October 4, 2010
Last Call for Climate Talks in Tianjin
Today is the first day of the interim talks for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Tianjin, China. This meeting is the last opportunity for negotiations before the official UNFCCC summit in Cancun from November 29 through December 10th 2010.
If you recall, last year’s climate change summit in Copenhagen was nothing short of a disaster, and we have seen little to show that world leaders are going to be much different this time around.
With regards to the marine environment, we’ve seen how climate change leads to ocean acidification and jellyfish invasions. We’ve seen how our dependence on oil has led to devastating oil spills like in the Gulf of Mexico, and Nigeria (where the catastrophic impact of an oil spill far outweighs that of the Deep Water Horizon disaster). We’ve seen how melting ice in Alaska has forced thousands of walruses onto shore.
We aren’t sure what we’ll be hearing over the next 5 days, but we certainly hope that governments begin to understand that there isn’t time to ignore scientific advice. The time for action is now.