Q. Who will benefit from Europe's Green Deal in 2020 "THE YEAR OF TRUTH"?
A. Not Polish miners!
This post is prompted by an article written for the Guardian by Daniela Gabor, professor of economics and macrofinance at UWE Bristol. It was published in the Europe now section of the print edition Wednesday 19 Feb 2020 under the headline:
Who'll benefit from Europe's green deal? Not Polish miners
The digital version has the image of Greta Thunberg below the headline, as she is mentioned at the beginning of the article in the context of remarks made by Josep Borrell, the EU’s newly appointed foreign policy chief, who caused outrage by dismissing young climate activists as flaky sufferers of “Greta syndrome”.
Hey Josep! It's not just Greta Thunberg . . .
. . . and it's NOT a syndrome!
This story from Energy World (India Times) and Reuters (February 17, 2020) reports on industrial unrest amongst the coal miners of Poland's biggest coal group over pay and future energy plans.
KATOWICE:
Miners at Poland's biggest coal producer, state-run PGG, staged a two-hour strike early on Monday, warning they will not renounce demands for a 12 per cent pay rise and a clear national energy plan guaranteeing a future role for coal.
The protest comes as PGG grapples with falling demand for coal and EU pressure to fight climate change.
"We hope that this week we can meet with the government representatives, because the issue of a salary rise is still unsolved. We also want to know what Poland's future energy mix will look like," said Boguslaw Hutek, the head of coal trade union Solidarity.
He added that if there is no agreement with PGG management and the government, PGG miners will protest in Warsaw on Feb. 28.
PGG Chief Executive Tomasz Rogala appealed for patience from union leaders.
"Our offer is: let's be cautious, as we see what is going on around coal mining. Let's wait until the end of the first half of the year. In July we will analyse and calculate everything," he said in a statement.
Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party has taken steps to improve air quality and encourage investment in offshore wind and solar energy, but its plan regarding the nation's future energy mix is not clear.
The party, which is keen to secure coal miners' votes in a May presidential election, has said Poland will continue to use coal as its main fuel for years to come.
PiS rose to power in 2015 partly on promises to sustain the then troubled coal mining. Since then the industry has recovered, as coal prices rebounded and the government closed some of the most loss-making mines.
Last year, however, the Polish coal industry started to face new problems due to increased coal imports and falling demand, leaving coal-mining companies with unsold stocks.
PGG does not disclose its financial results, but on Friday state-run utilities PGE, Enea and Energa , which all have minority stakes in PGG, said their 2019 results had been hit by impairments at PGG.
The Polish government, which in December was the only EU state that did not pledge to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, has been under rising pressure to take more action to reduce the use of coal.
The LODE-Zone line crosses Poland . . .
. . . so for Re:LODE Radio this is of primary interest.
Climate change and the backstory, the Paris Agreement and COP24 that took place in Katowice, Poland . . .
The Paris Agreement
The Paris Agreement (French: Accord de Paris) is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), dealing with greenhouse-gas-emissions mitigation, adaptation, and finance, signed in 2016.
The agreement's language was negotiated by representatives of 196 state parties at the 21st Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC in Le Bourget, near Paris, France, and adopted by consensus on 12 December 2015.
As of February 2020, all UNFCCC members have signed the agreement, 189 have become party to it, and the only significant emitters which are not parties are Iran and Turkey.
The Paris Agreement's long-term temperature goal is to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels; and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 °C, recognizing that this would substantially reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. This should be done by peaking emissions as soon as possible, in order to "achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases" in the second half of the 21st century. It also aims to increase the ability of parties to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change, and make "finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development."
Science is way better than silence . . .
Dana Nuccitelli in 2018 (Thu 29 Mar 2018) writes about climate scientists debating how to clarify some of the vague areas around what should be exact calculations regarding the 1.5 DEGREES limit of global heating.
The debate lies in exactly how the Paris climate target is defined and measured, which has not been precisely established. Millar’s team used the UK Met Office and Hadley Centre global surface temperature dataset called HadCRUT4, which begins in 1850 and estimates global surface temperatures have warmed about 0.9°C since that time. The team thus calculated the remaining carbon budget that will lead to an additional 0.6°C warming.
With the minor heading "On the other hand, it’s not that important", Dana Nuccitelli writes:
Ultimately, climate scientists are asking for a more specific definition of the Paris climate target. The agreement says we want to limit global warming to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels (preferably closer to 1.5°C), but when is the post-industrial start date, and which temperature measurement is the target based on?
However, the 2°C target itself is somewhat arbitrary. It’s based on two factors: science and politics. On the scientific side, we can probably accept and adapt to the adverse climate change consequences at that degree of climate change. On the political side, transitioning away from a fossil fuel-based global economy is a tremendous undertaking. From a practical standpoint, it will take everything we’ve got just to stay below 2°C. That’s why the 1.5°C target in the Paris agreement is ‘aspirational.’ The latest IPCC report considered 116 potential scenarios for staying below 2°C, and 101 of those scenarios (87%) included negative emissions in the form of carbon capture and storage. In other words, it’s difficult to envision meeting the Paris target by cutting carbon pollution alone.
The 2°C target is simply a nice round number that represents what the international community considers an acceptable amount of climate change risk and is also a practically achievable (although daunting) goal.
Under the Paris Agreement, each country must determine, plan, and regularly report on the contribution that it undertakes to mitigate global warming. No mechanism forces a country to set a specific emissions target by a specific date, but each target should go beyond previously set targets.
COP21
The Paris Conference is designated as COP21, the twenty-first formal meeting of the UNFCCC Parties (Conference of the Parties, COP) to assess progress in dealing with climate change. Beginning in the mid-1990s, these meetings were held to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol and to establish legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
From 2005 the Conferences have also served as the "Conference of the Parties Serving as the Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol" (CMP); also parties to the Convention that are not parties to the Protocol can participate in Protocol-related meetings as observers.
From 2011 the meetings have also been used to negotiate the Paris Agreement as part of the Durban platform activities until its conclusion in 2015, which created a general path towards climate action.
