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Germany advances India’s call for “Contraction & Convergence”
Original: Merkel offers climate compromise
Claudia Kade, Reuters
German Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to offer developing countries a compromise pact on climate change and carbon dioxide emissions based on population size, but said on Friday that negotiations will be tough.
Merkel, who helped draw up the Kyoto Protocol on climate change as Germany’s environment minister in 1997, made global warming and talks over a deal to succeed the protocol the focus of her three-day visit to Japan.
“The question is: at what point can we involve developing countries, and what kind of measure do we use to create a just world?” Merkel said before holding a speech at a symposium in Kyoto, an ancient Japanese capital.
Merkel suggested that developing countries should be allowed to increase their emissions per capita while industrialized national cut theirs, until both sides reach the same level.
(31 August 2007)
Contributor Lewis Cleverdon writes:
The global climate policy framework of Contraction & Convergence (C&C) has been advanced by Global Commons Institute since its inception in 1990. (See www.gci.org.uk)
International Convergence to per capita parity of GHG outputs, as a deal-maker for the global Contraction of those outputs, is a sweetly simple basis for the requisite Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons.
Chancellor Merkel’s active support is very welcome indeed as a further expression of the EU Parliament’s vote for this essential treaty framework. So where exactly are Al Gore and the US presidential candidates on C&C ?
Greenpeace Blocks Lake Erie Coal Freighter
Allan Benner, Welland Tribune/Canada
After spending the past three days anchored off the shore of Port Colborne, the Greenpeace vessel MY Arctic Sunrise went into action on Lake Erie Thursday morning, blocking a freighter loaded with coal from reaching the Nanticoke power generating station.
“They’re in full action mode right now up in Nanticoke,” said Paul Ruzycki, a Greenpeace representative and Port Colborne native, who has been serving aboard the Arctic Sunrise. He was in his hometown when the protest occurred, purchasing supplies for the ship. 0831 07
Ruzycki said the Greenpeace activists aboard the Arctic Sunrise stopped the Algomarine, loaded with 30,000 tonnes of coal from reaching Nanticoke. The ships were anchored about 24 kilometres from shore during the protest.
The Greenpeace activists also “managed to paint the side of the ship,” Ruzycki said.
In white lettering, they painted “No nukes. No coal. Clean energy now,” across the hull of the Algomarine, owned by Algoma Central Corp. of Sault Ste. Marie.
(31 August 2007)
Also at Common Dreams.
China says one-child policy helps protect climate
Alister Doyle, Reuters
China says its one-child policy has helped the fight against global warming by avoiding 300 million births, the equivalent of the population of the United States.
But delegates at U.N. climate change talks in Vienna said on Thursday birth control is unlikely to find favor as a major policy theme, partly because of opposition by the Catholic Church and some developing nations trying to increase their population.
Some scientists say that birth control measures far less draconian than China’s are wrongly overlooked in the fight against climate change, when the world population is projected to soar to about 9 billion by 2050 from 6.6 billion now.
…China, which rejects criticism that it is doing too little to confront climate change, says that its population is now 1.3 billion against 1.6 billion if it had not imposed tough birth control measures in the late 1970s.
The number of births avoided equals the entire population of the United States. Beijing says that fewer people means less demand for energy and lower emissions of heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels.
(30 August 2007)
