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Bali Conference: Climate Change Is Security Issue, Not a Green Dilemma |
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By Daniel Howden
The Independent UK
Thursday 06 December 2007
Foreign policy-makers are waking up to the impact of climate change on conflict
zones worldwide, and will add their voice to those calling on governments at
the UN conference in Bali to act urgently.
An internal presentation to senior diplomats at the Foreign Office listed every
recent, serious breakdown of civil order around the world and mapped it against
those countries hardest hit by climate change. The fit was almost perfect. One
of the diplomats present said there was an "audible intake of breath"
from the audience when the slide was shown.
As the scientific debate has been unequivocally settled by the UN's Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change this year, it has become increasingly apparent that
its effects will have major implications for foreign policy.
"Climate change presents an enormous challenge to the international community,
and unless we respond effectively we won't be able to deal with the implications,"
said John Ashton, the UK's special representative for climate change. "We
need to see how we can use the assets at our disposal to something about it."
Those assets include the know-how to build international coalitions, and the
kind of influence over governmental decision-making that environment ministers
can only dream of. Analysts point out that while environment experts know how
to make emissions trading work, it's a "political fact" that you get
a quicker response to a security crisis.
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US Blasted for Carbon Greed at UN Climate Meet |
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The India Times
Thursday 06 December 2007
Bali
- A US environmental group lashed the United States for greed and waste
at a global forum on climate change on Thursday, saying many American
states emitted more carbon pollution individually than scores of poor
nations combined.
"The
US is responsible for 27.8 per cent of the cumulative global warming
pollution, while all developing nations' emissions put together totals
just 23 per cent," the National Environmental Trust (NET) said.
Forty-two
US states individually emit more carbon dioxide than 50 developing
countries combined, and three states individually emit more CO2 than
100 developing countries, NET said.
Its
report noted that Texas, with 24 million people, emitted 696 million
tonnes of CO2 per year, more than Britain, whose 60 million people
emitted 578 million tonnes.
"Even
Wyoming, the most sparsely populated state in the US, with only 510,000
people, emits more carbon dioxide than 69 developing countries that are
home to 357 million," NET said.
The
report, presented on the fourth day of the 12-day UN talks, placed the
spotlight on what green groups brand President George W. Bush's
dangerous indifference to global warming.
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US Under Mounting Pressure at Bali |
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By Joseph Coleman
The Associated Press
Thursday 06 December 2007
Bali,
Indonesia - American climate negotiators refused to back down in their
opposition to mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions Thursday, even
as a U.S. Senate panel endorsed sharp reductions in pollution blamed
for global warming.
The
United States, the world's largest producer of such gases, has resisted
calls for strict limits on emissions at the U.N. climate conference,
which is aimed at launching negotiations for an agreement to follow the
Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.
That
stance suffered a blow when the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee passed a bill Wednesday to cut U.S. emissions by 70 percent
by 2050 from electric power plants, manufacturing and transportation.
The bill now goes to the full Senate.
U.S.
climate negotiator Harlan Watson, however, said that would not impact
Washington's position at the international gathering in Bali.
"In
our process, a vote for movement of a bill out of committee does not
ensure its ultimate passage," he told reporters. "I don't know the
details, but we will not alter our posture here."
It
was the first bill calling for mandatory U.S. limit on greenhouse gases
to be taken up in Congress since global warming emerged as an
environmental issue more than two decades ago.
Republican critics of the bill argued that limiting the emissions could become a hardship because of higher energy costs.
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Scientists Beg for Climate Action |
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By Seth Borenstein
The Associated Press
Wednesday 05 December 2007
Washington
- For the first time, more than 200 of the world's leading climate
scientists, losing their patience, urged government leaders to take
radical action to slow global warming because "there is no time to
lose."
A
petition from at least 215 climate scientists calls for the world to
cut in half greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It is directed at a
conference of diplomats meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate the
next global warming treaty. The petition, obtained by The Associated
Press, is to be announced at a press conference there Wednesday night.
The
appeal from scientists follows a petition last week from more than 150
global business leaders also demanding the 50 percent cut in greenhouse
gases. That is the estimate that scientists calculate would hold future
global warming to a little more than a 3-degree Fahrenheit increase and
is in line with what the European Union has adopted.
In
the past, many of these scientists have avoided calls for action,
leaving that to environmental advocacy groups. That dispassionate
stance was taken during the release this year of four separate reports
by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
But no more.
"It's
a grave crisis, and we need to do something real fast," said petition
signer Jeff Severinghaus, a geosciences professor at the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. "I think the stakes are
way way too high to be playing around."
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Major Global Warming Bill Headed for Senate |
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By Frank Davies
The San Jose Mercury News
Thursday 06 December 2007
Backers build momentum despite GOP opposition.
Washington
- In a landmark effort to tackle global warming, a Senate committee
Wednesday approved a sweeping program to slash greenhouse gas emissions
through the first half of this century and mandate a low-carbon future
for the U.S. economy.