The first UN Climate Change Conference was held in 1995 in Berlin. There is a full list and sequence of these meetings can be found on Wikipedia's article United Nations Climate Change conference.
Good COP? Bad COP?
COP22 (Bad?)
Held in Marrakech, Morocco, on 7–18 November 2016, the conference incorporated the twenty-second Conference of the Parties (COP22), the twelfth meeting of the parties for the Kyoto Protocol (CMP12), and the first meeting of the parties for the Paris Agreement (CMA1).
The purpose of the conference was to discuss and implement plans about combating climate change and to "demonstrate to the world that the implementation of the Paris Agreement is underway".
However, the inclusion of fossil fuel lobby groups with observer status, including the World Coal Association, the Business Council of Australia, Business Europe, and the Business Roundtable, was met with some criticism.
Michael Slezak reporting for the Guardian (Sun 6 Nov 2016) writes under the headline and subheading:
Marrakech climate talks: giving the fossil fuel lobby a seat at the table
Is it a conflict of interest to have representatives of coal and oil companies at the climate change discussions?
Jesse Bragg from Corporate Accountability International says it is clear those groups are driven by a profit motive and not by the desire to curb carbon emissions, and so have a conflict of interest.
“It’s hard to believe the World Coal Association is having conversations with delegates, encouraging them to more strictly regulate the coal industry,” Bragg says. “That’s completely against their interests. So what is their purpose in that space other than to continue to extract and burn coal?”
Bragg says those groups have a role to play in the implementation of the rules set by nations but no legitimate role to play in the setting of the rules themselves.
The role many fossil fuel companies play in policy debates as the world attempts to curb carbon emissions has been clear:
A series of ongoing revelations have shown the fossil fuel industry was aware of climate change for decades but publicly denied its scientific basis.
Analyses of the limited amount of public information about the lobbying efforts of fossil fuel companies suggests that ExxonMobil, Shell and others spend millions of dollars to manipulate public discourse on climate change.
When Peabody went bankrupt this year a Guardian analysis of court documents revealed America’s biggest coalmining company was funding at least two dozen groups that cast doubt on human-made climate change and oppose environmental regulations. Peabody will be represented at the meeting by six bodies with observer status.
Corporate Accountability
Other criticisms of COP22 came from environmental campaigners who argued that the Conference was;
"heavy on rhetoric and light on real progress."
The Conference in Paris the year before was seen as a breakthrough that provided a foundation for future progress, with the succeeding event in Marrakesh supposed to be turning those promises into action.
Additional criticisms related to the fact that the less developed countries were not receiving enough money from developed countries in order to help them adapt to "changes that are already happening because of global warming."
In June 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his intention to withdraw the United States from the agreement. Under the agreement, the earliest effective date of withdrawal for the U.S. is November 2020, shortly before the end of President Trump's 2016 term.
In times, that for many seem "apocalyptic", the group of nations that had signed up to the Paris Agreement no longer included one of the original signatories, the United States.
On June 1, 2017, United States President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would cease all participation in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation. Trump had justified this policy by saying:
"The Paris accord will undermine (the U.S.) economy," and "puts (the U.S.) at a permanent disadvantage."
Trump also emphasized his assertion that the withdrawal would be in accordance with his America First policy and election campaign promises.
"the heightened potential for increased greenhouse gas emissions poses a substantial threat to our communities, businesses, and military."
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation called the decision to withdraw "very discouraging" and said that it would diminish confidence in international climate change efforts; the technology think tank called for federal efforts on "the smart grid, energy storage, carbon capture and sequestration, and advanced nuclear and solar power" and warned that:
"Without a smart, aggressive clean-energy innovation strategy, the world will not avert the worst effects of climate change."
Canadian academic and environmental activist David Suzuki stated:
"Trump just passed on the best deal the planet has ever seen".
Navroz Dubash of the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi expressed bafflement at Trump's move, citing the declining costs of renewable energy sources and the increasing difficulty of obtaining investment for fossil-fuel projects.
Environmental scientist and risk assessor Dana Nuccitelli stated that;
"it now seems inevitable that the history books will view Trump as America's worst-ever president".
"a stupid and reckless decision—our nation's dumbest act since launching the war in Iraq."
McKibben wrote that Trump's decision to withdraw amounted;
"to a thorough repudiation of two of the civilizing forces on our planet: diplomacy and science."
He called upon U.S. states and cities to "double down" on commitments to renewable energy.
In English, crack of doom is an old term used for the Day of Judgement, referring in particular to the blast of trumpets signalling the end of the world in Chapter 8 of the Book of Revelation.
A "crack" had the sense of any loud noise, preserved in the phrase "crack of thunder", and Doom was a term for the Last Judgement, as Doomsday still is.
Detail of The Last Judgment, 17th-century icon from Lipie. Historic Museum in Sanok, Poland, including the "crack of doom"Trumpeteers!
Q. What will it take to wake the many somnambulists, especially those in positions of power?
Vice president Mike Pence stated that Trump administration "demonstrated real leadership" by pulling the United States out of the international accords which he called "a transfer of wealth from the most powerful economy in the world to other countries around the planet".
He also said that he doesn't understand why Democrats and liberals in the United States and the left around the world care about climate change.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway and Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt praised the decision as a victory for America's middle class, workers, businesses and coal miners.
When it comes to facts Kellyanne Conway has a problem . . .
. . . the truth!
Trump spoke throughout his announcement concerning this withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in order to demonstrate that he was fulfilling his election promises, saying:
"I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris."
The incumbent Mayor of Pittsburgh, Bill Peduto, immediately responded on Twitter with a reminder that 80% of his city's voters favored Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, and wrote:
"As the Mayor of Pittsburgh, I can assure you that we will follow the guidelines of the Paris Agreement for our people, our economy and future."
Does Trump think that the Paris Agreement is about Paris?
Trump referred to Paris in his Davos Speech, but that was somehow all about the Notre Dame disaster and the challenge of restoring this once magnificent medieval cathedral. Perhaps his perceptual horizon is unable to encompass anything as broad and complete as our planet Earth?
