Reflections on the Failed US Media Coverage of COP 21 in Paris

Donald A.  Brown

The US mainstream media coverage of the UNFCCC COP 21 in Paris missed some of the most important issues that US citizens need to understand to evaluate the US governments response to climate change.

Although there has been ample coverage of President Obama’s appearance at the beginning of the Paris COP and abundant coverage of a few issues such as the fact that national commitments on ghg emissions reductions are not likely sufficient to limit warming to 2⁰ C, there has been only sketchy coverage at best of the following issues:

• The enormity and urgency of global green house gas (ghg) emissions reductions that are needed to limit warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees C. Only when citizens fully understand the limited carbon budget that remains to be distributed among all the nations of the world if the international community is going to retain hope of limiting warming to non-dangerous levels can they understand why all nations must increase their ambition in reducing ghg emissions to their fair share  of safe global emissions.
• The evidence that 1.5 degrees C should be the warming limit for the world that all nations should seek to achieve rather than 2 degrees C. To the extent that the press has covered the controversy between setting a global warming limit at 2 degrees C or 1.5 degrees C. the press has left the impression as if this is simply a choice for the international community without explaining the enormous danger for many poor developing countries that turns on this choice. Unless citizens understand how some countries are put at much greater risk if the warming limit remains at 2 degrees C they cannot clearly reflect on their moral responsibility to act to limit warming to lower amounts.
• The implications of taking equity and justice seriously in allocating national ghg emissions reduction targets for the United States including the fact that if the United States would take its equitable obligations seriously it would not only have to reduce its carbon emissions to zero by 2050, it would have to financially contribute to the costs of emissions reductions in developing countries.
• The damage to the world from an almost 30 year US delay in taking serious steps to reduce the threat of climate change including the enormity of global ghg emissions reductions that are now necessary compared to the reductions that would have been necessary if the United States and the world acted more forcefully a decade ago or so earlier.
• The ethical and legal reasonableness of requiring high-emitting nations including the United States to financially contribute to the costs of adaptation, losses, and damages in poor, vulnerable nations that have done little to cause the threat of climate change.
• The enormity of growing costs for needed adaptation, loses, and damages in poor developing countries. Without a clear understanding of how adaptation and loses and damages costs increase dramatically as delays continue in making adequate dramatic ghg emissions reductions, citizens cannot evaluate the need of their nations to act rapidly to reduce ghg emissions.
• The failure of  developed countries to meet their obligations to help poor vulnerable nations meet clear adaptation needs.
• Why the commitment on reducing ghg emissions by the Obama administration, despite it being a welcome change from prior US responses to climate change, is still woefully inadequate.
• The utter ethical and moral bankruptcy of the positions of opponents of climate change policies in the United States that are being presented in opposition to the Paris negotiations.

Donald A. Brown is scholar In residence and professor at the Widener University Commonwealth Law School

Republished with author’s permission from Ethics and Climate blog.

Feature Photo:  OurVoices/Flickr photos/Creative Commons attribute