Trust in Bonn?

About 163 countries have submitted plans on how they will contribute to meeting the Paris climate agreement goal to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. But put together, the plans are likely to lead to a 3 degree temperature rise this century, according to the United Nations. With hurricanes, floods and other impacts of climate change becoming increasingly destructive, countries urgently need to step up their ambitions to cut emissions if they are to keep global warming within safe limits, experts said. With such impacts following a global temperature rise of just 1.2 degrees Celsius, many poorer nations and organisations representing the world's vulnerable are pushing hard to keep temperature rises to not just well below 2 degrees but to a more ambitious 1.5 degrees Celsius. A global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees is "a critical threshold which can still prevent many of the worst impacts on poor populations", said Sven Harmeling of CARE International.

Wealthy countries have pledged to raise $100 billion a year in climate finance by 2020, to help developing countries cope with the impacts of climate change and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But more than $4 trillion is needed for developing countries to implement their plans, according to the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group which represents the world's poorest 47 countries. The group is pushing for the Bonn talks to come up with more promises of cash to fund the needed changes. Least-developed countries alone, in their climate action plans, have said they need at least $200 billion just to adapt to worsening climate impacts, including harsher droughts and worsening floods, Gebru Jember Endalew, the Ethiopian chair of the group said. Not finding it will be "a serious barrier to ambitious climate action", he said.

In the effort to reduce emissions and stave off worsening impacts, "we're in a race against time," Angel Gurria, secretary-general of the OECD, said last week. Time is indeed short, with global emissions of climate changing gases needing to peak by 2020 - just three years away - in order to keep warming to relatively safe levels, according to the World Resources Institute.

Camilla Born, a senior policy adviser for E3G, a London-based climate think tank said: "We are going to have to show increased ambition by 2020 if we're going to really get on track to delivering those long-term goals. This is a broader and deeper task than we've ever seen before. This isn't just a conversation about raising targets. This is about structuring our economies differently." (our emphasis)

But this is exactly what is not happening. It is capitalist business as usual and we should not expect any change except more climate change.