DP-Index-dec07-lead3
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A section of
DOCPOST which is an
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summary, index
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CLIMATE CHANGE
The
Bali Deal Is Worse Than Kyoto
Most
of the other governments insisted that the cuts be made at home. But
Gore demanded a series of loopholes big enough to drive a Hummer
through. The rich nations, he said, should be allowed to buy their
cuts from other countries. When he won, the protocol created an
exuberant global market in fake emissions cuts. The western nations
could buy “hot air” from the former Soviet Union. Because the
cuts were made against emissions in 1990, and because industry in
that bloc had subsequently collapsed, the former Soviet Union
countries would pass well below the bar. Gore’s scam allowed them
to sell the gases they weren’t producing to other nations. He also
insisted that rich nations could buy nominal cuts from poor ones.
Entrepreneurs in India and China have made billions by building
factories whose primary purpose is to produce greenhouse gases, so
that carbon traders in the rich world will pay to clean them up.
by
George Monbiot. Counter Currents. 18/12/2007
Global
warming to hit poor people: Report
The
impacts of climate change on poor people's human development prospect
around the world are significantly underestimated. The latest Human
Development Report observes that the world is drifting towards a
tipping point that could lock the poorest countries and their poorest
citizens in a downward spiral leaving hundreds of millions facing
malnutrition, water scarcity, ecological threats, loss of livelihood
and drop in agriculture productivity.
by
Vinod K Shukla. Sahara Time. 02/12/2007
What
single breakthrough would best advance the fight against climate
change?
Kofi
Annan
The
battle to find the funds
It
will take huge resources to fund the adaptation to the actual impact
of climate change on communities around the world. Funding must be a
part of any serious solution to the climate change predicament we
face.
Kofi
Annan was the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations
David
Bellamy
Conservation,
not carbon doom
Consensus
at Bali (despite the air miles) should replace the unproven big stick
of carbon doom and gloom with an interactive map highlighting the
fact that both rich and poor will prosper from good science,
engineering and technologies already in the pipeline. No need for
debilitating taxes, as environmental rewards will flow from the
efficient use of energy, water and other resources.
The
Guardian. 03/12/2007
Key
climate summit opens in Bali
Governments
at a key UN climate summit will discuss how to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions after the current Kyoto Protocol targets expire in 2012.
Talks will centre on whether a further set of binding targets is
needed. It is the first such meeting since the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that evidence for global
warming was "unequivocal".
The
two-week gathering in Bali, Indonesia, will also debate how to help
poor nations cope in a warming world.
BBC
News. 03/12/2007
Climate
Talks Take on Added Urgency After Report
Jakarta,
Indonesia, Dec. 2 Thousands of government officials, industry
lobbyists, environmental campaigners and observers are arriving on
the Indonesian island of Bali for two weeks of talks starting Monday
(03/12/2007) that are aimed at breathing new life into the troubled
15-year-old global climate treaty. A heightened sense of urgency
surrounds the meeting in light of a report issued last month by the
United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which
detailed the potentially devastating effects of global warming in the
panel's strongest language yet. But few participants expect this
round of talks to produce significant breakthroughs. At most, they
say, it will result in new commitments to negotiate to update the
original treaty by the end of 2009.
by
Peter Gelling. The New York Times. 03/12/2007
Climate
Change: Bangladesh Takes Its Trauma To Bali
Bangladesh
sees in the United Nations climate change conference, currently
underway on the Indonesian resort island of Bali, an opportunity to
remind the world of its special vulnerability.
Bangladesh
is still trying to cope with the aftereffects of Cyclone Sidr which
tore through this deltaic country on Nov.15, killing more than 4,000
people and rendering several millions more homeless and starving.
by
Farid Ahmed. Countercurrents. 04/12/2007
Errors
of emission
The
dangers of climate change and global warming are not new. Back in
1992, this was the basis of the Earth Summit in Rio, and the UN
Framework on Climate Change, the first international treaty where
countries agreed to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The
Kyoto Protocol, which first set mandatory targets for industrialised
nations to reduce emissions of GHGs that are considered responsible
for global warming, was adopted in 1997, though, tellingly, ratified
only in 2005, and without two key countries, the United States and
Australia. Today, few can doubt that the world is getting warmer or
that humans are responsible. We believe it not only because of the
cogency of the reports of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), but because we can feel the impact: heat waves and
floods, the Katrinas and the Sidrs.
by
Supriya Bezbaruah. The Hindustan Times. 10/12/2007
India
on climate conflict list
India,
Bangladesh and Pakistan are among potential hot spots where climate
change could aggravate tensions, trigger violence and spawn conflict,
a report released at the Bali climate meet warned.
by
G.S. Mudur. The Telegraph. 11/12/2007
Nobel
Prize Acceptance Speech
Your
Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Honorable members of the Norwegian
Nobel Committee, Excellencies, Ladies and gentlemen. I have a purpose
here today. It is a purpose I have tried to serve for many years. I
have prayed that God would show me a way to accomplish it. Sometimes,
without warning, the future knocks on our door with a precious and
painful vision of what might be. One hundred and nineteen years ago,
a wealthy inventor read his own obituary, mistakenly published years
before his death. Wrongly believing the inventor had just died, a
newspaper printed a harsh judgment of his life’s work, unfairly
labeling him “The Merchant of Death” because of his invention -
dynamite. Shaken by this condemnation, the inventor made a fateful
choice to serve the cause of peace.
by
Al Gore. The Huffington Post. 11/12/2007
Developing
nations find CFCs attractive
International
concern about the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
and the possible effects on global temperatures, have led to a series
of international initiatives for collective action. These include the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC 1992),
The Montreal Protocol to Control Substances that Damage the Ozone
Layer 1987 and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 on Global Warming.
