Reuters

    Monday 01 October 2007

    Jakarta - Cutting emissions from deforestation will be key to curbing climate change and should be agreed upon in December's climate talks in Bali, a leading Indonesian forestry researcher said on Monday.

    The conference on the resort island is expected to initiate talks on clinching a new deal by 2009 to fight global warming.

    Under the Kyoto Protocol, developed nations can pay poor countries to cut emissions from activities such as the manufacture of refrigerants and fertilizers as well as capturing greenhouse gases from farm waste and rubbish dumps.

    But greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, nearly 20 percent of the world's total, are not yet eligible for trade because they were excluded from the Kyoto Protocol's first round, which runs out in 2012.

    "It's huge because preserving and conserving the existing pool will then become very attractive," said Daniel Murdiyarso, senior scientist at the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

    "Whether by means of a market mechanism or not, including deforestation in the new deal is something Indonesia and every developing country should push for."

    Murdiyarso, who is often consulted by the government on forestry and climate change issues, said the next climate deal should increase emission cut targets to halt rising temperatures.

   
    By Peter Applebome
    The New York Times

    Sunday 30 September 2007

    Yorktown Heights, New York - When she moved to the United States from Germany seven years ago, Angela Neigl brought with her the energy-conscious sensibilities of life in Europe. You drove small cars. You recycled every can, lid and stray bit of household waste. You brought your own reusable bags or crate to the market rather than adding to the billions of plastic bags clogging landfills, killing aquatic creatures on the bottoms of oceans and lakes, and blowing in the wind.

    But, alas, there she was Friday morning, lugging her white plastic bags from the Turco's supermarket, like everyone else, figuring there was no fighting the American way of waste.

    "When I was first here, I brought my own bags to the market, but they would stuff the groceries in the plastic bags anyway. Finally, I gave up," she said. "People are very nice here. It's more relaxed. But the environmental thing is a little scary."

    You could have learned a lot, I guess, about the politics of global warming from the lukewarm response President Bush received last week from skeptical delegates at his conference on climate change and energy security. But in the most micro of ways, you can learn plenty any day of the week at the Turco's or the Food Emporium in Yorktown Heights, the Super Stop & Shop in North White Plains, the A.&P. or Mrs. Green's Natural Market in Mount Kisco or just about anywhere Americans shop in Westchester County and beyond.

    And the lesson for now pretty much seems to be that no matter how piddly the effort, no matter how small the bother, well, it's too much bother.

    
    By Bojana Stoparic
    Women's eNews

    Tuesday 25 September 2007

In a warm-up meeting ahead of a major global-warming gathering in Bali in December, advocates pressed negotiators to include more women in the process and pay more attention to women's special expertise and exposure to climate change.

    Women's perspectives and experiences must be included in international negotiations over climate change if efforts to curb global warming are to succeed, participants said at a roundtable last week on the effects of climate change on women.

    Sixty government, United Nations and civil society representatives attended the meeting on Sept. 21, which aimed to influence discussions during Monday's gathering on climate change at the U.N. headquarters as part of the annual meeting of the general assembly.

    "Climate change will increase existing inequalities," said Irene Dankelman, vice-chair of the Women's Environment and Development Organization, in her opening remarks at the roundtable. "Not only are women adversely impacted by climate change, they also contribute differently from men to its causes and its solutions."

    The group highlighted women's disproportionate vulnerability to the types of natural disasters that climate change is expected to cause as well as women's often overlooked capacity to join mitigation efforts.

   
    By Seth Borenstein
    The Associated Press

    Sunday 23 September 2007

    Washington - Climate scientist Michael Mann runs down the list of bad global warming news: The world is spewing greenhouse gases at a faster rate. Summer Arctic sea ice is at record lows. The ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica are melting quicker than expected.

    Is he the doomsayer global warming skeptics have called him?

    Mann laughs. This Penn State University professor - and many other climate scientists - are sunny optimists. Hope blooms in the hottest of greenhouses.

    Climate scientists say mankind is on the path for soaring temperatures that will melt polar ice sheets, raise seas to dangerous levels, and trigger mass extinctions. But they say the most catastrophic of consequences can and will be avoided.

    They have hope. So should you, Mann said.

    "Sometimes we fear that we are delivering too morose a message and not conveying enough that there is reason for optimism," Mann said.

    Mann is not alone in laughing, even though the news he delivers could make people cry.

    "It's hard at times," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver. "You can't give up hope because what else is there in life if you give up hope? When you give up hope, that's quitting and scientists don't like to quit."

   
    By Jeff Mason
    Reuters

    Monday 24 September 2007

    Brussels - The European Union will press ahead with plans to include aviation in its emissions trading system despite United States' efforts through a UN body to discourage it, a spokeswoman for the EU executive said on Friday.

    Airline emissions are at the top of the agenda of a tri-annual meeting of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in Montreal, which began earlier this week.

    The United States, which opposes EU plans to include foreign airlines in its emissions trading scheme, is pushing ICAO to let individual nations decide the best way to manage greenhouse gas emissions from their airlines, a US working paper says.

    It asks the group to "endorse guidance material for emissions trading that is on that basis of mutual consent" and to say "the only acceptable manner for managing emissions from international aviation is on the basis of mutual agreement".

    But the European Commission, which authored the legislation that would include flights coming into and out of the 27-nation bloc from 2012 in the EU scheme, said it will go forward with its proposal, which it says is in line with international law.

    "The mutual consent approach for us is not an option," said Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.

    
    By James Macintyre
    The Independent UK

    Saturday 22 September 2007

    The Pope is expected to use his first address to the United Nations to deliver a powerful warning over climate change in a move to adopt protection of the environment as a "moral" cause for the Catholic Church and its billion-strong following.

    The New York speech is likely to contain an appeal for sustainable development, and it will follow an unprecedented Encyclical (a message to the wider church) on the subject, senior diplomatic sources have told The Independent.

    It will act as the centrepiece of a US visit scheduled for next April - the first by Benedict XVI, and the first Papal visit since 1999 - and round off an environmental blitz at the Vatican, in which the Pope has personally led moves to emphasise green issues based on the belief that climate change is affecting the poorest people on the planet, and the principle that believers have a duty to "protect creation".

    Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in the UK, said last night: "This is a crucial issue both today and for all future generations. We are the stewards of creation and we need to take that responsibility seriously and co-operate to care for the created world."