Racing Toward Climate Disaster

beatriz

CHALLENGES 2005-2006:
Racing Toward Climate Disaster
Stephen Leahy

BROOKLIN, Canada, Dec 27 (IPS) - With 2005 the warmest year in modern times and new research confirming scientists' worst fears, most experts agree that urgent and innovative international action on climate change is needed.

But neither action nor urgency was in evidence earlier this month in Montreal, Canada when 189 nations spent two weeks attempting to deal with climate change. Although the United Nations sponsored-talks were widely seen as an international success, they accomplished little beyond supporting the Kyoto Protocol and an agreement for more talks.

"As usual, national self-interest dominated, but at least the whole process wasn't derailed," said Dale Marshall, a climate change policy analyst with David Suzuki Foundation, a Canadian environmental NGO, who attended the meetings.
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"Kyoto won't be enough. Emissions will need to fall by 80 or 90 percent, rather than 5 or 10 percent, to have an effect on the models. In terms of a response, Kyoto is only a start," Guy Brasseur, head of the Hamburg-based Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, told the European Parliament in late November.
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continue reading: IPS, http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=31592

peter_j

Elizabeth Farrelly writes in The Sydney Morning Herald:

The US developer-turned-greenmeister and World Green Building Council president, David Gottfried, argued in Sydney earlier this year: "Green is the new black. All the big businesses are in the game, and it's for the benefit of everybody." Gottfried had one small goal in Australia: a tax credit for five-star green buildings. The Howard Government's Sustainable Cities report noted last August the "need for the Australian government to assume a leadership role". Yet the opposite is happening. Said Gottfried: "I don't see your Federal Government involved … they're not at the table."

SMH 19.07.06

Farrelly sees Australia being "left out in the warm" due to the sluggish and halfhearted responses from government to climate change. Even the States seems more inclined to action than here.

peter_j

The breath-taking inertia of the Howard government in addressing climate change has led many that I know into a state of cynicism and resignation about the future state of the planet. It appears to be the case that governments are the last body willing to try to fix things, they are just too focussed on short electoral terms and keeping economies growing relentlessly.

Personally, I don't really know how an economy can just keep on growing. Say you are aiming for 6% growth of GDP per year, isn't that going to have to compound as the years go by? So that rather than a constant velocity of growth what we apparently need is accelerating growth. With finite resources and just one atmosphere with an increasing population living within it, it all seems very irresponsible of our governments, and therefore us. I'm more naive on the economic front than I'd like to be - I had a good book on it all but someone borrowed it... what I did learn from it before it walked, was that the development of money and the global economy has been haphazard and not followed any particular course until recently. It reshapes itself depending on circumstances, so now would surely be a good time for it to metamorphosize again.

Anyway, what I was really meaning to do was link in this article, which is quite depressing, but hopefully will stir some too act:

TIM FLANNERY IN THE AGE
THE AGE 28.10.06

peter_j

The Scottish Sunday herald has an interesting article today on what the climate change debate could mean for capitalism.

The energy dilemmas raised by the [International Energy Agency], traditionally a very conservative organisation, echo the fundamental shift in establishment thinking epitomised by the Stern report. But neither report really explains how the world is meant to overcome the entrenched vested interests that cause climate pollution, and the political contradictions they create.
SUNDAY HERALD 05.11.06

The author, Rob Edwards, makes the vaild and often overlooked point that european countries are having an easier time adopting Kyoto as they've shipped their manufacturing industries off shore - someone else can do their dirty work. He then runs through a few things in Europe that will have major impacts on CO2 emissions that are off the radar in the climate discussion. Atlantic oil exploration, airline and airport growth, and automobile manufacturing increases for instance.

The suggestion is that Europe is not doing what it ought to be doing, despite outwards appearances.