"This
is the most far-reaching global warming bill in the world," said Sen.
Barbara Boxer, chair of the Environment Committee, who was jubilant and
tearful after the 11-8 vote that sends the bill to the Senate floor
next year.
The
measure still faces significant obstacles in the Senate and the House,
and the Bush administration disagrees with some of the bill's mandates.
But the bill's backers say political and moral momentum are on their
side.
"This
is historic, and it sends a message to the Senate, White House and the
world that the United States is ready to get into this fight and lead,"
said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., one of the co-sponsors of the
300-page measure.
The
10 Democrats and independents on the committee were joined by one
Republican, John Warner of Virginia - the other co-sponsor - who
predicted the bill would force members of Congress and presidential
candidates "to do their homework and take a stand."
The
measure would establish a cap-and-trade program, administered by two
new federal boards, and set emissions limits that get tougher every
year after 2012. Utilities and industries would be granted allowances
to stay under the cap, and could sell or trade those allowances.
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In Bali, Germany Takes Dramatic Step on Climate Change |
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By Mariah Blake
The Christian Science Monitor
Wednesday 05 December 2007
The country adopts legislation Wednesday
to cut emissions 36 percent as delegates hammer out a post-Kyoto treaty.
Hamburg, Germany - This week, delegates from more than 180 countries are gathered
in Bali for a United Nations-sponsored conference, where they will try to hash
out a road map for a post-Kyoto climate treaty. Meanwhile, Germany is forging
ahead and adopting what experts here say is the most comprehensive climate-protection
package ever enacted worldwide.
Using a raft of measures - many aimed at boosting energy efficiency or
cultivating renewable energy sources - the nation plans to reduce heat-trapping
gases by 36 percent from 1990 levels by the year 2020.
By adopting the plan Wednesday, Germany aims to influence the negotiations.
"We hope that the example set by our decisions will be followed and that
we come together internationally to implement ambitious climate goals,"
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Saturday in her weekly podcast.
But at home the plan has gotten mixed reviews, particularly from environmental
groups and climate scientists who say there are crucial gaps that reflect larger
contradictions in the nation's policies.
Germany has made bold strides in the fight against climate change and is one
of only three European nations on track to meet its Kyoto obligations.
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The Tropical Global Warming Solution |
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By Glenn Hurowitz
Grist
Monday 03 December 2007
Bali conference could end deforestation
overnight.
Indonesia is the world's third largest global warming polluter, behind the
United States and China, and just ahead of Brazil. But in Indonesia, like Brazil
and the rest of the tropical world, pollution isn't coming from factories, power
plants, or cars like it is in the industrialized world. Instead, almost all
of it is coming from the rapid burning of the world's vast tropical forests
to make room for timber, agriculture, and especially palm oil plantations. (Despite
its green reputation, palm oil is anything but: a recent study in Science found
that palm oil, like other biofuels, produces two to nine times more greenhouse
gases than regular old crude oil because of the forests and grasslands destroyed
for its production.)
Companies like Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, Cargill and Seattle's Imperium
Renewables are paying top dollar to turn palm oil into food, cosmetics and biodiesel.
That global demand has driven the value of a hectare of palms above $1000 (PDF)
in some cases - providing a powerful financial incentive to corporations, investors,
and farmers to raze the forests, regardless of the consequences to the climate
or to the endangered orangutans, tigers, and rhinoceroses - and indigenous people
- who need them to survive.
The Bali conference could immediately eliminate that perverse accounting by
making sure forests and other wild lands around the world are financially valued
for the carbon they store, and not just their potential as timber or agricultural
land. The way to do that is to allow polluters to get credit for protecting
forests that they can apply against their pollution reduction obligations, an
idea called carbon ranching or avoided deforestation.
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Climate Fund Falls Far Short |
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By Charles J. Hanley
The Associated Press
Tuesday 04 December 2007
Bali,
Indonesia - Victims of climate change, real and potential, appealed
Tuesday for a vast increase in international aid to protect them from
and compensate them for rising seas, crop-killing drought and other
likely impacts of global warming.
"We
cannot wait. We need to do something now," said climatologist Rizaldi
Boer of Indonesia, some of whose farmers are already suffering from
unusual dry spells blamed on climate change.
The
"Adaptation Fund," being developed under U.N. climate agreements to
enable poorer countries to adjust to a warmer world, has thus far drawn
a mere $67 million for a task the World Bank estimates will cost tens
of billions of dollars a year.
The
almost 190 nations assembled here for the annual U.N. climate
conference are taking up the fund's future among other issues on an
agenda aimed chiefly at launching a two-year negotiating process to
seal a deal to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
That
175-nation accord requires 36 industrial nations to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, a key source of global warming, by an average 5 percent
below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States is the only industrial
nation that has rejected Kyoto.
The
European Union and others are seeking a post-Kyoto agreement that would
mandate much deeper reductions by industrial nations - including, they
hope, the U.S. - in carbon dioxide and other such emissions from power
plants, factories, vehicles and other sources.
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