Final Push for World Government
World Leaders Urged to Take Climate Change Action
December 7, 2009BBC - Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen has described the UN climate summit in Copenhagen as an "opportunity the world cannot afford to miss".
Opening the two-week conference in the Danish capital, he told delegates from 192 countries a "strong and ambitious climate change agreement" was needed.
About 100 leaders are to attend the meeting, which aims to strike a deal on major cuts in greenhouse gas emissions...
The first formal sign of a discord between various parties surfaced in the opening session. The head of the Grenadan delegation said the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) would "consider their options" if a legally-binding deal did not materialise here.
It appears that this bloc of 43 countries may simply not sign a deal that they believe votes their nations out of existence. Some people here raise the point that small countries can be easily "bought off" by aid money or trade, or bullied into conformity, by their larger brethren. Surely history indicates that is true; but if you perceive that the end of your nation is in sight as sea levels rise, perhaps that changes the usual terms of business.
But on the first day of the summit, divisions were evident between various blocs, with small island states indicating they would not accept anything less than a legally binding deal including deep cuts in emissions.
In July, the G8 bloc of industrialised countries and some major developing countries adopted a target of keeping the global average temperature rise since pre-industrial times to 2C.
However, small island states think this would cause serious climate impacts from rising sea levels, and have been arguing for a lower target of 1.5C. A number of African nations also back the lower target.
BBC environment correspondent Richard Black say it is possible that the G77/China bloc will endorse the lower target. He says this would raise a huge obstacle, because none of the industrialised countries have put forward emission cuts in the range that would be required to meet a 1.5C target.
The African Union has threatened to walk out of the talks if industrialised countries do not agree to help poor states pay for the transition to cleaner economies.
The main areas for discussion at Copenhagen include:
- Targets to curb greenhouse gas emissions, in particular by developed countries
- Financial support for mitigation of and adaptation to climate change by developing countries
- A carbon trading scheme aimed at ending the destruction of the world's forests by 2030.
In his opening remarks, the Danish prime minister told delegates that the world was looking to the conference to safeguard humanity.
...The ruling by the Environmental Protection Agency on the dangers of greenhouse gases allows it to issue rules to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, even if the US Congress fails to pass suitable legislation. Climate legislation passed narrowly in the House of Representatives in June, but the bill has been delayed in the Senate...
To stress the importance of the summit, 56 newspapers in 45 countries published the same editorial on Monday, warning that climate change will "ravage our planet" unless action is agreed, the London-based Guardian reported.
The editorial - published in 20 languages - was thrashed out by editors ahead of the Copenhagen talks, the newspaper said.
"At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world," the editorial says.Environmental activists are planning to hold protests in Copenhagen and around the world on 12 December to encourage delegates to reach the strongest possible deal.
COPENHAGEN IN BRIEF
192 countries attending talks, including about 100 leaders
To discuss emissions cuts and financial measures to combat climate change
Danish PM urges delegates to deliver "hope for the future"
South Africa is the latest country to make emissions offer
Due to end 18 December
TIMELINE: Carbon pledges, schemes pile up ahead of Copenhagen
Open or Obstinate, the Arab World Heads to Copenhagen
December 6, 2009Jerusalem Post - The oily lands of the Middle East have an image problem.
As the nations of the world prepare for the most significant international negotiations on carbon emissions in two decades, countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Morocco are rarely depicted as 'leading the charge'...
Munqeth Mehyar, Vice President of the Jordan Society for Sustainable Development and the Jordan director of EcoPeace, argued that the oil producing Arab states posed one of the principal obstacles to international consensus on combating climate change.
"There are two positions in the Arab world," he told The Media Line. "The oil producing countries and the non-oil producing countries. The non-oil producing countries want to see less emissions and to see the developing world lead in cutting emissions. But the oil producing states are absolutely unsupportive of all this talk about carbon emissions"...Nejib Friji, a United Nations official in Bahrain, argued that Gulf states' reputation for working against international initiatives towards sustainability was undeserved.
"I take exception to the depiction of oil producing Gulf countries as obstinate to working to curb the effects of climate change," he told The Media Line. "Over the last few months there has been quite an active reaction to the summit both on the government and civil society levels, and you can see, read and hear lots of talk about climate change in the local media."
"Arab nations are trying to come to a consensus with other UN member nations," Friji said. "Of course it's not easy but at least they are actively involved."
"There are lots of major challenges threatening this region," he said. "The rising sea level could flood the Nile Delta and endanger small islands throughout the Arab world, temperatures will increase by three to four degrees and the Sahara, which is a huge phenomenon of desertification, is affecting the ecosystems in most of the Arab regions, and water scarcity will increase throughout much of North Africa and the Middle East, with shorter rain seasons for farmers impacting our food security."
"So there is a growing awareness that nobody is hidden from the risk of the impact of climate change," Friji stressed. "The Arab states are just as concerned and desperate to seal the deal in Copenhagen."
"Although climate change largely carries a "made in the west" label, the region is set quite literally to take the heat for it," Khaled Diab wrote in The Guardian. "Both temperatures and populations are expected to rise over the coming decades, causing water reserves to diminish, or at best stagnate, and desertification to accelerate. This means that scarce water will become even scarcer. Rising sea levels could also threaten major coastal population centres."
"In the Arab world, although direct industrialisation has slowed down over the past three decades, modernisation has not - stressing the environment enormously," Diab added. "The region may be the world's main petrol pump, but this finite resource is rapidly dwindling and dependence on it has affected air quality in large urban centres and on the coastal plains where half of the region's population lives. Major investment in harnessing the region's massive solar resources makes both economic and environmental sense."
FACTBOX: Who Is Going to Copenhagen?
December 5, 2009Reuters - The number of world leaders due to attend the Copenhagen climate conference has risen to 105, Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said on Saturday.
They represent 82 percent of mankind, 89 percent of the world's GDP, and 80 percent of the world's current greenhouse gas emissions, he said.
Most are expected to come for the climax of the December 7-18 conference: U.S. President Barack Obama and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh are the latest to announce such plans, adding to momentum for a new accord to curb global warming...
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