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer condemned the withdrawal. Responding the following week to the withdrawal, the governors of California, New York, and Washington founded the United States Climate Alliance, pledging to uphold the Paris Agreement within their borders. By the evening of June 1, 2017, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Oregon, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia declared their intention to join with United States Climate Alliance members in reaching Paris Agreement goals. Governors of other states also expressed interest in upholding the Agreement. As of July 2017 the alliance included 13 states plus Puerto Rico.
The Caribbean island of Puerto Rico is situated along the pathway of the LODE Zone Line and the people of this island are well aware of the impact of climate change when it comes to the experience of extreme weather events.
The Re:LODE Radio project takes a particular interest in finding out more about the experience of the people living in the archipelago of Puerto Rico, and especially the impact of extreme weather events and the traumatic aftermath.
The 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference ("COP23") was an international meeting of political leaders, non-state actors and activists to discuss environmental issues, held at the UN Campus in Bonn (Germany) from 6–17 November 2017.
The conference incorporated the 23rd Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the thirteenth meeting of the parties for the Kyoto Protocol, and the second session of the first meeting of the parties for the Paris Agreement.
The purpose of the conference was to discuss and implement plans about combating climate change, including the details of how the Paris Agreement will work after it enters into force in 2020.
The COP was presided over by the Prime Minister of Fiji, Frank Bainimarama, marking the first time a small-island developing state assumed the presidency of the negotiations.
The German government provided considerable support that amounted to more than €117 million ($135.5 million) for the construction of the conference facilities.
Although COP23 focused primarily on technical details of the Paris Agreement, it was the first conference of the parties to take place after President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the agreement.
COP23 concluded with what was called the 'Fiji Momentum for Implementation,' which outlined the steps that need to be taken in 2018 to make the Paris Agreement operational and launched the Talanoa Dialogue - a process designed to help countries enhance and implement their Nationally Determined Contributions by 2020.
Damian Carrington, Environment editor for the Guardian reported (Sun 5 Nov 2017) on:
Climate change is already significantly increasing the likelihood of extreme weather, from heatwaves to floods. But without sharp cuts to global carbon emissions, we can expect “severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts” for billions of people and the natural world. The landmark Paris agreement at COP21 in 2015 delivered the first truly global deal to tackle climate change, but national action needs to be significantly toughened to meet to goal of keeping global temperature rise to well below 2C, and 1.5C if possible.
All the science, and the battering that extreme weather has inflicted this year from floods in India and Nigeria to hurricanes in the Caribbean and wildfires in the US and Europe, indicates that global emissions need to start falling urgently – in the next few years. The Paris agreement set out principles, but not the details, with one diplomat likening it to having a brilliant new smartphone but no operating system. The Bonn meeting will be vital in building the rules that will enable the Paris deal to work.
What’s new?
COPs are always run by a designated nation and for the first time this will be one of the small island nations that are most at risk from the sea-level rise and extreme storms that climate change is bringing. Fiji’s prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, is the COP president, though the summit is being held in Germany for practical reasons.
Homes in Fiji destroyed by Cyclone Winston
Fiji suffered damages of well over $1bn after Cyclone Winston struck in 2016, which is likely to focus attention on the contentious issue of compensation for climate damage and adapting to future threats, as much as cutting emissions.
Damian Carrington asks the question:
What needs to be done?
The current pledges for carbon cuts by the world’s nations would mean at least 3C of global warming and severe damage. So the Paris agreement included a mechanism for the pledges to be reviewed and ratcheted up, but without setting the rules. The vital groundwork for this has to be done in Bonn before being finalised in 2018. Without serious preparation to build trust and agreement, deals don’t get done, as the failed COP in Copenhagen in 2009 showed.
Fiji has renamed the ratchet talks process from the bland “facilitative dialogue” to the “talanoa dialogue” after a Pacific island concept of using storytelling and talking as a way to make good decisions.
Damian Carrington also asks:
Could there be flashpoints?
Yes. There are deep and longstanding tensions over the issue of “loss and damage”, the idea that developing nations should be compensated for destruction resulting from climate change which they did little or nothing to cause. “The principle is one of compensation because the western countries developed their economies at the expense of the planet and of poor people,” says Dorothy Grace Guerrero, at campaign group Global Justice Now. The stakes are heightened further as some developing nations feel they lost out in the Paris agreement which, unlike previous deals, does not impose legally binding commitments on rich nations.
There is a strand of the negotiations tackling this – the Warsaw mechanism – but they have a “glaring omission”, according to aid groups: no money.
The rich nations are opposed to loss and damage payments, seeing them as similar to calls for reparations for slavery.
So, was COP23 a good COP?
Damian Carrington's take on COP 23 outcomes was that:
There was little drama as the diplomatic sherpas trekked up the mountain of turning the political triumph of the 2015 Paris agreement into a technical reality, with a rulebook that would allow countries to start ramping up action. They got about as far as expected in turning the conceptual into the textual, but no further.
The star . . .
The star for Damian Carrington was Timoci Naulusala, a 12-year-old Fijian boy, who gave a passionate yet nerveless account of the destruction of his village by Cyclone Winston in 2016 to the gathered heads of state and ministers.
“Climate change is real, not a dream,” he said.
. . . followed by the pantomime villain!
The Trump administration, which wants the US to be the only country in the world not in the Paris deal, was the pantomime villain, but only succeeded in uniting the 195 other nations against it. The sole US event brought an executive from Peabody, the US coal company with a long history of funding climate denial, to argue for “clean coal”. A protest song and walkout from most of the audience followed and for the rest of the summit, the US delegation was irrelevant.
But the large coalition of US cities and states backing climate action – which as a group represents the third-largest economy in the world – stole the American show, with the California governor, Jerry Brown, popping up everywhere, pumping up the crowds.
All eyes are now on Poland, the next summit host
Damian Carrington concludes with an assessment of where the Paris Agreement process was in the context of the closing of the conference, given the COP23 outcomes meant that a lot work needed to be completed by the time of COP24 came around in December 2018. He writes:
The multi-nation pledge to phase out coal use was the political high point, but the dragging on of the coalition talks in Germany prevented Angela Merkel from potentially joining the party. The politics is key: UN climate talks run on consensus, with no votes, so trust and momentum are vital and were preserved in Bonn.
