Extremes of weather, including increases in flooding around the world, are linked to global warming.
photo courtesy Enviroment News Service and the David Suzuki foundation
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Jan/Feb 2001 issue (#49)
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Extremes of weather, including increases in flooding around the world, are linked to global warming. photo courtesy Enviroment News Service and the David Suzuki foundation |
The contrast was stark at talks on global warming at The Hague, Netherlands, recently. The richest, most heavily polluting nations, including the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan, argued for flexibility (loopholes, in other words) instead of cutting back carbon dioxide emissions (CO2). Emitted principally from burning coal, oil, and gas, CO2 is the main culprit in the heating of the planet. Meanwhile the poorest nations, emitting the fewest gases, had their pleas for CO2 reductions ignored, even as they continue to suffer the most violent consequences of climate change.
The collapsed talks, called the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-6) met again in Ottawa, but still no deal was reached.
Consequences of global warming, now in progress, include disappearance of animal and plant species; melting of polar ice caps with a consequent rising of the seas, inundation of low-lying areas and, according to World Watch Institute, perhaps a billion people forced to become "climate refugees"; and drastic climate shifts including extreme heat or cold, storms, droughts, and fires; desertification; and more.
The Hague conference was to have fleshed out the Kyoto Protocol, drafted by more than 170 countries in 1997. The agreement stipulated that by 2012 the US would lower its greenhouse-gas emissions by 7 percent below 1990 levels, other industrialized countries would lower their emissions by over 5 percent, and the developing countries would target their emissions at a later round of talks.
The US, Canada, Australia, and Japan argued for "flexibility" mechanisms including carbon sinks, emissions trading, and funding clean energy projects in developing countries.
Problems with these proposals are as follows:Carbon sinks: These are huge plantations of trees that absorb some planet-heating gases. A delegate from Costa Rica argued that plantations of monoculture trees lead to a loss of biodiversity. They depend on heavy inputs of energy, fertilizer, and pesticides, are unproven, and avoid the real need to cut back on greenhouse gases.
Emissions trading: Climate Solutions, noted that this "scheme, promoted by market-mesmerized economists, determines each country's emissions quota. A country which emits less than its quota (e.g., Russia) could sell its unused allotment to another country (e.g., the US) which could then emit that more than its assigned quota." Climate Solutions [www.climatesolutions.org] is an Olympia-based group dedicated to helping the Pacific Northwest to become a world leader in alternative energy sources.
Funding clean energy projects in developing countries (also called Clean Development Mechanism): This plan permits industrial nations to buy inexpensive reductions in developing countries. Climate Solutions said a typical CDM plan might involve selling China technology to make its coal cleaner. Or a US coal-burning utility could pay to add or preserve forests in Costa Rica, which would absorb some of the excess carbon dioxide emitted in the US. These North-South carbon trades are being actively promoted by the World Bank-even as the Bank continues to underwrite carbon-intensive projects in poor countries, Climate Solutions noted. Between 1992 and 1998, the World Bank underwrote $13.6 billion for coal-powered generating plants and oil and gas explorations in developing countries, according to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies.
"There are profound problems with such proxy reduction schemes," Climate Solutions noted. "They are impossible to monitor. There is no agreement on enforcement mechanisms. Moreover, they allow wealthy countries to buy their way out of real carbon reductions at home. Finally, they are preventing the huge surge of worldwide economic expansion that would accompany the wholesale transfer of clean energy technologies to developing nations."
University of Washington professor Dr. Richard Gammon noted that there was "some progress" at The Hague on technical matters. He is professor of chemistry and oceanography and adjunct professor of atmospheric sciences; and was co-author of the 1990 Scientific Assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Asked what people can do, Gammon said people should "get informed on the correct science and spread the word at every opportunity, assess your own carbon budget and begin to reduce it [and] get involved politically-demanding real action from your city/county/state/ and national government. Join one of the many environmental groups with active climate change public outreach programs (Union of Concerned Scientists/Sound Science Initiative; Climate Solutions; Northwest Council on Climate Change."
In the end, Gammon concluded, "the changes occurring the natural world will sooner or later force all countries back to the bargaining table. Nature bats last and she owns the stadium," he said.
Material from Environment News Service and Climate Solutions was incorporated into this article.
(ENS)--"Each American emits three times more greenhouse gases than a Frenchman," pointed out French President Jacques Chirac at the talks on global warming at The Hague recently. Chirac urged the US to "cast aside their doubts and hesitations," and share its responsibility in cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
(ENS)--"For us, global climate change is not only a scientific phenomenon. For people in the south, climate change means a lot of suffering, a lot of cost to human lives." This was the statement of a Salvadorean representative of the environmental group Friends of the Earth at a press conference at the recent global warming talks at The Hague, Netherlands. He said Hurricane Mitch, which hit the Caribbean in November 1998, killed some 10,000 people in floods and mudslides, and injured tens of thousands more. He also mentioned floods in Venezuela that last year killed some 25,000 people.
"Some people enjoy the benefits of fuel consumption, and some people suffer the consequences," he said. "All the damage is on the people who are vulnerable, the people who are poor. This is a very high level of injustice."
Godwin Ojo, an FoE member from Nigeria, spoke of the unprecedented flooding in Mozambique in February 2000, when more than 100,000 people fled their homes, drinking water became contaminated, and the risk of malaria and cholera epidemics threatened major public health crises.
"We believe that industrialized nations need to cut down on their emissions drastically," Ojo said. "If the industrialized nations continue with their current trend ... there will be people and countries that will be held accountable for the loss of life and the loss of livelihood that is taking place in poorer nations."
Brent Blackwelder, president of FoE US, said: "Congress needs to wake up to the fact that climate change is real and that action needs to be taken now." "If we fail to dramatically lower fossil fuel emissions, we are sure to see more horrific weather events."
Blackwelder noted that according to a 1998 Commerce Department report, weather related catastrophes cost US taxpayers billions of dollars every year.
"This is an unbelievable and absolutely staggering figure," Blackwelder said. "The members of the Senate and House who are blocking the (Kyoto) agreement talk about 'family values.' But they fail to live up to their moral responsibility, because the preponderance of evidence suggests that our wasteful profligate energy use is actually devastating families and communities throughout the world."
Solcomhouse News Service--A report by the UK Meteorological Office's Centre for Climate Prediction quoted Michael Meacher, British Environment Minister, as saying, "The severity of [global warming] cannot be overstated. It is, by far, the greatest problem the world faces today." In a separate interview, Meacher said, "The important point is that the US has 4 percent of the world's population and accounts for 25 percent of global gas emissions and 36 percent of emissions from the industrialised world. That is why it's so important that they concentrate on the domestic economy--that is the cause of climate change."
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