Author: coastcontact

I am a somewhat cranky but mostly optimistic 65 plus who refuses to give up on this maddening world. The purpose of this BLOG is to express my feelings, thoughts.

“COP28 is now on the verge of Complete Failure”

This AP (Associated Press) article is worth displaying in full. The world has a problem that needs attention now.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Countries moved closer to reaching what critics called a watered-down final deal on how to act on climate change on Monday, to the disappointment and anger of nations who called to phase out planet-warming fossil fuels as the United Nations summit in Dubai neared its culmination.

A new draft released Monday of what’s known as the global stocktake — the part of talks that assesses where the world is at with its climate goals and how it can reach them — called for countries to reduce “consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”

The release triggered a frenzy of fine-tuning by government envoys and rapid analysis by advocacy groups, just hours before the planned late morning finish to the talks on Tuesday — even though many observers expect the finale to run over time, as is common at the annual U.N. talks.

Anger grew as people had more time to read the document.

In a closed-door meeting late Monday, some country delegation chiefs needled COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber’s frequent calling of the goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since preindustrial times his “north star,” saying the president’s proposal misses that star.

“It is not enough to say 1.5, we have to do 1.5. We have to deliver accordingly,” Norway minister Espen Barth Eide said.

A person inside the room said several negotiating blocs, including those for small island states, Latin American countries, the European Union and developing countries, all spoke against the new draft, saying its ambition wasn’t strong enough. The person spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak without fear of affecting the negotiations.

Some Pacific Island nations argued the text amounted to a death sentence.

The proposed text “doesn’t even come close to delivering 1.5 as a north star,” Tuvalu’s delegation chief Seve Paeniu said. “For us this is a matter of survival. We cannot put loopholes in our children’s futures.”

Small island nations are some of the most vulnerable places in a world of rising temperatures and seas. Final decisions by COPs have to be by consensus and objections can still torpedo this. Activists said they feared that potential objections from fossil fuel countries, such as Saudi Arabia, had watered down the text.

German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said Europe is “extremely unified” in opposing the COP presidency’s text, calling it unacceptable.

“We’re prepared to stay as long as it takes to get the course correction that the world needs,” Morgan told The Associated Press as she walked into the heads of delegation meeting.

Zhao Yingmin, China’s vice minister for Ecology and Environment, said at the meeting that “the draft fails to address the concerns of developing countries on some key issues” and in particular the idea that greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025.

United States climate envoy John Kerry says the language on fossil fuels in the text “does not meet the test” of keeping 1.5 alive.

“I, like most of you here, refuse to be part of a charade” of not phasing out fossil fuels, Kerry said. “This is a war for survival.”

Kerry’s remarks received a round of applause from the room.

A combination of activists and delegation members lined the entry into a special late-evening meeting Monday of heads of delegations, with their arms raised in unity as delegations walked through, creating a tunnel-like effect. A few activists told delegates passing by: “You are our last hope. We count on you.”

Negotiators broke well after midnight, and it wasn’t clear when talks would resume.

“We need to find a solution that has maximum ambition and maximum equity,” South Africa minister Barbara Creecy said as negotiators left the room. “One without the other will not solve the conundrum we face.”

In the 21-page document, the words oil and natural gas did not appear, and the word coal appeared twice. It also had a single mention of carbon capture, a technology touted by some to reduce emissions although it’s untested at scale.

Activists said the text was written by the COP28 presidency, run by an Emirati oil company CEO — Al-Jaber — and pounced on its perceived shortcomings. It fell fall short of a widespread push to phase out fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal altogether.

Al-Jaber skipped a planned news conference and headed straight into a meeting with delegates just after 6:30 p.m. It was the second time for him to cancel a press briefing on Monday.

“We have a text and we need to agree on the text,” al-Jaber said. “The time for discussion is coming to an end and there’s no time for hesitation. The time to decide is now.”

He added: “We must still close many gaps. We don’t have time to waste.”

Critics said there was a lot to do.

“COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure,” former U.S. Vice President and climate activist Al Gore posted on X. “The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. … It is deeply offensive to all who have taken this process seriously.”

