Keep Big Oil Out of Climate Negotiations: Petition

http://www.kickbigpollutersout.com/?code=EA

Sign the petition to the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change:

"We call on you to take immediate action to protect COP21 and all future negotiations from the influence of big polluters. Given the fossil fuel industry’s years of interference intended to block progress, push false solutions, and continue the disastrous status quo, the time has come to stop treating big polluters as legitimate “stakeholders” and to remove them from climate policymaking."

http://www.kickbigpollutersout.com/?code=EA

Today, we are facing the prospect of the destruction of life as we know it and irreversible damage to our planet due to climate change. Scientists are telling us with ever more urgency that we must act quickly to stop extracting fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But the world’s largest polluters have prevented progress on bold climate action for far too long.

We call on the Parties to the UNFCCC to protect the UN climate talks and climate policymaking around the world from the influence of big polluters. The world is looking to the next round of negotiations – in Paris this December – for decisive action on climate. This is a pivotal moment to create real solutions. We need a strong outcome from the Paris talks in order to seize the momentum of a growing global movement, and to urge leaders to take bolder action to address the climate crisis.

http://www.kickbigpollutersout.com/?code=EA

But the fossil fuel industry and other transnational corporations that have a vested interest in stopping progress continue to delay, weaken, and block climate policy at every level. From the World Coal Association hosting a summit on "clean coal" around COP19 to Shell aggressively lobbying in the European Union for weak renewable energy goals while promoting gas – these big polluters are peddling false solutions to protect their profits while driving the climate crisis closer to the brink.

http://www.kickbigpollutersout.com/?code=EA

A decade ago, the international community took on another behemoth industry – Big Tobacco – and created a precedent-setting treaty mechanism that removed the tobacco industry from public health policy. This can happen again here.

Corporate Accountability International will deliver this message and the list of signatures at the climate talks in Bonn, Germany, the first week of June. We will do another delivery by the end of COP21 in Paris this December.

http://www.kickbigpollutersout.com/?code=EA

Participating organizations:
350.org
Amazon Watch
Chesapeake Climate Action Network
Climate Action Network International
Corporate Accountability International
CREDO Action
Daily Kos
Environmental Action
Food & Water Watch
Federation of Young European Greens
Forecast the Facts
Greenpeace USA
League of Conservation Voters
Oil Change International
People for the American Way
Rainforest Action Network
RH Reality Check
SumOfUs
The Natural History Museum

CC: UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon
Outgoing COP20 President Manuel Pulgar-Vidal
Incoming COP21 President Laurent Fabius

Oil Companies @ World Climate Talks/Negotiations?

http://grist.org/news/should-oil-companies-have-a-seat-at-the-climate-negotiating-table/

Should oil companies have a seat at the climate negotiating table?

By John Light on 2 Jun 2015

U.N. negotiators are meeting in Bonn, Germany, this week to continue to hash out the global climate deal that will (hopefully) be signed in Paris later this year. And, just in time for these negotiations, a new coalition is calling on governments to get some carbon-pricing mechanisms in place. This coalition, however, has an unusual membership: CEOs of major, Europe-based oil companies.

Chief executives of the U.K.’s BP and BG Group, British/Dutch Shell, Italy’s Eni, Norway’s Statoil, and France’s Total sent a letter to the U.N. stating that “we need governments across the world to provide us with clear, stable, long-term, ambitious policy frameworks. … We believe that a price on carbon should be a key element of these frameworks.” Earlier in the letter, the six companies “acknowledge that the current trend of greenhouse gas emissions” would fail to “limit the temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels.”

“The challenge is how to meet greater energy demand with less CO2,” the letter continues. “We stand ready to play our part.”

Of course, not everyone is eager for the companies who for years resisted regulations like carbon pricing to plop down at the negotiating table.

“I think what these corporations are looking to do is to change the conversation from one of global emissions standards and top-down governmental enforcement of standards to one … where these corporations can buy and sell pollution and find different ways to continue to do what they’re doing, which is contributing to climate change in a very real way,” said Jesse Bragg of Corporate Accountability International, a group that’s trying to keep corporate players away from the climate negotiations.

“We need long-term solutions,” he told Grist. “So the solution here is find ways to keep it in the ground and replace our energy needs with renewables. And any conversation about finding ways to use more natural gas and oil is a distraction from the actual solution.”

CAI and a number of prominent environmental groups, including Greenpeace USA, 350.org, and the League of Conservation Voters, recently petitioned the U.N. to keep polluting corporations away from climate change negotiations. The groups say that the industry “interferes at all levels,” including by providing sponsorship for the talks themselves.

The U.N. climate change leadership, however, has called for more cooperation between polluting industries and proponents of a climate deal. “Bringing them with us has more strength than demonizing them,” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said in May.

Not all green groups are cynical about the intention of the letter; some are enthusiastic about the progress it represents. “This is a symbolic moment, and demonstrates an important if not universal shift,” said Mark Kenber, CEO of The Climate Group, an international NGO. “It helps increase the likelihood of a positive outcome at COP21 by sending a signal to the wider business community, and showing that the direction of travel is towards comprehensive and effective regimes regulating carbon emissions.”

Even CAI sees the letter as an encouraging sign: “Many of the NGOs I’ve spoken with see this as a sign of them running scared, in a way,” said Bragg. “In terms of the movement, this is a good sign because it means that this work is having an effect and creating a need for them to respond and regroup and create a strategy … In that letter, the gas and oil industry took a couple shots at the coal industry, trying to differentiate themselves: ‘At least we’re not coal.’”

Some major oil companies were conspicuously absent from the letter, including U.S.-based ExxonMobil and Chevron. An industry source told Reuters that the two companies knew about the initiative, but didn’t want to sign on. “It’s clear that there is a difference of views on each side of the Atlantic,” Patrick Pouyanne, CEO of the French oil company Total, told reporters. He said the European companies were still chatting with Exxon and Chevron, and hoped they too would sign the letter soon.