The Counting The Cost programme on COP21. Video: Al Jazeera
Report by Pacific Media Watch in Paris
Al Jazeera’s socio-economic current affairs show Counting The Cost has featured the future of Kiribati and the Pacific in a programme devoted to exploring whether the world will finally agree to a meaningful and binding agreement on carbon emissions.
Climate change has been called the biggest threat facing humanity, yet for years, countries, particularly rich ones, have done nothing to fundamentally tackle the issue.
Global carbon emissions have increased by more than 48 percent since 1992, when the first UN climate change conference took place in Rio de Janiero.
And with average global temperatures likely to rise by three or four degrees Celsius, scientists have warned that, if emissions continue to rise, we will pass the threshold after which climate change will become catastrophic and irreversible.
With so much at stake, more than 40,000 delegates from 195 countries are attending COP21 in the French capital, Paris – tasked with reaching the first truly universal climate pact.
Meaningful agreement?
But will the summit lead to a meaningful agreement on carbon emissions?
In this week’s Counting the Cost, the show demonstrates the effects of climate change around the world, and hears all sides of the argument.
Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate Programme at the World Resources Institute, joins Counting the Cost to discuss whether a deal can be reached.
Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum and a critic of the conventional view on global warming, addresses the relevance of such a summit.
Finally, we speak to Atiq Rahman, an environmentalist at the Bangladesh Centre for Advanced Studies, on the threat being posed to Bangladesh, a nation which is expected to see 7.2 million people affected by flooding due to the sea level rising between the years 2070 and 2100.
Source: Pacific Media Watch 9505
