome makes it more difficult for the U.S. to act on the Paris Agreement’s goals, we have been here before and the rest of the world continued to progress climate action despite U.S obfuscation. I’m expecting Barrack Obama to arrive at any moment and shout “Yes We Can” to keep advancing this important work.  

​Delegates from the U.S.A. console us that over 75% of Americans now accept the climate science and are still keen to act and that even Republican politicians are moving toward climate action in response to constituents' demands. Local and city-level action on climate in the USA is stronger than ever before: California just banned fracking and Florida rejected an amendment enabling utilities to charge them fees for producing their own household solar power, just to name two good news stories overshadowed by the national result.

​Delegates from other high emitting countries, such as China, remind us that a tipping point has already been reached on climate action and that their countries are already beginning the transformation. The astonishing speed in which the Paris Climate Agreement went into force is offered as proof of that commitment. They argue no one man, especially not Donald Trump, can turn back the tide. 
Countries and communities no longer want to depend on dirty energy systems and all the negative societal impacts that come with them and will continue to move toward cleaner renewable energy for many reasons beyond climate change. 
Abraham Lincoln said America will never be destroyed from the outside, and if it falters, it will be because it destroyed itself. While America may have chosen a new president today, it still has a choice to make on whether to join the global clean energy revolution or stay behind in its Industrial past addicted to fossil fuel and a linear economy, destroying itself from within. Today at COP22, the evidence suggests the world will keep going in its transformation to a fossil fuel free future with or without the United States of America. Hopefully, the land of opportunity is still forward thinking enough to join us. 
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Cara Augustenborg at COP22 in Marrakesh, Nov. 8 2016
Today, there’s no reason not to keep fighting the good fight.
-Cara


​Stay tuned for more updates from COP22 this week on Twitter at @CAugustenborg 
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Was it all just a dream? Waking up as the Paris Climate Agreement comes into force.

11/4/2016

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It’s hard to believe it’s been almost a year since I heard French President Laurent Fabius pound the gavel on December 12, 2015 declaring the Paris Climate Agreement was adopted. 
At the time, I was overwhelmed by the emotion surrounding me in the United Nations’ Paris Climate Summit (COP21) and unsure how I felt about the Agreement personally, knowing that, while historic in nature, the ambition of the Agreement was completely detached from the scientific reality of our rapidly changing climate.
Watch EcoEye's synopsis of COP21 with an appearance from yours truly. 
Today, the Paris Climate Agreement officially comes into force, but much has changed in the world since it was adopted last year. We’ve undergone the shock of Brexit; the most disturbing U.S. Presidential election the world has ever endured; The worsening of the European migrant crisis and subsequent refugee camp destruction starting with Calais; The near annihilation of Mosul and Aleppo; More terrorist attacks on European soils and embarrassing Burkini bans in reaction; A US gun crisis so out of hand even toddlers are contributing to more than one shooting a week; And the provisional acceptance of the first of several global trade agreements (in the form of CETA) that make corporations more powerful than ever before. 

A year of climate drama

In climate and weather, this year our atmosphere was locked in to exceeding 400 parts per million of carbon dioxide through our great grandchildren’s lifetimes; The Global South suffered large crop failures and disease outbreaks due to strongest El Nino since 1997; We witnessed the deadliest Atlantic hurricane season since 2005 and stronger typhoons across the East; Satellites observed the second smallest arctic sea ice extent on record; Greenland experienced its earliest melt event on record; Ethiopia suffered its worst drought in 50 years; and Fort McMurray endured the worst fire in Canadian history. 

​On a more positive note, at least we’ve recently seen an effort by the aviation industry to address their significant greenhouse gas emissions and a global agreement to phase out harmful HFCs , buying us a little bit more time and less warming.

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Standing Rock protest. Photo credit: The New Yorker
In North Dakota, another disenfranchised culture faces harsh consequences as they stand up for their right to stop an oil pipeline from crossing their land. Even those who report on the protest at Standing Rock have been shot at by police and issued arrest warrants. 
We might expect such journalistic censorship and hindrance of civil liberties in places like Turkey, but I naively thought America was better than this, particularly after the lessons learned from the Keystone XL and Shell Kayaktivist protests. 
It seems the world’s ordinary citizens are more willing to uphold our commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement and #KeepItInTheGround than many of our political leaders. Soon after the Paris Agreement was approved, Canada’s once-impressive Justin Trudeau urged Leonardo DiCaprio to tone down criticism of Canadian oil and gas sector and (along with EU Council President Donald Tusk) was determined to realize CETA, thus preventing EU and Canadian governments from preferentially selecting renewable energy options over fossil fuels; Climate advocate Barrack Obama says he’ll consider re-routing the Dakota Access Pipeline rather than cancel it altogether; and the U.K. just approved a third runway at Heathrow to encouraging the 15% of the world’s population who are prone to committing the worst of our “climate sins” to fly even more. 
Nearly one year after attending the UN Climate Summit in Paris, I feel a bit like Dorothy waking up from her trip to Oz arguing: 
“But it wasn’t a dream, it was a place and you and you and you...and you were there.” ​
Maybe the Paris Climate Summit I remember was all just a dream because the politicians who were there don’t seem remember it the way I do.  ​
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Scene from the Wizard of Oz