But the summit was like a dress rehearsal for next year, when the Paris rulebook has to be finalised and poorer and vulnerable nations will demand much more action and funding from the rich countries they blame for climate change. Further gatherings in Paris in December and California next year will also help prepare the stage for the 2018 UN climate summit.
That will be in Silesia, a heartland of Europe’s King Coal, Poland, which has already started feeling the international pressure to clean up its act. If that summit achieves its goals – accelerating carbon cuts – then the curtain will have been raised on the clean, green 21st century, against a backdrop of the mines and power plants of the 20th century.
King Coal, Poland . . .
So, the city chosen to host the conference in the following year was Katowice in Poland, and, as Damian Carrington pointed out in 2017, Katowice is the first city in Silesia with a history, and a culture, shaped by coal production and consumption.
This is the Silesia City Center - The largest shopping mall in Katowice, and one of the biggest malls in Europe. The mall is located over former coal mine "Gottwald", which explains the existence of the monumental tower in the background. This is a celebration of local identity associated with this modern industry.
In December 2018, for the first time, the climate summit will take place in Katowice. In April 2017 the UN technical mission delegates, while visiting the capital of Upper Silesia, appreciated the city’s excellent preparation for the event, including its infrastructure, meeting the highest standards.
The candidacy of Katowice received recognition from Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance and Development – Mateusz Morawiecki, as well as the Minister of the Environment, Professor Jan Szyszko, who stated that, ‘The whole region of Upper Silesia and Zagłębie is a very important example of what can be achieved through consistent policy of sustainable development and economic transformation.
While the ice melts, coal mines are turned into culture mines . . .
A possible future for Katowice? And what about the Polish miners? Will they get jobs in the "culture mines"?
The response of the Polish government to the Trump withdrawing the US from the Paris Agreement was made clear when Deputy Energy Minister Grzegorz Tobiszowski praised Trump's decision, while signing an agreement for a new coal power station in Jaworzno.
As a result of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement process, many adjustments to the usual schedules of discussion and negotiation have had to be made. China took a leading role by hosting many of the preparatory meetings in the weeks beforehand.
Karl Mathiesen, editor of Climate Home News, had an article published in the Guardian following the opening of the COP24 climate change conference, that gives an insight into the "influence vacuum" that has been created in the wake of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement process.
Karl Mathiesen explores what was going on in the complex negotiation processes, in the period before COP24, and focusing especially on the experience of an experienced US negotiators, Sue Biniaz, who had previously worked for Barack Obama, but no longer, under the Trump administration. Nevertheless, she and others were involved as observers and participants, and remained committed to making a contribution to the process.
Karl Mathiesen identifies that the main task during this period between 2017-18 was to sort out the "Paris rulebook":
The 2015 Paris accord drew up the global system to bring down greenhouse gas emissions in only the broadest strokes. At just 27 pages long, it represents what could be agreed at the time. But interpreting the agreement into a concrete set of rules is proving an immensely complicated task. For example, the Paris deal asks all countries to submit their plans to fight climate change. But much is left open as to what those plans should cover, or how often they should be updated, using which metrics and baselines, and how much leeway should be given to poor countries with bad data. These questions can all be split into increasingly finer details, with such eventual complexity that in many negotiating parties, the lead diplomat has only a rudimentary understanding of what their staff are working on. Consensus is proving difficult to find.
If it is ever agreed, the “Paris rulebook” will iron out these technical, in some cases toxic, details. Without it, the deal will collapse.
The article follows Sue Biniaz on her mission to rescue the spirit of the Paris Agreement in the absence of US leadership:
There is an undercurrent at the talks that is disturbing the former US diplomat, who says there are serious attempts afoot to write rules Biniaz thinks “ignore the language” agreed in 2015.
Based on legal language Biniaz helped to draft, Barack Obama and Xi Jinping agreed to universal rules that gave flexibility for the poorest countries. That compromise is credited with making Paris possible. It was good for small, vulnerable nations that feared China’s gigantic future emissions. But for emerging, coal-dependent economies it was hard to swallow. Hence their efforts now to reverse the deal and the possibility that a dual deal could be reached in Poland under which China is subject to different rules than the US.
A group of developing countries, spurred by US betrayal and most likely coaxed on by China, are now trying to create one set of rules for the rich and one for the poor. This approach would govern China’s massive emissions more loosely, which would be unacceptable to the US and EU. If talks fail to produce a rulebook in Katowice over the coming weeks, it will be over this.
The smoothing over of differences between the US and China had been a large part of the Paris Agreement scenario for Obama's special envoy on climate change Todd Stern, and Karl Mathiesen picks up the story in this article:
If Biniaz was the driving intellectual force behind US efforts in Paris, Stern, as Obama’s special envoy for climate change, was its voice and face. His relationship with China’s lead negotiator and government minister Xie Zhenhua was a crucial factor when talks hit the skids in the final hours. The final draft contained a single word – some claimed it was a typo – the US found unacceptable. As the talks threatened to unravel, Xie stepped in, backed the change the US demanded and the gavel came down.
However the problem of a possible dual deal was still in the offing and could present real difficulties along any future timeline. Mathiesen says in the article:
In September 2017, a few months after Trump had announced his intention to leave the Paris deal, Stern travelled to New York to talk to old contacts as they gathered for the UN general assembly. He wanted to find out what other countries were thinking. How would the negotiations on the Paris rulebook, so critical to its function, be conducted with US leadership stripped away?
Word of the binary system being pushed by China and its allies was circulating. This was something Stern and Biniaz believed they had buried in Paris. If US climate diplomacy has had a defining theme over years and across presidencies, it is that its great rival China must be bound by the same conditions. If December’s talks deliver a dual rulebook, it could stop the US rejoining the deal under a different president, says Biniaz. Neither Stern nor Biniaz denies that making sure this doesn’t happen is guiding their involvement. Six current and former non-US diplomats interviewed for this story said they thought this was at least partly their goal.
Coal phase out . . .
