Civil litigation/class actions: defense.Product liability, mass tort and class action - plaintiff Product liability, mass tort and class action - defense: toxic tort Product liability, mass tort and class action - defense: pharmaceuticals and medical devices Product liability, mass tort and class action - defense: consumer products (including tobacco) Product liability, mass tort and class action - defense: automotive/transport Even though most of these countries have low coal use, this is the correct signal: Coal is the fuel of the past, renewables are the future.Appellate: courts of appeals / Appellate: supreme courts (states and federal)Ĭorporate investigations and white-collar criminal defense One such concrete step is the pledge of 20 nations toward a phase-out of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel. Coalition talks following the federal elections in September have been going on for weeks.Īt the climate conference, I kept hearing people say: Enough vague goals, we need concrete steps. In her speech at COP23, German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged the need for a coal exit - even though Germany is in a tricky situation on that since there's still no government. Brown coal from Hambach makes up the single largest CO2 emissions source in Europe. On the Saturday before the summit started, up to 25,000 people marched in Bonn, demanding an end to the use of coal - particularly in Germany, where it makes up almost half of the energy mix.Īctivists also briefly shut down the Hambach coal mine, only 50 kilometers (31 miles) away from Bonn, to send a signal. That's compensation for the irreparable, most destructive impacts of climate change, which developing countries had sought.Ĭlimate finance: It's about the money needed to prevent global warming of more than two degreesĬoal was in special focus at the 23rd climate summit in Bonn.
This came, however, in exchange for not including contentious "loss and damage" as part of the agreement. In an eleventh-hour compromise, industrialized countries conceded that the Adaptation Fund from the Kyoto Protocol, worth about $330 million, could become a part of the Paris Agreement. (Although nongovernmental groups remain skeptical of that figure, and say that really, only $20 billion have been committed.) So it is a significant development that in Bonn, financiers have now named a sum of $60 billion. At COP23, developing nations sought commitments on climate finance.
Starting in 2020, industrial nations aim to spend $100 billion (€85 billion) a year for climate action in poorer countries.īut the "finance gap" is a looming threat to implementing the Paris Agreement. There's broad consensus that since the wealth of industrialized countries is based on the historical burning of fossil fuels, they're responsible for not only decarbonizing their own economies but also for helping out the rest of the world.īefore COP23, only $10 billion had been pledged to the Green Climate Fund, which is used for "adaptation and mitigation" - to pay for both managing the impacts of climate change, and for transforming energy systems and otherwise reducing emissions. If the world's nations need to quickly decarbonize, who will pay for this? The hole in committed greenhouse gas reductions is also known as the emissions gap And a significant step here is that United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was tasked with bringing ambition forward before COP24 in Poland next year.īefore COP21 in Paris, Ban Ki-Moon similarly achieved success - so signs are good. Key to this was the so-called Talanoa Dialogue.
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One is ambition - that is, how greenhouse gas emission cuts can be made more deeply and more quickly.Ĭlimate experts keep reminding us: There's only a window of about a decade left for the world's nations to decarbonize their economies, before we've blown our carbon budget and the limit of a 1.5 degree Celsius temperature increase - or even 2 degrees - will no longer be possible.įor island-state host Fiji and many developing nations hard-hit by climate change, the lower limit of 1.5 degrees Celcius remained the main goal.ĭiscussion centered particularly on how to increase ambition before 2020, when the Kyoto Protocol expires and the Paris Agreement is set to be implemented. Sonya Angelica Diehn is DW's Environment Team Leader