There's no place like home

Back in Ireland, we experienced a major shake-up in our national political foundations this year with the first election in history in which one of our two major political parties didn’t win a majority. What could have been an opportunity for real change and an end to civil war politics created political stagnation. Inevitably, our so-called Independent ministers  became Fine Gael-light to maintain their illustrious positions and keep the government from falling.
​
In the last year, we’ve watched the Irish government: 
  • Contest the 13 billion Euro the EU declared Ireland was owed by Apple
  • Return to Celtic Tiger housing policies, encouraging more urban sprawl and inflationary prices and ignoring the quarter of a million vacant properties in Ireland that could be put to better use.
  • Fail to uphold their promise to bring 4,000 refugees to Ireland. They’ve brought 311 refugees into the country since that promise was made two years ago and still haven’t reformed our direct provision system, so those that do arrive in Ireland are treated like prisoners in the ‘land of a thousand welcomes’.
  • And give themselves a EUR 5,000 wage restoration for their efforts…
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that our bus drivers, LUAS driver, teachers, police and doctors are all now threatening or undergoing strike action.

When I returned from the UN Climate Summit in Paris last year, my colleagues and I were inundated with requests to speak. The immense public interest in post-Paris briefings gave me hope that COP21 was a turning point for climate action in Ireland. ​
Coincidentally, Ireland experienced some of the midlands’ worst flood damage on record during the Paris conference, and there wasn’t a minister in the country that didn’t stand beside flood waters expressing concern for victims and declaring we could expect more of this due to climate change. In my mind, we were finally change ready.
Since Ireland agreed to the aims of the UN Climate Agreement, here are some of the things that have happened in the country with respect to climate action:
​Ireland's politicians beside flood waters in winter 2015-2016 to express their concern. 
  • Our EPA reported Ireland will fail to reach our 2020 EU emission reduction targets, with the transport sector alone projected to increase emissions between 13-19% between now and 2020
  • Our Minister for Transport, Shane Ross, ignores the worst congestion on our largest motorway to date, failing to allocate any further money to sustainable transport in spite of the largest cycling protest in over a decade (which he also ignored).
  • The IIEA reported Ireland faces a EUR 5.5 billion fine for failing to meet our 2030 targets. (Pity we sent back that #AppleTax)
  • Several of our Ministers travelled to Brussels to water down our EU climate targets to such a point that we now have an incentive to increase emissions between now and 2018
  • We increased the purchase of dirty coal for our power stations from 2014. 
  • This week, Minister Naughten told us there’s no room for a solar energy revolution in Ireland and Minister Kyne advocated for the continued prostitution of Ireland’s offshore hydrocarbon reserves.  
  • And we still have no national strategy to address climate change since the last one expired in 2012. 
The most progressive thing the Irish government has done for climate action since the Paris Summit was to include those words in the title of Minister Naughten’s Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, and (through heroic efforts by civil society) to unanimously support a Bill to ban fracking in Ireland. While it was a huge relief to have a fracking ban on the same day Ireland ratified the Paris Climate Agreement, banning something that doesn’t even exist in Ireland yet does nothing toward reducing our existing greenhouse gas emissions.
​
On the ground, I’ve observed a shift in how people talk about climate change since the Paris Climate Summit. At least the Paris Agreement fostered a global acceptance of the problem which paved the way for real work to begin. I still believe the people of Ireland are game for transformation because our systems are broken on so many levels and sustainable solutions could help in so many ways, but most of our politicians are slow to catch up and love their status quo.

The dreams you dare to dream...

Maybe I should have thrown in the towel by now given the bleak state of affairs regarding Ireland’s record on climate action, but (at least until the U.S. finds itself with a President Trump) I still believe in “the sandwich method” -squeezing the political meat and cheese in between pressure from bottom-up climate activism and top-down goals from the United Nations and the EU.

​That’s why I’m on my way to COP22 in Marrakesh. -Paris’ COP21 may have been historic, but COP22 is all about action, which makes it even more significant than the dream that was Paris. To stay with my Wizard of Oz analogy, for now, I'm still on the yellow brick road hoping to find out that Paris wasn't just a dream and we're really headed toward a world of emerald green cities. Marrakesh is where our negotiators will have to show their cards. 
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Following a week of top-down influencing with the Friends of the Earth International delegation at COP22, I return to Ireland just in time for some bottom-up action as part of Stop Climate Chaos’ mass lobby of TDs on November 15th. 
Their last mass lobby event was enormously successful and an efficient way to convey to our political representatives that they need to do far more on climate if they want our support. If there’s only one thing you do to act on climate this year, this could make the most impact to demanding system change over climate change. ​
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Stay tuned for my updates from the “Action COP” this week and keep fighting the good fight!

-Cara
​
  • To participate in Stop Climate Chaos Ireland’s mass lobby of TDs, join here.
  • For live updates from COP22 beginning Monday, Nov 7 follow me on Twitter and Facebook. 

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