Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Exxon Free Environmental Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1294)	10/9/2007 10:22:50 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 49038

World moves into the ecological red By Jeremy LovellSat Oct 6, 4:41 PM ET The world moved into "ecological overdraft" on Saturday, the point at which human consumption exceeds the ability of the earth to sustain it in any year and goes into the red, the New Economics Foundation think-tank said. Ecological Debt Day this year is three days earlier than in 2006 which itself was three days earlier than in 2005. NEF said the date had moved steadily backwards every year since humanity began living beyond its environmental means in the 1980s. "As the world creeps closer to irreversible global warming and goes deeper into ecological debt, why on earth, say, would the UK export 20 tonnes of mineral water to Australia and then re-import 21 tonnes," said NEF director Andrew Simms. "And why would that wasteful trade be more the rule than the exception," he added. Not only was there a massive gulf between rich and poor but there were deep variations in environmental profligacy between the rich countries, NEF said. If everyone in the world had the same consumption rates as in the United States it would take 5.3 planet earths to support them, NEF said, noting that the figure was 3.1 for France and Britain, 3.0 for Spain, 2.5 for Germany and 2.4 for Japan. But if everyone emulated China, which is building a coal-fired power station every five days to feed its booming economy, it would take only 0.9 of a planet. The NEF report comes as diplomatic momentum builds for UN environment ministers meeting in December on the Indonesian island of Bali to agree to start talks on a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol on curbing climate change that expires in 2012. Governments have started to sit up and take heed as global public opinion begins calling for urgent action to tackle what has been described as the biggest threat facing humanity. But there is still no meeting of minds between the world's biggest carbon polluter, the United States, and booming emitters like China and India; both sides insisting that the other make the first move. But the NEF report "Chinadependence" noted that Britain among others was understating its carbon emissions because it in effect exported its smokestack industries to China in the 1990s and was now importing products it would have been making itself. "As China is increasingly attacked because of its rising pollution levels, people overlook two important issues," said Simms. "First, per person, China's greenhouse gas emissions are a fraction of those in Europe and the United States." "Second, a closer look at trade flows reveals that a large share of China's rising emissions is due to the dependence of the rest of the world on exports from China. "Because of the way that data on carbon emissions gets collected at the international level, this has the effect of 'carbon laundering' economies like those of Britain and the U.S.," he added.

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (1294)	10/9/2007 2:06:04 PM
From: Sam	Respond to of 49038

Peak oil--can't happen soon enough, IMHO. Scientist: Emissions levels accelerating By MERAIAH FOLEY, Associated Press Writer Worldwide economic growth has accelerated the level of greenhouse gas emissions to a dangerous threshold scientists had not expected for another decade, according to a leading Australian climate change expert. Tim Flannery told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that an upcoming report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will contain new data showing that the level of climate-changing gases in the atmosphere has already reached critical levels. Flannery is not a member of the IPCC, but said he based his comments on a thorough review of the technical data included in the panel's three working group reports published earlier this year. Carola Traverso Saibante, spokeswoman for IPCC headquarters is in Geneva, said she was unable to disclose what would be in the final report synthesizing the data before it is released in November. "What the report establishes is that the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is already above the threshold that can potentially cause dangerous climate change," Flannery told the broadcaster late Monday. "We are already at great risk of dangerous climate change, that's what these figures say. It's not next year or next decade, it's now." Flannery, whose recent book "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth," made best-seller lists worldwide, said the data showed that the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions had reached about 455 parts per million by mid-2005, well ahead of scientists' previous calculations. "We thought we'd be at that threshold within about a decade, that we had that much time," Flannery said. "I mean, that's beyond the limits of projection, beyond the worst-case scenario as we thought of it in 2001," when the last major IPCC report was issued. The new data could add urgency to the next round of U.N. climate change talks on the Indonesian island of Bali in December, which will aim to start negotiations on a replacement for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel called Tuesday for an international system of global emissions trading to be adopted as part of an agreement to flight climate change from 2012 onward. Speaking at a symposium of Nobel laureates and other leading scientists, Merkel insisted that only by establishing limits on carbon dioxide output per individual around the world — suggesting about 2 tons per head — could the fight to stop global warming be effective. "Our long-term goal can only be the assimilation of worldwide per capita emissions," Merkel told the conference. Her suggestion would mean drastic cuts: Germany currently has a carbon dioxide output of some 11 tons per person per year, while the U.S. is at around 20 tons per person. Flannery said that the recent economic boom in China and India has helped to accelerate the levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but strong growth in the developed world has also exacerbated the problem. "It's a worldwide issue. We've had growing economies everywhere, we're still basing that economic activity on fossil fuels," he said. "The metabolism of that economy is now on a collision course clearly with the metabolism of our planet." A spokesman for Australia's IPCC delegate, Ian Carruthers, said he was not available to comment on the report because it was still in draft form. news.yahoo.com