On the 27 November 2018, just a few days before the opening of the COP24 conference on 2 December 2018, Greenpeace mounted a demonstration. Their Press Release explained:
Belchatow, Poland – Early this morning, Greenpeace activists climbed a 180 metre-high chimney at Belchatow power plant, the largest climate polluter in Europe and one of the largest coal fuelled power plants in the world, to demand climate action and a coal phase out. Greenpeace said political leaders meeting next week at the UN climate talks (COP24) in Katowice, Poland, must take responsibility and address the global climate crisis and take urgent, immediate action.
Discussions at COP24 will take place in the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC), which in October made it clear that we only have 12 years left to act decisively on climate change if we’re to stay within the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.
Greenpeace activist from Poland Marek Józefiak said:
“We are pushing nature to the brink and now she’s pushing back. A climate crisis is unfolding before our eyes, and political leaders who have the power to change the course of events must lead us towards a solution. I am from a mining family, we have been connected to coal mining for generations. There is no future in coal. What we need is a just transition from coal and fossil fuels to renewables. A just transition that respects people and the environment, guaranteeing a better future for all. If it wants to be a responsible COP24 host, Poland must move beyond coal, stop promoting false solutions and drive ambition at Katowice. ”
Representatives of climate vulnerable nations – the Philippines and Indonesia – joined Greenpeace activists in Belchatow to remind political leaders of the real effects of climate change: people losing their lives, their homes, their relatives, not being able to care for their families and not having access to food and water.
Climate activist Joanna Sustento said:
“Climate change is not about statistics and numbers in a news report. Before typhoon Haiyan, I had a happy life, a good job, a loving family. It was all swept away in a few minutes and I am the only one left behind with my brother. But even in the biggest of tragedies, hope can be found, and we are now millions across the world standing up to fight for basic human rights to a stable and healthy climate.”
From Germany to Vanuatu, from the Netherlands to the US, Canada and Peru, people are mobilising worldwide, protesting against lack of adequate climate action. It is now up to governments to stop promoting false solutions and financing polluting utilities, they must move beyond coal and fossil fuels and drive climate ambition at Katowice. Note
Poland hosts Belchatow, Europe’s largest lignite-alimented plant and largest coal polluter , and plans to build a new one . Belchatow is operated by state-owned facility PGE, and is responsible for the emission of about 38 mln tonnes of CO2 per year. It is about a tenth of all CO2 emissions of Poland. Belchatow is also responsible for significant air pollution, with mercury emissions levels of 2820 kg/year. This means that the power plant in Bełchatów emits yearly more mercury than the whole industry of Spain. Poland and Germany are jointly responsible for 51% of the EU’s installed capacity and 54% of the emissions from coal-fired power plants.
This was followed on 29 November by a Press Release by Greenpeace on preparations by Greenpeace Poland to sue coal operator PGE over climate change.
Good Cop or bad Cop?
Civilization phase out . . .
David Attenborough, one of the "usual suspects" in international occasions of this kind, where a bit of gravitas is required, and also, in terms of media coverage, does the job brilliantly, gave it his all with this speech.
On 3 December 2018, the noted British naturalist Sir David Attenborough told delegates at the conference that:
Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.
In this speech addressing those with the power to act to mitigate the impact of global heating, he made clear that difficult decisions that need to be taken by politicians are supported by civil societies on a global scale, even though sacrifices will need to be made.
What he did not say, or could not say, is that capitalists and capitalism needs to change, and to make self-sacrifice a part of a global response to a global threat.
So, here is the choice! Civilization phase out . . . . . . or phasing out global capitalism?
This is NOT a question the UN or the ANGRY BIRDS can ask of you!
If they did, they would get FIRED!
Damian Carrington in Katowice reported for the Guardian on the opening of COP24 (Mon 3 Dec 2018):
Andrzej Duda, the president of Poland, spoke at the opening ceremony, saying the use of “efficient” coal technology was not contradictory to taking climate action. Poland generates 80% of its electricity from coal but has cut its carbon emissions by 30% since 1988 through better energy efficiency. Friends of the Earth International said the sponsorship of the summit by a Polish coal company “raises the middle finger to the climate”.
A major goal for the Polish government at the summit is to promote a “just transition” for workers in fossil fuel industries into other jobs. “Safeguarding and creating sustainable employment and decent work are crucial to ensure public support for long-term emission reductions,” says a declaration that may be adopted at the summit and is supported by the EU.
All and any "just transition" should be a part of any future global agreement on tackling climate change. The problem is: Who pays!
The Wikipedia article on COP24 also quotes the speech made by Greta Thunberg.
On 4 December 2018, 15 year-old climate change activist Greta Thunberg addressed the summit and explained the severity of the problem this way:
What I hope we achieve at this conference is that we realise that we are facing an existential threat. This is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced. First we have to realise this and then as fast as possible do something to stop the emissions and try to save what we can save.
And what Attenborough could not say . . .
. . . Greta Thunberg said, speaking very clearly to power!
"Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money."
"Our biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury."
"It is the sufferings of the many that pay for the luxuries of the few."
Fiona Harvey in Katowice reporting for the Guardian (Sun 16 Dec 2018) writes:
What was agreed at COP24? Countries settled on most of the tricky elements of the “rulebook” for putting the 2015 Paris agreement into practice. This includes how governments will measure, report on and verify their emissions-cutting efforts, a key element because it ensures all countries are held to proper standards and will find it harder to wriggle out of their commitments.
Why did it take so long? There was a row over carbon credits, which are awarded to countries for their emissions-cutting efforts and their carbon sinks, such as forests, which absorb carbon. These credits count towards countries’ emissions-cutting targets. Brazil, which hopes to benefit from its large rainforest cover, insisted on a new form of wording that critics said would allow double counting of credits, undermining the integrity of the system. This issue has been put off until next year.
What wasn’t agreed? Largely absent from these talks, which had a technical focus, was the key question of how countries will step up their targets on cutting emissions. On current targets, the world is set for 3C of warming from pre-industrial levels, which scientists say would be disastrous, resulting in droughts, floods, sea level rises and the decline of agricultural productivity.
When will that be agreed? The key deadline is 2020, when countries must show they have met targets set a decade ago for cutting their emissions, and when they must affirm new, much tougher targets.
