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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: HPilot who wrote (26669)	12/9/2009 3:19:06 PM
From: Land Shark	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

The Guardian’s Editorial Filed under: Climate Science— eric @ 8 December 2009 The following editorial was published today by 56 newspapers around the world in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like The Guardian most of the newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their front page. The Guardian, the editorial is free to reproduce under Creative Commons. RealClimate takes no formal position on the statements made in the editorial. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copenhagen climate change conference: Fourteen days to seal history’s judgment on this generation Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency. Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year’s inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world’s response has been feeble and half-hearted. Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must be solved by everyone. The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which these predictions are based. Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty; real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism. Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so. But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty. Next June’s UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their deadline. As one negotiator put it: “We can go into extra time but we can’t afford a replay.” At the deal’s heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels. Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade to very substantially less than their 1990 level. Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the world’s biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important steps in the right direction. Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests, and the credible assessment of “exported emissions” so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much poorer than “old Europe”, must not suffer more than their richer partners. The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of doing nothing. Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it. But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels. Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effort to achieve collective salvation. Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism, of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”. It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can too. The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history’s judgment on this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.

To: HPilot who wrote (26669)	12/17/2009 10:29:58 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

Jimbo forgot to petition the Lord. Nobody could hear him squeak. No ‘truth,’ but telling consequences for Inhofe’s strange Copenhagen visit 17 Dec 2009 12:59 PM by Keith Schneider COPENHAGEN—On the day that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton showed up in Copenhagen to say the U.S. would contribute to a global climate action fund, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) also appeared in Copenhagen. Without, however, his much-hyped “truth squad.” Earlier this month, the Oklahoma Republican and one of Capitol Hill’s fiercest critics of climate action, told reporters that he would travel to Copenhagen with a “truth squad.” Its express mission: dispute climate science and disrupt the United Nations Climate Change Conference, which ends tomorrow. But the weight of urgency to meet tomorrow’s deadline and the intense diplomacy occurring around the clock now transformed the roar of perceived fact that Inhofe planned into a politically diminishing squeak. Briefly circled this morning by a group of reporters inside the Bella Center’s media center, Inhofe looked fidgety and uncomfortable as he accused the news media here of “being on the far left,” asserted that climate science was “debunked,” and promised that the chance of the Senate approving a proposed climate and energy bill was “zero.” “Nothing binding will come out of here in my opinion,” Inhofe said, referring to the negotiations. “And if it does it will be rejected by the American people.” Weak appearance Inhofe’s conservative allies in government and the media are certain to describe his visit as a heroic act of political principle—confront the lions of climate action in their own den and all that. But a more significant outcome of Inhofe’s three-hour Copenhagen visit could be the political consequence it may produce in Washington. Inhofe, who steadily elevated his career to national significance—in the model of former Alabama Governor George Wallace—through calculated confrontation and rhetoric strategically calibrated to excite and inflame, miscalculated every aspect of his trip here. The timing was wrong. The audience was not receptive. And Inhofe’s message was a blur for foreign reporters—Senate politics, hijacked emails—and old news for American journalists. Indeed, there was real news to report. The United States started the day here with a surprising commitment to help finance a $100 billion climate and energy fund, the first time the U.S. has formally recognized the magnitude of the investment needed globally. Clinton did not specify how much the U.S. would commit or its schedule, but did say that it was predicated on the Chinese allowing the world to measure and verify carbon reductions there. The Chinese followed later in the day—no surprise—with assurances that it would be much more open and transparent in reporting progress on commitments it made last month to reduce carbon emissions. A day of progress ignores Oklahoma Senator The climate negotiations, fraught with disagreement and slow progress for almost two weeks, clearly seemed to open up after both announcements. NGO experts close to the delegations said the talks were starting to move with more pace. The chance that the 192 nations here would reach a deal on climate change that makes a difference came into clearer focus. In other words, there is little space today in the momentous global conversation on climate and the economy for a whiny American senator from the Great Plains. Inhofe, in short, left Copenhagen looking weak, a little unstable, and kind of kooky. No doubt, the Congressional delegation that also arrived here today, led by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, took note. Inhofe’s revealing performance capped a tough week for free market conservatives in Copenhagen. Early in the week several meetings on climate science and the stolen emails, including one organized by Americans For Prosperity, an activist organization financed in part by coal and oil interests, attracted tiny audiences of less than a dozen participants. The stolen emails, flogged by Sarah Palin and the right as evidence of a conspiracy to cook the science on warming, were ignored in Copenhagen. Instead negotiators vigorously defended the scientific consensus on the causes of climate disruption and its consequences. Oklahoma’s favorite son in D.C. It’s too early to tell, of course, what effect Inhofe’s silly visit to Copenhagen will have on his standing in Washington. It’s almost certainly not going to injure his stature in Oklahoma. Named a senator in 1994, to replace Senator David Boren, who resigned to assume the presidency of the University of Oklahoma, Inhofe has won with strong margins three times, the latest in 2008 by gaining 57 percent of the vote. His primary financial support comes from the fossil fuel industries whose climate science-denying interests he vigorously advances. Since 2000, according to Oil Change International, the coal and oil industries have contributed $1.13 million to his campaigns. Oklahoma is the number three producer of natural gas, the number six producer of crude oil, and is home to seven big coal-fired power plants, according to the Energy Information Administration and the Union of Concerned Scientists. And Inhofe’s role as one of President Barack Obama’s most aggressive opponents appears as secure as any in the Senate. Just 34 percent of Oklahoma’s voters supported the president in the 2008 election. Only Wyoming disapproved of the president more. grist.org