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Grim outlook for poor countries in climate report
David Adam, Peter Walker and Alison Benjamin, Guardian
The effects of climate change will be felt sooner than scientists realised and the world must learn to live with the effects, experts said today.
Professor Martin Parry, a climate scientist with the Met Office, said destructive changes in temperature, rainfall and agriculture were now forecast to occur several decades earlier than thought.
He said vulnerable people such as the old and poor would be the worst affected, and that world leaders had not yet accepted their countries would have to adapt to the likely consequences.
The professor was speaking in London at a meeting to launch the full report on the impacts of global warming by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The report – which had its executive summary released earlier this year – says hundreds of millions of people in developing nations will face natural disasters, water shortages and hunger due to the effects of climate change.
(18 September 2007)
A judge denies California’s bid for damages from carmakers
Marc Lifsher, Los Angeles Times
California’s attempt to collect billions of dollars in damages by accusing automakers of creating a global warming-related “nuisance” was dismissed Monday by a federal judge in San Francisco.
The courts aren’t set up to deal with climate change and other “political questions” with international reach, U.S. District Court Judge Martin J. Jenkins said. That task belongs to Congress and the executive branch of the government, he said.
The suit, originally filed a year ago by former Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, claimed that emissions of carbon dioxide and other so-called greenhouse gases from automobile tailpipes cause environmental damage. It cited as examples melting Sierra snowpacks, prolonged droughts and dying forests.
Car makers denied that their products could be characterized as nuisances under California and federal law. “Our bottom-line point is that global warming presents exceedingly complex policy issues that must be addressed at the national and international levels by Congress and the president, not through lawsuits seeking damages in the federal courts,” said Ted Boutrous, lead attorney for the auto companies.
The defendants in the case included General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor North America Inc., Ford Motor Co., American Honda Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler Corp. and Nissan North America Inc.
Those same auto companies, independently and through trade groups, are suing the state of California in U.S. District Court in Fresno, challenging a 2002 California law that would limit vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.
(18 September 2007)
APEC’s agreement is a good start to tackling climate change
Brendan Mackey, The Age
THERE are positive aspects to the Sydney Declaration on climate change. It helps re-establish Australia as one of the good guys working to solve the global warming problem, and essentially re-aligns Australia’s position with that of progressive nations including the European Union.
…But we will be sadly and dangerously misled in thinking that aspirational targets, and promoting particular technologies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, provide a suitable framework for the post-Kyoto protocol.
…governments now need to start negotiating a new post-Kyoto protocol that will solve the global warming problem. What should such a new protocol look like?
The answer is called “contraction and convergence”, a framework for crafting a new protocol that forces governments to agree on three vital questions.
First, what is a safe concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases? Many scientists argue a safe concentration is what it was during the 1960s. Once a safe concentration is agreed on, it is then easy to calculate the total global amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted each year to achieve that target.
The second question that contraction and convergence forces governments to answer is: “When will the total global emissions of greenhouse gases be reduced to the amount needed to maintain atmospheric concentrations at the agreed safe level: in 2020; 2100; next year?”
The third critical question governments must reach agreement on is how the global permissible amount of greenhouse gas emissions will be allocated between nations. This is the most politically difficult problem to resolve in negotiating a new international agreement. Contraction and convergence’s answer to this problem is that every person should be given an equal share, that is, emissions should be distributed at a national level on a per capita basis. A per capita allocation is the only allocation principle that is likely to be accepted by India, China, Indonesia and other developing nations with large populations.
(11 September 2007)
Contributor LC writes:
“Contraction & Convergence” (aka C&C) is the global climate policy framework now supported by the EU Parliament, by India & Pakistan, and by the Africa Group of Nations at the UNFCCC.
While this framework steadily gains support around the world, it is rather troubling that no senior US politician (of either bent) has yet shown the courage to give it their public endorsement.
