The EcoAction Committee of the Green Party of the US held a webinar on the Climate COP in Brazil on Monday, November 10.

It’s been a decade since the Paris Agreement, when UNFCCC Parties set a goal of keeping average warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Since then, we’ve had the hottest 10 years in human history. Around the world, blistering heatwaves, raging wildfires and catastrophic storms and floods have been devastating lives, economies and ecosystems. The UN Secretary-General recently admitted that overshooting the 1.5°C goal is “inevitable” and that it’s “absolutely indispensable to change course”. COP30 could be the last chance to do that.

COP30 is being held in Belem, in the Brazilian Amazon – so it’s the perfect opportunity to ramp up action to end deforestation, a critical component of tackling the climate crisis. Many countries, including Brazil, committed to ending deforestation by 2030 at COP26 in Glasgow, but so far progress has been slow.  Hosting COP in the world’s most important biodiversity hotspot is also a critical opportunity to align action on climate and nature.

We have invited the Global Greens to provide a speaker. We also expect a speaker for the campaign for the Fossil Fuel Treaty campaign who will be speaking to us from Belem. To protect people from the threat fossil fuels pose to our climate, our health and our future, a growing bloc of 17 countries are seeking a negotiating mandate for a Fossil Fuel Treaty. The proposed treaty would complement the Paris Agreement by providing the global roadmap needed to halt the expansion of fossil fuel, manage an equitable phase-out of coal, oil and gas, and lay the foundations for a true just energy transition in which no worker, community or country is left behind.

Also joining us from Brazil would be Holly Kaufman from the Plastics and Climate Project. She writes: “I am writing to share the Plastics & Climate Project's recommendations for how to include the uncounted climate impacts of plastics in the UN climate regime. We are hoping that delegations call for these recommendations at COP-30 in Belem so that they are included in the final COP decision. Plastics and the petrochemicals in them emit more greenhouse gases than are currently accounted for. If the plastics industry were a country, it would be the 4th largest emitter, after China, the US, and India. These emissions are not included in climate models, emissions scenarios or otherwise counted, nor are the impacts to carbon sequestration, and the potential impacts to the Earth's radiation budget. With the fossil fuel industry planning to greatly expand plastic and petrochemical production - tripling it by 2060, it is critical that we make the link between plastics and climate change, and account for all of plastic's climate impacts.” 

RSVP.

EcoAction Committee of the Green Party of the US
https://www.gp.org/ecoaction_committee | https://www.facebook.com/GPEcoAction/