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British Leader Pledges to Lead World in Reducing Emissions (text and audio)
Tom Rivers, Voice of America
Reacting quickly to the latest UN climate change report, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is pledging that Britain will lead the world in reducing carbon emissions. For VOA, Tom Rivers reports from London.
In what is being described as a landmark report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) describes the impact of global warming in stark terms, saying it will affect both rich and poor in the coming decades.
The IPCC says that human activity is largely responsible for warming. Its report says that as early as 2020, between 75 million and 250 million people in Africa will suffer from water shortages, main Asian urban centers will be at risk for flooding, and many species will disappear from Europe.
In London, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the message is simple. The time to act is now.
“This is a wake up call for the whole world. Britain has led the way, the first climate change bill in history, now the rest of the world must follow,” he said. “And at Bali in the next few weeks we need a climate change agreement that is global, that is comprehensive, that is radical and meets our ambitions that we have a 50 percent cut in carbon emissions around the world and we will do even better than that.”
(17 November 2007)
UK’s Climate change department faces £300 million cuts
David Hencke and John Vidal, Guardian
The government department spearheading the fight against climate change is planning an emergency package of at least £300m of cuts covering key environmental services, the Guardian has learned.
Frontline agencies tackling recycling, nature protection, energy saving, carbon emissions and safeguarding the environment are all being targeted in the package which is being drawn up by Helen Ghosh, the top civil servant at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Details of the cuts have emerged just as the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is due to publish its latest report. The study, to be made public today ahead of a UN climate meeting in Bali, will warn that all forms of carbon pollution from flights to inefficient light bulbs must become more expensive if the world is to avert catastrophic effects of warming.
The disclosure of the Defra cuts plan will embarrass Gordon Brown, who is expected next week to give a major speech on climate change, recommitting Britain to supplying a fifth of its energy requirements from renewables by 2020. Previously government officials had said Britain would struggle to meet the target and lobbied to be allowed to use different statistics.
The measures at Defra have become necessary, in part, because the department has been overwhelmed by huge bills for a series of disasters, from the foot and mouth outbreak to blunders over the payments of billions of pounds of EU cash to farmers.
(17 November 2007)
Atlanta May Have to Drink the Dregs
Greg Bluestein, Associated Press
With drought tightening its grip on the Southeast, the Atlanta area’s reservoirs are almost down to the dregs – the dirtier, more bacteria-laden water close to the bottom – and it’s going to require more aggressive and more expensive purification.
Some communities are buying stronger water-treatment chemicals and looking into other measures to make the water drinkable.
The problem is that the water levels on Lakes Lanier and Allatoona, the main sources of water for metropolitan Atlanta’s 5 million residents, have descended almost to the “dead zone,” a layer low in oxygen and high in organic material – that is, dead and decaying plants and animals.
Even with standard treatment, the water at that level can have a strong odor, taste and color. State officials consider the water “suspect” at best.
(16 November 2007)
