Climate displacement: an identity issue

By Aura Silva Martinez Climate change disasters displace millions of people each year. This is a present reality affecting multiple communities around the world. Despite having the very emblematic figure of the small island states in the Pacific, who are among the most impacted and vulnerable in respects to the effects of climate change, the definition of climate refugees is still at a very...

How the Paris Agreement FCCC’ed Us Over

by Aneesa Khan To be in a room for seven whole hours is arduous in itself. However, for that room to be one filled with painfully complacent idiots, the overpowering smell of corporate power, and sickeningly thundering applause? Well, that can only be described as torturous. Feelings along the lines of delirious levels of fury, profound misery and a fairly good amount of second-hand embarrassment...

Oil, Gas and Coal, Back Up, Back Up!

by Makiko Yoshida What the Paris Agreement has Failed to Achieve After four years of negotiations, the Paris Agreement was adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on December 12th. There are many reasons why many of us do not think that this agreement is sufficient to what the world needs despite what many media outlets have been reporting. Following the...

Lost and damaged: International politics playing with our lives.

By Kendall Cook I found myself walking through the bourgeois neighborhood Saint-Germain, an ornate path to a prestigious institution where I was meeting an elite group of Loss and Damage experts.  There were about twenty to twenty five people in the room, all professionals over the age of thirty, half of which were sustainable development directors of various NGOs, the other, self-involved...

Climate Chaos and the Externalities of Americanism

“The American way of life is not up for negotiations. Period.”   ~Pres. George W. Bush “To accept your rewriting of the Convention is to accept the destruction of our societies.”       ~The delegation of Malaysia to the UNFCCC, COP21 The Negotiator as Mythmaker American climate negotiators are the guardians of a precious, ridiculous, and destructive ideal. Therefore they must be at...