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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1067575)	5/2/2018 10:55:55 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1576293

All Paris Agreement Signatories Now Have at Least One Climate Change Policy By Guest • Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - 16:17 By Lorraine Chow, EcoWatch. Reposted with permission from EcoWatch. A new report highlights the significance of the Paris climate agreement in pushing global climate action. All of the 197 signatories of the landmark accord now have at least one national law or policy on climate change, an analysis published Monday by the London School of Economics (LSE) found. The Global trends in climate change legislation and litigation: 2018 snapshot shows there are now more than 1,500 national climate change laws and policies worldwide, with 106 introduced since the Paris agreement was signed in December 2015. “Of the 106 new laws and policies passed since the Paris agreement was reached, 28 explicitly reference the agreement,” the report states. “Further analyses will be required to determine if these new laws and policies are consistent with the Paris agreement and countries' nationally determined contributions. Alignment between national and international goals will be pivotal to meeting the Paris targets.” All 197 countries, nations & territories that have signed or ratified the Paris Agreement now have at least 1 national law or policy on climate change https://t.co/aKgLKEMwVY pic.twitter.com/AoacVtvKFr — Grantham LSE (@GRI_LSE) April 30, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy The report, from researchers at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the ESRCCentre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at LSE, was released Monday as representatives of 193 governments meet at the two-week Bonn Climate Change Conference in Germany. The summit is aimed at increasing global action to cut carbon emissions and speeding up progress on the Paris agreement to keep global temperature rise this century well below 2°C. The report's authors pointed out, “The ability to import internationally declared targets into actionable national laws and policies, and to translate those targets into action, will have a great impact on the success of the Paris agreement.” Also in the analysis, the researchers identified “a new wave” of climate change-related lawsuits and a number of “strategic” cases that “could have significant impact in holding governments and greenhouse gas emitters accountable for climate change.” The are now about 1,000 of climate-related lawsuits, with some cases focused on forcing courts to rule on the consistency of countries' actions with the Paris agreement. For instance, Greenpeace Nordic and the Nature and Youth environmental group sued Norway in November. The plaintiffs alleged that the government is contravening the Paris agreement and has failed to abide by its constitutional obligation to safeguard the environment for future generations. According to the LSE report, more than 800 of the 1,000 climate-related cases stem from the U.S., including roughly a dozen lawsuits filed directly against the Trump administration's rollbacks of climate regulation. President Trump, who does not believe in climate change and is ramping up development in fossil fuels, controversially announced his intention withdraw from the Paris agreement, making the U.S. the only signatory in opposition. U.S. cases also include efforts from San Francisco, Oakland and New York City that have filed lawsuits against major fossil fuel companies, alleging they knew about the threat of climate change for decades but concealed information about it. On the other hand, the researchers also determined that in the U.S., “industry, conservative NGOs and others have brought suits to support climate change deregulation, reduce climate protections generally or at the project level, and target climate protection supporters.” desmogblog.com

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1067575)

5/2/2018 11:20:26 AM

From: Wharf Rat

Respond to of 1576293

After a heavy rain in August, pedestrians wade across flooded streets in Miami’s Brickell area of Miami. Carl Juste cjuste@miamiherald.com

Miami taxpayers need full account of how much climate change is costing them

BY MAGGIE FERNANDEZ

Miami Climate Alliance

May 01, 2018 06:20 PM

I am the “climate-change activist” referenced in the April 13 editorial, “Heed some new ways to combat rising seas in Miami and Miami Beach.” As a Miami resident and business owner, I am concerned about climate change. How we can slow down its effects? How to we can protect ourselves from sea level rise?

That’s why I recently asked the city of Miami’s Sea Level Rise Committee to support providing taxpayers with a full account of the costs associated with planning for and adapting to climate change.

With the encouragement of city staff, I was invited to present on a campaign recently launched by the Miami Climate Alliance and the Center for Climate Integrity — “ Pay Up Climate Polluters.” As its name suggests, we believe climate polluters most responsible for sea-level rise and other affects of manmade climate change should pay their fair share of adaptation and mitigation costs.

Still, I was not there to talk about recovering costs, but simply accounting for them.

Given the focus of the Sea Level Rise Committee, it seemed the most logical place to raise the question. In 2015m Miami created a Sea Level Rise Committee to help the community better understand and prepare for the rising seas and chronic flooding that South Florida is starting to see — often on sunny days — as a result of man-made climate change.

The committee reviews any information pertaining to sea-level rise, holding public hearings and issuing a written report to the City Commission in accordance with the authorizing legislation that I helped draft.

However, a committee member publicly berated me for my public comments and told me never to come back. While that was disappointing, what concerns me more is that taxpayers still remain in the dark as to just how much man-made climate change has and will cost them as sea levels continue to rise.

We do know a few costs, though. The recent general obligation bond approved by Miami voters includes $192 million to combat rising sea levels, but that’s nowhere near the full picture. Former Mayor Tomás Regalado indicated that the city is facing at least a billion dollars in adaptation costs, but when the tab for sea walls, raising roads, installing pumps, rebuilding storm water drainage systems and other defenses is tallied, it will certainly far exceed this estimate. To give taxpayers the full picture of these costs, Miami should pass an ordinance to put a number to the cost of climate change.

As a city taxpayer, as well as a champion for climate action in local government, I was glad to start the conversation about climate liability and to seek support for my request that the city begin to itemize the costs of adapting to climate. The events that unfolded at the meeting brought many important issues to head — each carries a great deal of weight, including lack of diversity on city boards and of an understanding of what it means to serve on those boards.

I am grateful that Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has committed to addressing the vital issues that support the principles of democracy and expand public participation in government so that all residents have a voice. His commitment is to expand the focus of the Sea Level Rise Committee to climate impacts more broadly, so we can begin to calculate costs is also laudable.

In the midst of all that, what we cannot gloss over is the urgent need to take action on climate change and impacts like sea-level rise. Policy-makers must face the fact that we have an extraordinary challenge before us. We will have to both adapt to the climate impacts already in the pipeline and drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions so we do not make the problem worse.

To that end, we must consider who will pay for what is to come and be assured that the most vulnerable among us aren’t footing the bill while the polluters get off the hook. We live in one of the most wonderful places in the world and with that privilege comes an obligation to protect it.

miamiherald.com