COP18—Doha Climate Conference — Global Issues

By Creavibe

September 19, 2025

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by Anup Shah
This web page Created Sunday, December 02, 2012

This web page: https://www.globalissues.org/article/801/cop18-doha-climate-conference.
To print all info (e.g. expanded aspect notes, exhibits various hyperlinks), use the print model:

Introduction

November 26 – December 7, 2012, Doha, Qatar is the venue for the 18th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference, also referred to as the 18th Conference of the Parties — or COP 18.

Predictably and sadly, the identical points complained about at earlier annual conferences for the previous decade proceed to recycle themselves:

Lack of high quality (if any) media protection
West stalling on doing something
Lack of funding
Disagreement on the way to tackle it
and so on.

As the previous 20 years have proven making an attempt to get world settlement on tackling local weather change appears to be futile. By comparability, extra targeted and restricted curiosity of elites, nevertheless, are simpler to push via, corresponding to wars based mostly on geopolitical threats (actual and imaginary), or financial crises (the place banks and different elites most liable for the crises are bailed out by odd residents).

Furthermore, because the West has usually proven up to now decade or extra (even when their economies have been doing good) paying now for one thing that appears to be an issue sooner or later is difficult to just accept. It is simpler, due to this fact, to stall and preserve blaming China, India and different rising nations regardless of the historic inequality of these emissions. But ignoring that makes it simpler to hope these rising nations will decide up the burden of addressing emissions rises.

A abstract from the Malaysian-based improvement group, Third World Network, notes that when once more there are disagreements on the way to proceed with primary points of those local weather discussions corresponding to the way to agree on the following spherical of emission reductions:

Developing international locations need the Doha talks to provide elevated ambition in emission reductions for the second dedication interval (CP2) whereas developed international locations appear set to take care of their at the moment weak targets, with uncertainty over the long run evaluate of these targets.

Developing international locations are additionally insisting that the [new reduction targets] be established in a ratifiable legally binding modification of [the Kyoto Protocol], that comprises the quantified emission limitation or discount aims (QELROs) of every developed nation Party.

Many growing international locations additionally desire a authorized provision for provisional software of the QELROs from 1 January 2013 that developed international locations don’t assist.

According to a number of growing nation delegates, with out provisional software on a authorized foundation, the discount commitments can be rendered voluntary.

Chee Yoke Ling, Kyoto Protocol second dedication interval nonetheless mired in variations , Third World Network, November 28, 2012

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Generally talking, media protection of local weather change points and these conferences has been a blended bag over the previous decade. More current years has seen elevated curiosity and protection (although many vital points are glossed over in mainstream media sound-byte type reporting).

When I wrote an identical web page a couple of yr in the past concerning the earlier convention, COP 17, I famous that (as with many earlier conferences), I described mainstream media protection as pathetic and nearly non-existent till the very previous few moments.

I added that in actuality cash speaks and so brief time period and elite/institution views are likely to prevail, which is why governments can so rapidly get the 99% to bail out the banks and the highest 1% with many trillions of {dollars}, whereas discovering billions for combating much more devastating local weather change has taken nearly 2 a long time to this point with none convincing outcomes.

It looks like that would be the case once more this yr. As of writing, it’s half manner via the convention and scanning mainstream media headlines within the UK, I see no protection of the convention (at the least not as main information headlines). It could be very attainable I’ve missed it, however one would hope {that a} convention of such significance wouldn’t require a lot detailed have a look at mainstream media information headlines to seek out protection of it.

Indeed, this comes at a time when the British press is going through threats of regulation following scandals about journalist practices by some tabloid papers. Ironically, the British press now fears regulation will hinder their free speech (a professional fear). But what free speech are they combating for? For extra slim protection and tabloid headlines?

It is value quoting once more an article from Media Lens a couple of yr in the past on the poor media high quality protection lately.

Media curiosity within the topic has crashed. Dr. Robert J. Brulle of Drexel University describes a collapse of any important protection of local weather change within the [US] media. We know that 2010 was a report low yr, and 2011 will most likely look a lot the identical. If the media doesn’t draw consideration to the difficulty, public opinion will decline.

…

Equally disturbing is the variation in media efficiency throughout the globe. A large-ranging Reuters examine on the prevalence of local weather skepticism on this planet’s media — Poles Apart — The worldwide reporting of local weather skepticism – targeted on newspapers in Brazil, China, France, India, the UK and the USA. The durations studied have been February to April 2007 and mid-November 2009 to mid-February 2010 (a interval that included the UN local weather change summit in Copenhagen and Climategate). Remarkably, the examine concluded that local weather skepticism is predominantly an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon, discovered most incessantly in US and British newspapers.

…

And so we discover that Britain and the US — the 2 international locations responding most aggressively to alleged threats to human safety in international locations like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya — are additionally the 2 international locations least occupied with responding to the very actual menace of local weather change.

Climate Crisis – The Collapse In Corporate Media Coverage
, Media Lens, December 1, 2011

It can be value studying the media part of the earlier convention to see extra about media protection.

President Obama was not too long ago re-elected as President of the United States. It isn’t clear how a lot affect the devastating affect of Hurricane Sandy had on local weather change insurance policies (and it might even be too early to inform), however many actually felt that within the days main as much as the election it might have been an element. Perhaps, importantly, for the primary time, local weather denial could develop into a political legal responsibility within the US, and it stays to be seen how a lot the Republicans will hamper Obama’s local weather insurance policies.

The extra excessive information group within the US, Fox News, was discovered to to have 93% of their local weather reporting as deceptive. And this channel is a main channel for Republican leaning viewers. This can be regardless of guarantees by Murdoch a few years in the past to enhance local weather change reporting. But it’s not simply Fox News, though not media shops themselves many different influential firms have been actively supporting misrepresentation of the science round local weather change, undermining the US public’s understanding of scientific consensus round local weather change.

Numerous current experiences are discovering that local weather scientists, removed from being alarmist and scaremongering, have considerably underestimated the pace at which local weather change impacts corresponding to excessive climate and rising sea ranges will occur and that many circumstances match their higher estimates moderately than any median or better-scenario estimates.

For instance, the convention comes on the finish of a yr that noticed report Arctic sea ice melting, a number of world climate and local weather extremes, and excessive temperatures.

For years international locations have anxious that funding for adaptation and mitigation isn’t inexpensive (wealthy and poor nations alike) and but, as time goes on, adaptation and mitigation prices might be even larger.

Even the World Bank has chimed in noting that

Coal, oil and fuel corporations and their backers within the monetary and funding trade should cease placing billions of {dollars} into discovering and extracting new sources of fossil fuels. If they do not shift their investments, temperatures will soar 4 to 10 levels C larger, devastating many elements of the world, the World Bank mentioned Monday.

Stephen Leahy, Planet on Path to Four C Warming, World Bank Warns, Inter Press Service, November 19, 2012

Despite years of this, issues don’t appear to vary a lot. Perhaps it’s as a result of there isn’t an emotional attachment to the difficulty; it’s distant, imprecise, complicated. However, as David Robert notes,

Climate change isn’t solely the financial and ecological disaster of our time, it’s additionally an ethical disaster. What we’re doing to our descendants is an ethical crime. Finding methods to assist individuals get that, really feel it of their guts the best way they’d if somebody threatened their very own households, is a precondition for severe, sustained motion.

David Roberts, Why local weather change doesn’t spark ethical outrage, and the way it might, Grist, July 27, 2012

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