What does the science say? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global body of the world’s leading climate scientists, warned two months ago that allowing warming to reach 1.5C above pre-industrial levels would have grave consequences, including the die-off of coral reefs and devastation of many species.
How long have we got? If we extrapolate from the IPCC’s findings, the world has little more than a decade to bring emissions under control and halve them, which would help to stabilise the climate.
What happens next?
The UN will meet again next year in Chile to thrash out the final elements of the Paris rulebook and begin work on future emissions targets. But the crunch conference will come in 2020, when countries must meet the deadline for their current emissions commitments and produce new targets for 2030 and beyond that go further towards meeting scientific advice.
As a consequence of world events following COP24 the host and venue for COP25 was changed from Chile, at short notice, and relocated in Madrid, Spain.
COP26 in 2020 "THE YEAR OF TRUTH" is scheduled to take place in the UK in the Scottish City of Glasgow.
The Usual Suspects . . .
Fiona Harvey in her report mentions how:
The US, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait joined forces to prevent the conference fully embracing the IPCC’s findings, watering down a statement to a weak commendation of the timing of the scientists’ report. Australia joined with the US in a celebration of coal, and Brazil signalled its climate scepticism under Jair Bolsonaro by withdrawing its offer to host next year’s talks.
Following the teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg visiting Polish coal mines in Silesia to conduct secret interviews with miners, the spokesman of Sierpień 80, a miners' trade union, accused miners who spoke to Thunberg of treason.
Thunberg recently visited Poland accompanied by a BBC television crew, with Remix News unofficially learning that BBC is making a documentary on the phenomenon of Thunberg and a Polish tour will be an important part of the film.
She visited the Bełchatów Power Station, the world’s largest lignite-fired power station, and later the Makoszowy and Guido coal mines in Silesia.
Jerzy Hubka, a miner, posted on Facebook that miners had indeed met with Thunberg and took the activist along with the BBC camera crew to film the Guido mine and also to show Greta how the bottom of a mine looks like.
“We told her that miners are not afraid of changes and transformation, but only if they are being spoken to fairly with honest dialogue and with compromise in mind. We underlined that mines do not generate CO2, and that they can be equipped with modern technologies which would be beneficial to the environment and not cost workers their jobs,” Hubka wrote.
The spokesman of Sierpień 80 trade union, Patryk Kosela, slammed the meeting between the miners and Thunberg and outright accused Hubka of treason.
“Jerzy Hubka humiliated himself just so Greta Thunberg could say in Davos that she had spoken with Polish miners and 'even they haven’t surrendered'. Ms. Greta, Polish miners will NEVER surrender. Never! But Jerzy Hubka did not tell you that because he’s a fool who shits in his own nest.” Kosela wrote in a statement.
Thunberg referred to the meeting in her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, saying that the people she met had more hope than the leaders she was addressing.
“Last week I met with Polish miners who lost their jobs because their mine was closed and even they have not given up,” she said. “On the contrary, they seem to understand the fact that they need to change more than you do.”
The Miners Trade Union (ZZG) also distanced itself from the actions of the miners who met with Thunberg. “Jerzy Hubka possesses no authority to speak in [our] name,” wrote ZZG, quoted by RMF 24. “We regard the contacts with Greta Thunberg before the camera of the BBC as a manifestation of stupidity and megalomania, and harmful to Poland.”
A spokesman for the Mine Restructuring Company, the owner of the former Makoszowy mine, claimed that no visit had taken place to the site, but that “the mine management has no influence over who trade unionists meet at their headquarters outside of the mine”, report RMF 24.
During her visit to Poland, Thunberg also reportedly intended to carry out filming at Europe’s largest coal-fired power station in Bełchatów, but was denied permission by its owner, state-controlled energy group PGE. She therefore went instead to a nearby observation terrace to record her piece.
When livelihoods are threatened then feelings run high . . .
. . . and voters fears are a powerful political tool!
euronewsreported last September on this politically driven mining investment that some see as a blatant exchange for prospective votes in the upcoming election.
Under the headline: Polish government criticised for opening first new coal mine in 25 years, Méabh Mc Mahon with Reuters, makes some important points 26/09/2019. Here are some extracts from her report:
With just three weeks to go to a general election, Poland has opened its first new coal mine for 25 years.
In the country’s large mining communities, the promotion of the coal industry is seen as a likely vote winner for the ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS).
But environmentalists argue the policy flies in the face of European Union targets for all member states to be carbon neutral by 2050.
PiS has also said it wants to introduce legislation that will allow the government to open new coal mines without the approval of local authorities.
"This special legislation, which is being prepared by lawmakers is related to the fact that local authorities are not interested in new mines being built in their areas while we will need new coal deposits to secure supplies for the energy industry," energy minister Krzysztof Tchorzewski told reporters at the opening of the new mine.
Tchorzewski said the new legislation would help Poland develop the planned lignite open-pit mine Zloczew, which environmentalists say would be the country's deepest-ever open-pit mine and would displace 3,000 people from their homes.
"The Polish government is determined to ignore the wake-up call which was sounded by the youth ahead of the Climate Summit in New York," said Joanna Flisowska, senior coal policy coordinator at Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe.
"As the Polish Government inaugurated the start of construction works on a new coal mine just a day after the Summit, it has clearly demonstrated it has no intention of quitting its addiction to the most polluting of fossil fuels.
"Even more alarmingly, the Polish Government is now forcing through a new law which would allow it to open new coal mines without the consultation or permission by affected local communities. "That includes the new open-pit coal mine for the EU’s biggest climate-killer, the infamous Belchatow coal power plant, which would displace more than 3,000 people. "At the same time, the Polish Government seeks funding for just transition of coal regions. "But instead of undertaking the clean energy transition, it only wants the EU money, to pay for its coal addiction.”
Coal has become a hot issue ahead of the parliamentary vote on October 13 with PiS trying to secure coal miners' votes while facing down criticism from environmentalists.
PiS is leading in opinion polls, with the biggest opposition party, Civic Coalition, wanting to cut out coal completely by 2040.
