My Dear Friends:
Delivering for people and the planet (Really!?)
From 6 to 18 November, Heads of State, ministers, and negotiators, along with climate activists, mayors, civil society representatives and CEOs are meeting in the Egyptian coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh for the largest annual gathering on climate action.
The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – COP27 – "builds on the outcomes of COP26 to deliver action on an array of issues critical to tackling the climate emergency" – from urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions, building resilience, and adapting to the inevitable impacts of climate change, to delivering on the commitments to finance climate action in developing countries... excerpted from United Nation, Climate "Action:" COP27
Below is my poem about COP26 and its "outcomes:"
America is back, our president was here
The President's gas-guzzling 20-car motorcade wound through the streets of Glasgow for the summit. When the motorcade arrived under the media spotlight, a giant WWII-style Climate Siren blasted in the morning chill, opposite the grandiose entrance.
The president opened his speech by launching an attack against the Chinese leader for not attending the summit. One day later, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson hit back with a video clip; in it, the President's aide had to wake him up several times as he dozed off at the conference. Eventually, the two biggest polluters called a truce by agreeing to hold a bilateral talk annually, which will start next year. The agreement was reached one day before the end of the summit.
Five days after signing the climate action pledge, the earth-shaking news --"US auctions off the largest oil and gas drilling leases in its history" -- hit the headlines across the globe this cold, windy morning.
caw-caw-caw of crows
on the White House roof ...
climate talk briefing
Failed Haiku, 7:75, March 2022
FYI: Al Jazeera, Nov. 9, 2021: Climate activists decry ‘false solutions, fairy tales’ at COP26: While corporations promote carbon trading, critics say it is just a scheme to keep profiting from burning dirty energy sources.
(For my poetic responses to COP26, see my "Special Feature" post, "Haiku and Tanka Selected for the COP26 Summit)
Pissed off by these empty talks at the COP26, I decided to start a new, one-year writing project, titled No More Fairy Tales, to challenge these "talks and solutions" presented at the COP27.
Here are first three entries:
No More Fairy Tales, I
raven shadow
after raven shadow ...
COP27
FYI: The Wall Street Journal: Nov.6 : "COP27 Summit Begins as Economy, Ukraine War ...Overshadow Climate Concerns:" Progress has stalled since last year’s U.N. gathering...
The latest news released one hour ago: The Guardian, Nov.6 : "Cop27 gets off to delayed start after tussle over agenda for talks:" Contentious opening to UN climate conference as delegates struggle to reach agreement on discussion of loss and damage.
Reuters, Nov. 7: "At COP27, climate change framed as battle for survival"
"Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres told delegates, urging them to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels and speed funding to poorer countries struggling under climate impacts that have already occurred.
And ABC News In-Depth, Nov. 3: Climate Change Activist Greta Thunberg says UN Climate Change Conference is a "scam"
(The following senryu was inspired by Greta Thunberg's response to the "outcomes/solutions" of COP26
climate change debate
I swear I'll go net zero
on swearing
tsuri-dōrō ,10 , July/August 2022)
No More Fairy Tales, II
smoke
rising
c r o w s and of
of falling
murder plumes
a
No More Fairy Tales, III
written to this "ridiculously photogenic" Talker, Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, the fourth most polluting country per capita in 2022, a country of gas-guzzling car enthusiasts.
COP 1, 2, 3 ...
these endless climate talks
like crows' caw-caw-caw --
between Canada's plan and action
this Nunavut-sized gap
FYI: Top 5 most polluting countries per capita in 2022: Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Canada, and the United States of America. And Latest Canada’s Changing Climate Report, 2019
Canada is warming on average at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world, a new scientific report indicates...Canada's Arctic has seen the deepest impact and will continue to warm at more than double the global rate.
And The Tyee, May 23, 2019: Canada’s Cars Are World’s Worst Gas Guzzlers
A recent report by the International Energy Agency shows that Canada’s vehicles have the highest average fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions per kilometre driven. They are also the largest and the second heaviest in the world...
And CBC News, Nov. 14: Canada gets low marks for its efforts to tackle climate change in the new Climate Change Performance Index presented at COP27, scoring 58th out of 63 countries evaluated.
But the federal government says they’re starting to make changes to improve the country’s standing.
And CBC News, Nov. 16: The Arctic community, Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, Canada, falling into the ocean
The Arctic hamlet of Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., is collapsing into the ocean as it loses up to a metre of coastline each year. The people who live there are in a race against time to preserve their way of life — and their community — before it is washed away.
Powerful storm waves and thawing permafrost causing erosion are collapsing Tuk’s coastline by about one metre each year.
The hamlet of about 1,000 people, mostly Inuvialuit, are in a race against time to preserve their way of life — and their community — before it is washed away.
In about 50 years time, “the health care centre, the college and even half of the cemetery will be gone,” said Whalen, unless there’s physical intervention.
No More Fairy Tales, IV
written in response to [the "most powerful] Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin"'s critique of President Joe Biden's "end-of-coal remark" [not a plan]:
this cold night
a total lunar eclipse ...
toward the lamppost
the coal lobbyist's shadow
passing over a street teen
FYI: Insider, Nov. 7: "Biden says coal plants will be replaced by cheaper solar and wind power."
These comments drew criticism not only from Republicans, but from [the "most powerful] Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin" of West Virginia [49th place for average family income and 46th for percentage of families in poverty]. The senator, whose state still generates roughly 90% of its electricity from coal, called the president's comments "outrageous and divorced from reality."
"President Biden's comments are not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs"
Divorced from reality, Indeed! This is America, the second most polluting country in the world.
The former head of the Environmental Protection Agency was Andrew R. Wheeler, the most influential coal lobbyist (For more, see Public Citizen, July 12, 2018:The Coal Lobbyist Now Running the Environmental Protection Agency)
No More Fairy Tales, V
in the twilight chill
a sperm whale motionless
on the rocky shore
inside its stomach a knee-high
mound of fishing nets
FY: According to the Marine Animal Response Society's executive director, Tonya Wimmer, it is easy for sperm whales to ingest trash because “they use their mouths like a vacuum” while feeding. And thecloser inspection shows it died a slow, painful death caused by eating “garbage.” For more, see Miami Herald, Nov. 21: "Upsetting" discovery made in belly of whale on Nova Scotia beach, researchers say.
No More Fairy Tales, VI
for Greta Thunberg
tongues of forest fires
there's no Plan[et] B, the rest
blah, blah, blah ...
FYI: The New Yorker, Nov.21, 2022: Climate Change from A to Z
It was thirty years ago that the world’s “so-called leaders” gathered in Rio de Janeiro for the so-called Earth Summit. Everyone agreed that radical change was needed. To avert disaster, global CO2 emissions, which were then running at around twenty-two billion metric tons a year, would have to be reduced, eventually almost to zero...A follow-up conference of the parties, or cop, took place in Kyoto in 1997. By then, annual global emissions had risen to twenty-four billion tons....By 2015, emissions had increased to thirty-five billion tons a year. At that year’s cop—No. 21—held in Paris, it was decided that, at last, really and truly, it was time to get serious...
this year’s, in Sharm el-Sheikh, just concluded—and to speak loftily about “net zero” and “a low-carbon economy.” But nothing will change, and, as a result, everything will change...
To be continued ...
No comments:
Post a Comment