Jean Su from the Center for Biological Diversity said the text “moves disastrously backward from original language offering a phaseout of fossil fuels.”

“If this race-to-the-bottom monstrosity gets enshrined as the final word, this crucial COP will be a failure,” Su said.

But Mohamed Adow of Power Shift Africa said the “text lays the ground for transformational change.”

“This is the first COP where the word fossil fuels are actually included in the draft decision. This is the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era,” he said.

Also on Monday, the latest draft on the Global Goal on Adaptation — the text on how countries, especially vulnerable ones, can adapt to weather extremes and climate harms — was released on Monday.

The adaptation is “utterly disappointing” and “an injustice to communities on the frontline of the crisis,” said Amy Giliam Thorp of Power Shift Africa.

“The text is even weaker, more vague in many areas, and lacking in ambition,” she said. It’s “set to corrode trust between developed and developing nations. A framework focused on action without concrete targets, especially to support developing countries, is pointless and toothless.”

Cristina Rumbaitis del Rio, a senior advisor for adaptation and resilience at the U.N. Foundation said “the new text doesn’t have the strength that we were hoping to see.”

On Monday morning, visibly tired and frustrated top U.N. officials urged COP28 talks to push harder for an end to fossil fuels, warning that time is running out for action.

“We can’t keep kicking the can down the road,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “We are out of road and almost out of time.”

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Associated Press journalists Olivia Zhang, Malak Harb, Bassam Hatoum and David Keyton contributed to this report.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Inflation is Real

“It’s the economy stupid” was a phrase coined by James Carville in 1992, when he was advising Bill Clinton in his successful run for the White House. And it is still true today.

The Biden administration may want you to believe that inflation is not real but they are telling you a lie. This report from the latest Bloomberg Business Week provides the facts. In my own personal life my Quaker Oats Apple and Cinnamon now provides 8 packets down from 10 in a box. My shaving cream is now in a 7 ounce container down from 10 ounces. Next year’s inflation rate of an expected 2% won’t be bringing prices down.

Hatred of Jews has Reached a New High

It’s called anti-Semitism.

Harvard President Apologizes for Congressional Testimony on Antisemitism. The president, Claudine Gay, told the campus newspaper that she “should have had the presence of mind” to answer differently.

The presidents of leading Ivy League universities seem to be in support of on campus groups calling for a genocide against all Jews.

The exchanges involving Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Dr. Gay and two other university leaders, Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and Sally Kornbluth of M.I.T., have thrown three of the country’s most influential colleges into turmoil. On Thursday, a House committee opened an investigation into “the learning environments” on all three campuses, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, said the three presidents should leave their posts.

When the hate reaches a fevers pitch there is one place American Jews can go and feel safe. Israel. That is the reason that even Jews who believe Israel attacks on Gaza are too much still support that country.

Norman Lear

An amazing man who has had a huge impact on our culture with all his creative work and the iconic shows he produced and created. Archie Bunker, Maude Findlay and George Jefferson were among the characters he brought to America’s living rooms.

There will never be another like him. Here is a list of the programs he created.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

THE JEFFERSONS

MAUDE

SANFORD AND SON

GOOD TIMES

ONE DAY AT A TIME

MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN

What Is Hanukkah, and Why Do We Celebrate It?

Story by Lauren Cahn in the Reader’s Digest

Because Hanukkah and Christmas fall around the same time of year, people often wonder if Hanukkah is a Jewish version of Christmas. At least religiously speaking, it is not. Whereas Christmas marks the birth of Jesus, Hanukkah, which was celebrated for centuries before Jesus was born, commemorates something entirely different.

Hanukkah commemorates the victory in 164 B.C. of a group of Jewish people (the Maccabees) over the Syrian Greeks, who had been occupying the Land of Israel since before 167 B.C. Not only had the Greeks destroyed the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, but they also banned the practice of Judaism entirely. After a three-year fight, the Maccabees liberated the temple—and won the Jewish people the right to practice their religion.