Meanwhile, environmental group ClientEarth has filed a lawsuit against the owner of a coal-fired power plant in central Poland, calling for it to stop burning the polluting fuel and reduce its carbon emissions to zero by 2035.
The plant at Belchatow is Europe’s biggest of its kind and accounts for a tenth of Poland’s total CO2 emissions. It is owned by state-run PGE, Poland’s largest energy group.
“This is a first-of-its-kind lawsuit, seeking to hold coal plant operators to account for the direct impact their operations have on the climate and the surrounding environment," said Marcin Stoczkiewicz, head of central and eastern Europe at ClientEarth.
Poland, which generates most of its electricity from coal, led a handful of eastern European Union states in blocking a push by France and most others to commit the bloc to net zero emissions by mid-century in June.
This litigation launched by ClientEarth was also covered in this Guardian report by Christian Davies in Warsaw (Thu 26 Sep 2019).
Daniela Gabor sees through the "greenwash" and looks forensically at the politics of the European Green Deal as well as the macroeconomic naivety of some politicians. The disturbing conclusion she comes to is that it will most probably work for the carbon finance elites rather than for Polish coal miners trying to earn a living doing a difficult, hazardous and dirty job, and then seeing their livelihood vanish before their eyes. Here are some excerpts from the article to encourage readers to read further:
The European Green Deal is the European commission’s proposed €1tn plan to finance the transition away from fossil fuels to decarbonising Europe’s economy. But the commission quietly dropped the word “new” from original US plans for a green new deal, which of course echo Franklin D Roosevelt’s Depression-era economic New Deal.
Losing that “new” is a signal that the commission does not seek system change through ambitious green macroeconomics and tough regulation of carbon financiers. Rather, it takes a politics as usual, third-way approach that seeks to nudge the market towards decarbonisation.
The macroeconomics of the European Green Deal remains trapped in the black zero logic of austerity. Instead of ambitious green fiscal activism, it mostly reshuffles existing European funds through a logic of seed funding to mobilise private sector money. Public money will be used to take risk out of private business activities and finance a “just transition” mechanism that promises to protect groups like Polish miners after their coal mines close through retraining and reskilling programmes.
But there is little guarantee that European taxpayer money will reach Polish miners. It will probably go into the pockets of decarbonisation “barons”: clever local elites who will funnel transition money to their businesses, just as land barons siphoned most of the subsidies originally intended for small farmers under the common agricultural policy. Advertisement
Take Romania. Mining unions there complain that measures intended to “reskill’ miners, tested in the Valea Jiului region in Transylvania for the past 15 years, solely benefitted decarbonisation firms. Their connections to Romania’s political elites allowed them to capture the “market” for reskilling services, but private investment and jobs in new economic sectors never actually materialised.
In dismissing green macroeconomics, the European commission puts its hopes on private finance. The logic is that the state won’t have to pay if the private sector will, provided there is nudging from public funds to “derisk” green investments. Here, the commission seems to have powerful allies, such as institutional investors with trillions ready to be greened. Larry Fink, the head of BlackRock, one of the world’s largest asset managers, recently noted that “we are on the edge of fundamentally reshaping finance” by taking decarbonisation seriously. The turn to green finance is a welcome step given that BlackRock and other global investors have so far behaved more like greenwashing carbon financiers than responsible climate investors: talking green while consistently blocking climate shareholder resolutions.
But the danger is that the public money the commission plans to put into greening the European economy will instead merely subsidise greenwashing.
Think of it as a two-step strategy through which carbon financiers can turn climate into a profitable business.
The first step involves shaping the rules of the game, such as the “green list” of assets (or “green taxonomy”) currently being negotiated by the EU institutions. The EU taxonomy of sustainable activities has important advantages over the private environmental ratings (known as ESG ratings) currently used by private finance to identify green assets. Drawing on a broader range of views, including climate experts, the EU taxonomy sets a public standard of green that makes it more difficult for carbon financiers to purchase green ratings privately. Done properly, it could become a global standard for measuring and regulating the environmental performance of global finance.
But the EU list risks being watered down in the ongoing political negotiations over the exact details of what constitutes “green” activities. Already, furious lobbying has led to the inclusion of a category of “enabling” activities under the auspices of “pathways to green”. These could easily become loopholes for activities that are more brown than green. The incentive for carbon financiers is to stick the label green everywhere they can in preparation for the second step: persuading European regulators to promote (de-risk) green assets.
Meanwhile the commission refuses to talk about – let alone regulate – “brown finance”. Yet the strict regulation of brown finance could be a powerful tool for financing the European Green Deal. The commission could impose penalties on brown assets, either through taxation (a green FTT) or regulation, thus accelerating the switch to green assets.
Those outraged by Borrell’s dismissive remarks about Greta Thunberg’s generation should note that the real political battle is to ensure that the European Green Deal does not morph into the first greenwashed social pact between regulators and carbon financiers, between Brussels and local elites, exporting greenwashed finance standards to the rest of the world.
Climate activists should be pushing for a complete green economic agenda that recognises the critical role of green fiscal activism in organising the transition to low-carbon. It also means protecting public finances from carbon financiers, ensuring instead that private finance becomes the first lever in the climate fight.
Across Poland the impact of coal burning as a domestic heating fuel, as well as its use in industrial processes, has a wider social and health impact as a result of the heavy concentrations of air pollution in many districts.
Commuters walk past a subway near the Palace of Culture and Science, the most visible landmark in Warsaw. According to data presented by Poland Smog Alarm, residents of the Polish capital inhale levels of the carcinogen benzo(a)pyrene akin to smoking about 1,000 cigarettes per year. Those who live in the suburbs ingest the equivalent of about 2,400 cigarettes.
A week ago, in the Guardian print edition, there were two stories in the Financial section that connect with Daniela Gabor's article and Greta Thunberg's 2018 speech at COP24, one that identifies the oil companies who have earned nearly $2 trillion in profits since 1990, and the other, that reports on the announcement that BP's carbon footprint will be net-zero by 2050.