Paul
Horwitz, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) Ozone Secretariat talked to Marianne de
Nazareth at the 60th Annual DPI/NGO Conference held at the United
Nations in New York.
The
Deccan Herald. 16/12/2007
Dump
Thy SUVs
The
debate over climate change is surreal—those humming along in their
suvs or sitting in overheated buildings are asking people with
bicycles and thatched roofs to sacrifice and arrest global warming.
While the thermostats in Manhattan can't be adjusted to consume less
energy, the electrification of Indian villages is being questioned in
Bali where delegates from 190 countries are discussing the future of
the planet in a dense fog of claims and demands, disagreements and
even disinformation.
Some
see it as neo-colonialism, an attempt by the West to perpetuate the
status quo and maintain unsustainable lifestyles while trying to
impede growth in the developing world. No one questions science
anymore but how should responsibility and costs be spread are the
contentious issues. India is under pressure to take on future
commitments, and the pressure will only grow as global opinion on
taking action converges, making it a recurrent foreign policy
migraine. So far the developing countries, including China, are
sticking together as G-77 but as in any gargantuan gathering, fission
and fusion are both likely.
by
Seema Sirohi. Outlook. 17/12/2007
Later
is over
The
negotiators at the U.N. climate conference here in Bali came from
almost 200 countries and spoke almost as many languages, but driving
them all to find a better way to address climate change was one
widely shared, if unspoken, sentiment: that "later" is over
for our generation. "Later" was a luxury for previous
generations and civilizations. It meant that you could paint the same
landscape, see the same animals, eat the same fruit, climb the same
trees, fish the same rivers, enjoy the same weather or rescue the
same endangered species that you did when you were a kid -- but just
do it later, whenever you got around to it.
Citizen's
forum gearing up to assess situation aftermath Bali
The
Citizens Global Platform (India) in response to the Bali declaration
has said, the issues of climate change should be strategically made a
very serious issue with wider awareness campaign at all levels—local
community, children and youth in every corner of the country—and
efforts, to address the impacts of climate change from the grass root
level to policy level should be encouraged. CGP-I is part of the
global initiative by civil society actors in Tanzania and Finland,
Brazil and open to all those interested in global issues.
by
Ashok Sharma. The Financial Express. 17/12/2007
Bali
Climate conference has a message for rural community
The
13th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) which concluded in Bali in Indonesia was a partial
success. It has some good message for the rural community.
The
world leaders recognised that 20% of the global emission of
greenhouse gases (GHGs) can be contained by forestation. The
programme, Reducing Emissions From Deforestation and Degradation
(REDD) aims to compensate the developing countries in the tropical
region to maintain their forests and discourages deforestation. It
allows developing countries to sell carbon offsets to rich countries
in return for not burning their tropical forests from 2013.
by
Ashok B Sharma. The Finacial Express. 17/12/2007
Climate
of Confusion
Ever
since the Rio conference, the environmental rhetoric has steadily
escalated and today we are overwhelmed by PR gurus with mandates to
get politicians re-elected on a soft environmental ticket and protect
profits of multinationals without damaging their environmental
credentials. In that process, pin-pointing over-consumption —
undoubtedly, one of the primary drivers of climate crisis —
continues to be taboo. Looking at per capita energy consumption, per
capita GDP and per capita emission of greenhouse gases, one does not
have to be an Einstein to see the linkage. Yet, not only politicians
and business leaders, but the popular media too, continue to advocate
consumption as the motor of growth, job protection and profits, as
the entire industrialised world focuses on technology solutions,
energy saving, fuel switch, renewable energy etc., as the panacea.
by
Dr H.N. Sharan. The Asian Age. 19/12/2007
Class
injustice
It
is a truism and so does not require detailed surveys to drive home
its point: in India the disparities in living standards and
consumption patterns, in particular of energy, between the rich and
the poor are so vast that in the context of climate change, by
emitting disproportionately large amounts of carbon, the former class
is eating into the carbon space that the latter genuinely needs for
its economic growth and development. By focussing exclusively on
economic growth in the gross without adequately addressing issues of
equity, national policies of the recent past have increased these
disparities, which will only render the already vulnerable sections
of India even more incapable of adapting to the dangerous effects of
climate change.
by
R. Ramachandran. Frontline. 21/12/2007
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