In 2023, Hanukkah begins at sundown on Thursday, Dec. 7, and finishes at sundown on Friday, Dec. 15. If you’re wondering why Hanukkah falls on a different date every year, it actually doesn’t, according to the Hebrew calendar. The rededication took place on the 25th day of the month of Kislev in 164 B.C. Every year since then, the start of Hanukkah has been on 25 Kislev. But the Hebrew calendar is lunar, meaning it follows the moon, whereas most of the rest of the world uses a solar-based calendar, which follows the sun. Because the lunar and solar calendars don’t line up precisely, Hanukkah can fall anytime from late November to late December.

“Never Again”

Despite all the support for Hamas in the United States and around the world supporters of Israel rally in Washington under heavy security, crying ‘never again’

Supporters of Israel are rallying by the thousands on Washington’s National Mall, voicing solidarity in the fight against Hamas and crying “never again.”

For those of you who do not understand the words “never again” it resulted from the killing of 6 million Jews by the Nazis in World War 2. Hamas wants to kill every Jew in Israel. That is their goal.

Don’t Let the Gun Lobby Win This Time

By Michael R. Bloomberg, owner of Bloomberg Businessweek

Another mass shooting. Another group of innocents slaughtered. Another public gathering place terrorized. Another community devastated. And another occasion for the gun lobby to say: Oh, well, move along, nothing to see here.

Not this time. We can’t let it happen again. We can’t let the gun lobby get away with it. Not when your community-your bowling alley, your bar, your house of worship, your movie theater, your supermarket, your shopping mall, your work-place and, yes, your child’s school-could be next. Unless we take action to adopt smart and commonsense gun laws, the question isn’t whether another massacre will occur-only how soon. And sadly, we know the answer: Very soon.

In 2023 alone, there have been more than 565 incidents in which someone shot four or more people-that’s almost two mass shootings a day. The US is the only country in the world where this happens. We are not the only country with mentally ill people, of course, just the only country that makes it easy for nearly anyone, no matter how dangerous, to buy guns, including guns that were designed to be used by soldiers.

There is no reason any civilian needs to carry a military-grade rifle. It’s not a hunting weapon. It’s a weapon designed to kill as many people as quickly as possible. The continued sale of these weapons, as well as high-capacity magazines, not only places all Americans at risk but also endangers our police officers, including those who must track down and apprehend people who have shown no compunction about mass killings.

The definition of insanity, it’s often said, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That’s what the gun Iobby wants us to keep doing-offering “thoughts and prayers” but doing nothing. But there are some encouraging signs that more people are refusing to go along.

Faced with the enormity of the catastrophe, Jared Golden, the Democratic congressman who represents most of rural Maine, has reversed his opposition to a ban on assault weapons. In announcing his change of heart, Golden, a Marine Corps veteran who knows the deadly capacity of these weapons firsthand, used words the public rarely hears from elected officials: “The time has now come for me to take responsibility for this failure,” he said to his great credit, asking Maine’s residents “for forgiveness and support.” Senator Susan Collins, too, has begun to reevaluate her positions. Collins was among the Republicans who helped kill an assault-weapons ban in 2013, after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School. She now says that she supports a ban on high-capacity magazines.

Golden can also help bring along Maine’s state lawmakers and its Democratic governor, Janet Mills. Mills has previously failed to lend her support to red-flag laws that are designed to prevent the kind of tragedy the state has just suffered: stopping a person with a history of mental illness from being able to buy and possess guns. She has also opposed stronger background checks and limits on magazines. Her support now is crucial to reviving and passing such laws.

It’s not just in Maine where the politics of gun safety are changing. Last year, after nearly three decades of inaction, 15 Republican senators joined Democrats to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act following mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas. And this year, Vermont, which like Maine has a strong tradition of gun ownership, adopted new gun safety policies under a Republican governor.

In the days and weeks ahead, it’s crucial for all of us to make our voices heard and demand that elected officials who have opposed sensible gun regulations follow Representative Golden in reversing course. The gun lobby wants the massacre in Maine to pass from the news quickly. We can’t let them win-not when so many innocent people are dying so many families are grieving and so many Americans are facing danger in their own communities.

The moment is now. Speak out. Get involved. And when politicians offer only thoughts and prayers, counter with deeds and votes. It’s the only way out of this insanity.