Matthew Taylor and Jillian Ambrose reported on the outcomes of an analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense on the profits of four of the world's biggest oil companies (Wed 12 Feb 2020). Here are some extracts from the report:
BP, Shell, Chevron and Exxon have made almost $2tn in profits in the past three decades as their exploitation of oil, gas and coal reserves has driven the planet to the brink of climate breakdown, according to analysis for the Guardian.
Analysis for the Guardian by Taxpayers for Common Sense in the US reveals that since 1990 – at which point the impact of fossil fuel extraction on the climate had been well known to industry leaders and politicians for years, experts say – the big four companies have accumulated $1.991tn in profits.
Critics say the findings highlight how a few corporations have generated extraordinary wealth by pursuing policies that were known to be driving the climate crisis.
The analysis shows that Exxon was the most profitable of the big four over the past three decades, making a total of $775bn. Shell was second with $524bn, followed by Chevron on $360bn and BP on $332bn.
Autumn Hanna, of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said: “For decades, oil and gas companies have been pocketing trillion-dollar profits and padding their bottom line with tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies. All while passing the buck on climate change.”
Mel Evans, a senior climate campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said the big oil companies knew the danger that their products posed to the climate well before it became common knowledge but pursued profits above the wider interests of the planet.
“Why did they continue to promote those products and dispute science they knew to be correct? Why are they still spending hundreds of billions of dollars on making the problem worse, drilling for new oil and gas we can’t possibly afford to burn?” Evans said.
The big four investor-owned corporations were found to be behind more than 10% of all carbon emissions since 1965.
The polluters project highlighted how many of the leading fossil fuel corporations had spent billions of pounds on lobbying governments and portraying themselves as environmentally responsible.
A study published last year found that the largest five market-listed oil and gas companies – the big four plus Total – spent nearly $200m each year lobbying to delay, control or block policies to tackle climate change.
The profits of the world’s most profitable listed oil companies were dwarfed last year by the financial reports of the Saudi state-owned oil firm Aramco. It listed on the Saudi stock exchange after racking up profits of $111.1bn (£84.7bn) in 2018, which was more than double the profits of Apple and five times those reported by Shell.
Experts say the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by industry leaders and politicians, particularly in the US, as far back as the mid-60s. Certainly by 1990 the facts were well known: two years earlier the Nasa scientist James Hansen had raised the alarm about the impact of fossil fuels during a landmark hearing at the US Congress. In 1992, world leaders came together at a summit in Rio to recognise the role carbon emissions were playing and to pledge coordinated action.
BP did not respond to a request for comment on the findings.
A spokesperson for Shell said: “Just as reliable, affordable energy has benefited us all, all of society has a role to play in tackling climate change. We’re working hard to develop lower-carbon energy options and meet demand for more and cleaner energy.”
ExxonMobil said it was helping address “the dual challenge of the world’s growing demand for energy and reducing emissions”.
Chevron said it was taking action to address climate change by “lowering the company’s carbon intensity, increasing the use of renewable energy and investing in breakthrough technologies.”
Provisions of the U.S. tax code that allow oil and gas companies to write off exploration and development expenses, form master limited partnerships, and take advantage of Last-In, First-Out accounting (among others) reduce revenue to the Treasury by billions of dollars every year. Combined with charitable regulations for development on federal lands that allow for free use of natural gas, methane venting and flaring with little oversight, and royalty payments at a fraction of rates charged by state and private lands, these policies have padded industry’s profits by more than $100 billion over the last few decades, all at taxpayers’ expense.
Promises, promises, promises . . .
Jillian Ambrose Energy correspondent for the Guardian reported (Wed 12 Feb 2020):
BP’s new chief executive has set an ambitious target to shrink the oil firm’s carbon footprint to net zero by 2050 by cutting more greenhouse gas emissions every year than produced by the whole of the UK.
Bernard Looney, who replaced Bob Dudley as chief executive this month, said it was clear that BP needed to change. He said BP would aim to become a net zero company by 2050 or sooner by tackling “all the carbon we get out of the ground as well as all the greenhouse gases we emit from our operations”.
Looney expects BP will “invest more in low-carbon businesses – and less in oil and gas – over time”, but will not set out the detail of how BP plans to meet the goals until an investor meeting in September.
Murray Worthy, a senior campaigner at Global Witness, said BP’s net zero pledge “looks like an attempt to grab some positive headlines by a new CEO but with little of substance to show how it will achieve these grand claims.
“Saying that they will invest more in low-carbon tech and less in oil and gas ‘over time’ is not a credible plan for reaching net zero.”
Kicking the can down the road and greenwashing? 2050 is too late anyway! We have twelve years to sort this!
Epilogue
Broken windows and empty hallways A pale dead moon in the sky streaked with gray Human kindness is overflowing And I think it's going to rain today
Scarecrows dressed in the latest styles With frozen smiles to chase love away Human kindness is overflowing And I think it's going to rain today
Lonely, lonely Tin can at my feet Think I'll kick it down the street That's the way to treat a friend
Bright before me the signs implore me To help the needy and show them the way Human kindness is overflowing And I think it's going to rain today
The forecast remains unsettled into next week, with spells of rain and strong winds expected to bring impacts to parts of the country.
Severe weather warnings for rain are in place for parts of Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England tomorrow, with further severe warnings in place for parts of the UK on Saturday and early next week.
Storm Dennis was a European windstorm which, in February 2020, became one of the most intense extratropical cyclones ever recorded, reaching a minimum central pressure of 920 millibars (27.17 inches of mercury). The thirteenth named storm of the 2019–20 European windstorm season, Dennis affected the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom less than a week after Storm Ciara, exacerbating the impacts from that storm amidst ongoing flooding in the latter country.
At least five fatalities have been recorded from Storm Dennis as of 18 February: in the United Kingdom. Heavy rainfall caused severe flooding in Wales and southern England, with many rivers reaching their highest levels ever recorded. Further flooding was also reported in areas of northern England that had been inundated by Storm Ciara the previous weekend.
Q. Climate change?
While not on the scale of the extreme weather experienced by Puerto Ricans, as the islands were battered in the wake of Hurricane Maria, the United Kingdom has experienced a sequence of weather events that are recorded in the Wikipedia article: 2019–20 United Kingdom floods
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