ECO ECHO: Getting warmer in the winter

17:00 Fri 07 Dec 2007 - Elitsa Grancharova

The 13th United Nations Climate Change Conference started on December 3 – two weeks of talks taking place in Bali, Indonesia, between representatives of about 180 countries, some of which have ratified and some of which have not yet ratified the Kyoto Protocol.

Good news at the very beginning of the conference came from Australia, whose government decided to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. New Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd signed the instrument of ratification of the protocol on December 3 and the country will be a full member to the agreement by the end of March 2008. (The Kyoto Protocol is an international legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the world, which came into force on February 16 2005).

According to the European Greens, Australia’s decision will “intensify pressure on the US, now isolated among wealthy countries in rejecting the international global-warming pact”. One of the main challenges of the 2007 climate talks is again to try drawing the United States in to the Kyoto Protocol agreement. This country is the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter (at 25 per cent of the world’s output), with only four per cent of US electricity being produced by nuclear power plants. About 90 per cent of its energy comes from coal, which contains about 80 percent more carbon per unit of energy than gas does.

According to the UN, to have a system in place on time, an agreement with US should be made by 2009 at the latest.

Finnish Green MEP and vice-chair of the European Parliament’s environment committee Satu Hassi said: “The window of opportunities to tackle climate change is closing fast.” According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, avoiding catastrophic climate change means limiting average global warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. This requires global greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced by more than 50 per cent by 2050.

“Global leaders meeting must not waste this crucial opportunity. We urgently need an equitable, binding global agreement to reduce global emissions, which takes account of rich countries’ overwhelming responsibility for those emissions. The decision by the Australian government […] augurs well for negotiations in Bali. Only one major stumbling block now remains in the developed world. Hopefully, the US will finally see sense, so we can take global action before it’s too late,” Hassi said.

On the occasion of the Climate Talks, non-governmental organisations and people from 84 countries are organising various actions united in the Global Climate Campaign (globalclimatecampaign.org). Simultaneous actions in all countries are planned for December 8 but in many places different things are also happening after that date.

On November 4 and 11, about 100 000 and 120 000 Australians, respectively, marched against global warming nationwide. Actions in the US started on November 4, involving residents in more than 20 locations. In Vermont, for example, there were about 28 demonstrations with more than 500 people taking part. They reached every corner of the state, with participants hiking to mountain tops, kayaking on rivers, walking through towns, dancing in the streets, climbing up cliffs and more, at each demonstration displaying a banner saying “Vote to Stop Global Warming”.

The third annual Day of Action Against Climate Change in Bulgaria took place on December 6. The campaign focused on raising public awareness about the various easily achievable, effective and economically viable measures, which any person, politicians or commercial company can undertake to come out the winner in the fight against the global warming.

At 4.30pm at Slaveikov Square in Sofia, a street performance and concert started, which included stage plays, music and fire-dancing shows. Later in the day, the Red House Centre for Culture and Debate hosted a screening of the Greenpeace film On Thin Ice, followed by a multimedia presentation of less well-known technological, energy, household, industrial, transport, infrastructure and organisational innovations for greenhouse gas emissions reduction. All was organised by the environmental activist and geologist Mark Bossanyi, an expat in Bulgaria for 13 years, who established the Climate Action Bulgaria Initiative Committee in 2005.

Comments

Comments by david hill - 21:26 08 Dec 2007
	The build up of Carbon Dioxide is humankind's greatest threat to its very existence, but Carbon Capture, is putting off today what others will have to solve tomorrow. Politicians are pushing for CC, but the real motive appears to be the vast profits that multinationals will make and endow to them through taxation et al. The EU is no different here. The World Innovation Foundation is the voice of the world's 'INDEPENDENT' scientific community (3,500 eminent scientists, engineers and technologists and counting). It is not dictated too by governments or national academies of science. This independence of mind away from the control of governments and multi-national financially supported entities, gives the WIF the ability to tell the truth. Therefore with regard to just one possible aspect of trying to reduce the effects of global warming, that of carbon capture, what we are doing here is basically putting off as usual, problems that our future generations will have to solve. Therefore carbon capture is just putting off the inevitable and where the big multinationals will make literally billions out of a regime of continuation and where no real solutions are found. Indeed, if this vast amount of carbon leaches out of the ground or oceans in the future, we might as well say goodbye to human life on this planet. Therefore politicians are presently dabbling with humankind's very existence. What in essence should be happening is that governments around the world should be investing in the development of a centralised global centre that solves the world's immense problems, not putting them off for others to solve at a later date. We as independent scientific minds have been telling governments for a decade now to develop the concept of the ORE-STEM complex with its 1000 plus incubator centres around the world. Simply, this mechanism harnesses the world's creative thinking and siphons it into this huge centre to solve the biggest problems that confronts humankind and possibly save it from extinction. It is common sense in reality, as only a mechanism large enough to stop the worst effects of global warming and provide the necessary answers to famine, supporting the population explosion (now predicted to be a minimum of 10 billion by 2050 and possibly even 12 billion) and alternative energy sources (new discoveries) et al. Therefore the world has to force forward what the independent scientific community is saying, for if not, we certainly run the greatest risk of all, the extinction of the human experience itself. Dr David Hill World Innovation Foundation Bern, Switzerland