The climate is in the news. Yes, it has been since the water dried up in California and the tide began washing the streets of Miami. But now even more, as countries from around the world are converging on Paris to worry about it, some 4o,ooo strong.
The conference is called COP21, for Conference of Parties, and this is the twenty-first meeting. They started in 1995 and this conference will have 195 nations participate. The conference objective is to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on climate, from all the nations of the world.
In case you want to know, the United States and China are the two nations which send the most green-house gases into the air.
Not important to the Santa Fe? OK, stop here. Rather than try to explain and make excuses, we will simply continue.
Two articles appeared recently in the Gainesville Sun regarding this topic. One Sun. Nov. 29, by Susan Nugent, “Be Part of the Solution on Climate Change,” and another Nov.30, by Sylvie Corbet, Karl Ritter and Seth Borenstein, of the Associated Press, “Billions Pledged to Clean Energy,” but the link is elsewhere to the New York Times.
Although past world climate conferences have fallen short of most expectations, optimism is running higher at this one because, for the first time, each nation is submitting its own plan for reducing carbon contamination.
Secondly, motivation is higher this year because nations are seeing that extreme climate fluctuations and issues are costing so much money, that even the most dense naysayers are now realizing that climate change us real. The admission, the realization has been slow and gut-wrenching for some, but when property owners find they can no longer get insurance on their homes, and no water comes out of the well, people take notice.
Leaders in the move to cleaner energy are France, U.S.A., India, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada and Norway, who are reportedly ready to pledge to double their investment on low nor no-carbon energy. We will hear more soon.
Just testing the comment system…