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UN Report to Offer Climate Change Evidence
Charles J. Hanley, Associated Press via Common Dreams
A long-awaited report by an international scientific network will offer much stronger evidence of how man is changing Earth’s climate, and should prompt balky governments into action against global warming, the group’s chief scientist said Monday.
The upcoming, multi-volume U.N. assessment – on melting ice caps and rising seas, with authoritative new data on how the world has warmed – “might provide just the right impetus to get the negotiations going in a more purposeful way,” Rajendra K. Pachauri said in an interview midway through the annual two-week U.N. climate conference.
The Indian climatologist is chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global network of some 2,000 climate and other scientists that regularly assesses the state of research into how carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases produced by industry and other human activities are affecting the climate.
(13 Nov 2006)
For sale: CO2 by the ton
Warren Cornwall, Seattle Times
How about a few tons of carbon dioxide in your stocking this Christmas?
It’s just what some environmentally conscious people might be dreaming of: a gift certificate for 10 tons of carbon-based gas and the promise that someone else won’t puff the globe-warming stuff into the atmosphere.
They’re called “carbon offsets,” based on the idea that individual consumers can make up for the amount of greenhouse gas they produce in everyday life by paying someone else to cut back. And they might be the next big thing in eco-friendly marketing, especially with concern about climate change going mainstream. Seattle mortgage brokers and real-estate agents are promoting “carbon neutral” home loans, promising to buy enough offsets to cover a year’s worth of emissions from the house. Bellevue online travel site Expedia is selling airline tickets that come with the offsets. Even local rocker Dave Matthews is promising to make up for whatever greenhouse gases his band’s traveling show creates.
Then there’s the Christmas carbon gift certificate sold by NetGreen, a Seattle company.
Offsets are billed as a way for average people to do their part by opening their wallets and investing in an important world issue.
But increasingly there are worries of gimmicks tainting what has become an unchecked market that is potentially worth millions.
(13 Nov 2006)
‘Obscenity’ of carbon trading
Kevin Smith, BBC (Viewpoint)
If we want to curb climate change, carbon trading won’t do, argues Kevin Smith in the Green Room this week. From the Stern Review to Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme, he argues, the aim of reducing emissions has been perverted by neo-liberal dogma and corporate self-interest.
In 1992, an infamous leaked memo from Lawrence Summers, who was at the time Chief Economist of the World Bank, stated that “the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable, and we should face up to that”.
The recently released Stern Review on climate change, written by a man who occupied the same position at the World Bank from 2000 to 2003, applies a similar sort of free market environmentalism to climate change.
Sir Nicholas Stern argues that the cost-effectiveness of making emissions reductions is the most important factor, advocating mechanisms such as carbon pricing and carbon trading.
While dumping toxic waste in the global South might look like a great idea from the perspective of the market, it ignores the glaringly obvious fact of it being hugely unfair on those getting dumped upon.
In a similar way, Stern’s cost-benefit analysis reduces important debates about the complex issue of climate change down to a discussion about numbers and graphs that ignores unquantifiable variables such as human lives lost, species extinction and widespread social upheaval.
Kevin Smith is a researcher with Carbon Trade Watch, a project of the Transnational Institute which studies the impacts of carbon trading on society and the environment
(9 Nov 2006)
Discussion about carbon trading at Gristmill.
Cash row looms at climate talks
Richard Black, BBC
Disagreement over management of a fund to help poorer countries adapt to climate change threatens the second week of UN climate talks in Nairobi.
Western nations want control to lie with a body tied to the World Bank, while developing countries argue they should decide how funds are allocated.
Adaptation is the main focus of the 12th round of UN climate negotiations.
(12 Nov 2006)
David Miliband at the UN climate change conference (text and podcast)
Lewis Williamson, Guardian
In the first a week of daily podcasts with Guardian Unlimited, David Miliband, the environment secretary, explains to Deborah Summers what this week’s UN climate change conference is is all about, and tells us how much can really be achieved.
Although the rising star of the cabinet has admitted that there is only a slim chance of a breakthrough in Nairobi, he hopes to inject fresh momentum into the stalled talks, which will propose successors for the targets for 2012 set out in the Kyoto protocol of 1997.
(13 Nov 2006)
A podcast is available at the original article. Related at the Guardian: Miliband: we can make progress on climate change.
