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Global Warming: Get Used to It
Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek
Even if we adopted the most far-reaching plans to combat climate change, we would still watch greenhouse gases rise for decades.
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The most inconvenient truth about global warming is that we cannot stop it. Please don’t mistake me for a skeptic. I’m fully persuaded by the evidence that climate change is real and serious…. The trouble is, if you accept all these facts and theories about global warming, it is difficult to see how any human response launched today can avert it.
The gases that are warming the Earth have built up over hundreds of years. They do not disappear or dissipate easily. Even if the world adopted the most far-reaching plans to combat climate change, most scientists agree that the concentration of greenhouse gases will continue to rise for the next few decades. In other words, global warming is already baked into Earth’s future.
Scientists estimate that simply to keep greenhouse gases at their current levels, we would need to slash carbon-dioxide emissions by 60 percent. Given current and foreseeable technology, that would require cutting back on industrial activity across the globe on a scale that would make the Great Depression look very small. In fact, the future will almost certainly involve substantially greater emissions of CO2.
…I state these facts plainly not to induce fatalism or complacency. It’s scandalous that we’re not weaning ourselves off dirty fuels. Perfecting just two new (and almost workable) technologies-clean coal and hybrid cars-would be a giant leap forward. We could be experimenting with hundreds more technologies and techniques. But even so, the Earth would still warm substantially over the next few decades. So in addition to our efforts to prevent and mitigate climate change, we need to employ another strategy-adaptation.
(19 Feb 2007 issue)
Commentary: Climate change 2007: Lifting the taboo on adaptation
Roger Pielke, Jr, Gwyn Prins, Steve Rayner and Daniel Sarewitz, Nature
During the early policy discussions on climate change in the 1980s, adaptation was understood to be an important option for society. Yet for much of the past two decades the mere idea of adapting to climate change became problematic for those advocating emissions reductions, and was treated “with the same distaste that the religious right reserves for sex education in schools.
…But perspectives have changed. Adaptation is again seen as an essential part of climate policy alongside greenhouse-gas mitigation. Both the recent Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change2 and the efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change3 demonstrate that adaptation is firmly back on the agenda. There are at least three reasons why the taboo on adaptation can no longer be enforced.
…First, there is a timescale mismatch. Whatever actions ultimately lead to the decarbonization of the global energy system, it will be many decades before they have a discernible effect on the climate.
(8 Feb 2007)
Unfortunately this article is behind a paywall. (Individual copies available for $18.)
Contributor SP writes:
I’m not sure the authors have adequately defined what “adaption” means here, or my view is clouded by the Australian PMs use of the phrase, which I take to mean “I’m all right Jack, YOU adapt”.
Of course if adaption means “social engineering” schemes I’m not sure how the current crop of conservative pollies will respond, given the rhetoric given to them by their think tanks. But I do agree that an over-emphasis on mitigation leads to investment only in techno-fixes.
Investors turn up heat over carbon emissions
Ron Scherer, The Christian Science Monitor
One investor group has labeled 10 companies as ‘laggards’ in responding to climate change.
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NEW YORK – In the Wells Fargo logo, a stagecoach races in front of a pristine blue sky. Bed Bath & Beyond, meanwhile, is touting the “environmentally friendly” nature of many of the products it sells. And ExxonMobil, in its guiding principles, lists running an “environmentally responsible operation.”
But Tuesday, a group of investors put these companies, as well as seven others, on a new “climate watch list,” labeling them as laggards in their response to climate change.
This is just one example of how global warming is starting to hit corporate America between its pinstripes. This year at corporate annual meetings, shareholders will present a record 42 resolutions asking for more disclosure of company carbon emissions and potential financial exposure to new regulations. Some companies are finding themselves named as defendants in class-action lawsuits accusing them of heating up the planet. This week, Congress will begin hearings on global warming and is expected to hear from companies such as General Electric and Nucor Steel.
“A lot of people are wondering if [climate change] will be the calamity du jour,” says Sam Stovall, director of investment strategy at Standard & Poor’s in New York. “It could end up having a very severe impact on economies and fortunes.”
(14 Feb 2007)
Call for votes on climate change
Carolyn Said, SF Chronicle
Climate-change activists have found an effective way to get corporate America’s attention.
They are sponsoring shareholder resolutions asking companies to address global warming in ways such as issuing reports on how it affects their businesses, acting to reduce their greenhouse-gas emissions or preparing for carbon regulations.
Such resolutions have proliferated. This year, resolutions on global warming are on the annual meeting agenda at 42 U.S. corporations, according to Ceres, a Boston network of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups that has spearheaded the issue.
On Monday, Ceres and other investors released a “climate watch” list of 10 companies it thinks should strengthen their responses to climate change.
(13 Feb 2007)
Push for New Climate Treaty Intensifies, Hope Seen
Jeremy Lovell, Reuters via Planet Ark
LONDON – Intensive diplomatic efforts to agree the elements of a framework by the end of the year for a new global climate change treaty are starting to make headway, according to a European official close to the negotiations.
The tone of the debate has changed in the United States and Australia — key nations which rejected the Kyoto Protocol on curbing greenhouse gas emissions — and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it a top target of her G8 presidency this year.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, with only months left in office and keen to find a positive legacy to offset the damage done by Iraq, is using his weight to help secure a deal.
He meets Merkel in Germany on Tuesday to discuss tactics.
(13 Feb 2007)
