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December 12, 2007

Act now on climate change or face oblivion, warns UN chief

Richard Lloyd Parry in Nusa Dua, Bali

Humanity faces oblivion if it fails to reach agreement on global warming, Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary General, said yesterday as the US and the European Union continued to scuffle over a successor to the ten-year-old Kyoto treaty on climate change.

“The world’s scientists have spoken with one voice: the situation is grim and urgent action is needed,” Mr Ban said at a gathering of 190 countries on the Indonesian island of Bali. “The situation is so desperately serious that any delay could push us past the tipping point, beyond which the ecological, financial and human costs would increase dramatically. We are at a crossroads: one path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other one to oblivion.”

Scientists and government officials have been meeting on the tropical island since the beginning of last week, but it is over the next three days that the most intense and important negotiations will begin. Environment ministers from around the world, including Hilary Benn, from Britain, will debate a “road map” for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, the first treaty to impose on its signatories legally binding cuts in greenhouse gases, which expires at the end of 2012.

This week’s meeting will not agree on a successor to the treaty, which was finalised in the ancient capital of Japan ten years ago yesterday.

It will, however, set parameters for debate and negotiation, and give an important indication of the state of the ongoing struggle between the opposing sides. The governments of the European Union favour strict targets for rich countries to reduce emissions of the gases that cause the Earth’s atmosphere to warm up, while the United States wants to leave out specific figures and insists that the burden must also be borne by developing economies such as China and India.

The draft of the conference document circulating yesterday included “guidelines” calling for rich industrialised countries to cut their emissions by between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020. Such a cut is in keeping with recommendations by the UN scientific panel that to avoid devastating environmental catastrophe global warming must be kept below an average increase of 2C.

“We need this range of reductions by developed countries,” Stavros Dimas, the European Commissioner for Environment, said yesterday. “Science tells us that these reductions are necessary. Logic requires that we listen to science.”

The US delegation has insisted that it will block this, because precise numbers will be the subject of negotiation over the next two years and it does not wish to narrow its options too early. It was because the US failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol that the treaty will largely fail to achieve its goal: the reduction of greenhouse by an average 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. But much has changed since 1997, when President Clinton gave his support for Kyoto only for it to be blocked by a Republican-controlled Congress.

Now Democrats control Congress, and President Bush, who has been so opposed to fixed carbon-reduction targets, has less than a year left in office. This month the US lost its principal ally in rejecting fixed targets when Kevin Rudd, the newly elected Australian Prime Minister, ratified Kyoto.

Ban Ki Moon should never have that we ARE facing oblivion, only that there is a wealth of evidence indicating that this is a possible, if not likely, scenerio. There are no certainties, though the real worry seems to be that the latest forecasts don't include the positive feedbacks of the recent decrease in the oceans carbon sink (halved in the North Atlantic in the last decade) and the melting of the permafrost in polar regions releasing vast amounts of methane - plus of course the effects of the endless deforestation of tropical areas.
The other main worry is that most of the feedback about the article are from people from Canada and the USA who probably have no idea what positive feedback is

colin scrimgeour, gartmore, stirling, Scotland

Yawn

How did the Vikings survive in Greenland during the Medeival Warm Period ?

If CO2 is such a problem why aren't planes & shipping grounded? What about Methane...why aren't cattle slaughtered to slow down "man made" warming . Why are Mars and Pluto warming up at the moment? Why are we suddenly being bombarded with stories such as these ?

Because the people are waking up and the cash cow is dis-appearing over the (cyclical) warming horizon

bilyb, Cardiff, Wales

"one path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other one to oblivion.â€

Oblivion! - what alarmist nonsense!
It is comments like this that make it very difficult for anyone with half a wit to take the U.N. and I.P.C.C. seriously.

doug newton, Toronto, Canada

The Republican congress DID NOT block Kyoto. Clinton never attempted to get Kyoto passed in the senate as his own Democratic Senators told him that they could not support Kyoto. The Byrd-Hagel resolution, a bi-partisan effort setting conditions for signing Kyoto, passed 95 to 0. In effect both the Republicans and Democrats told Clinton that they would not pass Kyoto if China and India didn't have to meet emission limits.

These facts are easy to Google. To bad the writer prefered to push the envrionmental lobby narrative that Bush and the Republicans are the problem rather than do a little research to find out that Bush administration policy toward Kyoto is really a continuation of the Clinton adminstration policy toward Kyoto.

Ken, Saskatoon, Canada

How in the heck did these whack jobs get this far with this scam? This is nothing but a control of America issue wraped up in a green flag. Global Warming is nothing but a hoax.

D4379, Germantown, Maryland USA

Scientists have hardly spoken with one voice. Those dissenting have largely been ignored or silenced. The main reason for the rush to action is that the "global warming" will soon be shifting to "global cooling" and those with the political agenda will be shown to once again be wrong and will lose their bully pulpits. I still have the article from about 30 years ago when many of these same folks were using "global cooling" to push their agenda of global governance.

Philip Johnson, Dallas,, TX, USA

Ban-Ki-Moon, his name says it all. Subject yourselves to us or you'll be utterly distroyed! This guy sounds more like Austin Powers than the head of an organization (albeit a very useless and expensive one). The stupidity of these whacko's telling us to do our part to reduce emissions, then go flying around the world holding useless junkets (Bali) trying to convince us we're going to hell in a handbasket if we don't stop emissions NOW! I think we've heard this too many times to even give it credence anymore. Sounds like a bunch of Bovine flatulance coming from the Moon we need to stop.

Martin, nashville, USA/ Tennessee

If the world ends, so what?

Hank Williams, Brookfield, IL, USA

"We are at a crossroads: one path leads to a comprehensive climate change agreement, the other one to oblivion.â€

Oblivion? - What a load of hysterical nonsense!

If we do nothing and the extreme end of the computer generated scenarios are correct, then the cost in human life and misery could be significant. Spending all of our efforts on reducing so called green house gases ( they don't actually work like a greenhouse) will result in less effort in other areas that will also result in a significant cost in human life and misery.
In no climate change scenario that I am aware of does the word oblivion appear.
No wonder anyone with half a wit is suspicious of the U.N. and the I.P.C.C. that they control.

Doug, Toronto, Canada

Count me as a proud AGW denier. This whole issue shows how easy it is to sway people through propaganda and scare tactics. The earth is a huge, complex eco-system. There is no way these mere mortal human scientists can make these bold claims with such certainty. It's funny and scary at the same time to see all of the things that these "experts" blame on global warming. For example, I read two news stories last year - on the same day - in which scientists blamed global warming for decreased snowfall at ski resorts while in another story blaming global warming for record snowfalls in another area! ANY "climate change" can be attributed to global warming! How convenient.
And who says that our current average world temperature is the optimal temperature? NASA recently revised its weather data to show that the warmest year in the past century was 1934... not 1998. If the IPCC had been around in 1934, I'm sure they'd have found a way to blame humans.

Lee, Wisconsin, U.S.

When is the World going to tell the Pope and George Bush that their stand on birth control and the use of condoms to prevent AIDS is hastening the end of the world? People generate heat be it for warmth, cooling cooking of just body heat. One has to be a complete fool to ignore all the indications of the changing environment. How about drinking water shortages world wide?
Time to tell the religious folks that they are going to meet their maker sooner rather than later. Won't bother me any but I worry about my granddaughter's kids!

Ralph Smith, London, , Ontario, Canada

The big shame here is China and India; who want to be in the big boys club, but don't want to pay the initiation fee.

An agreement of this nature MUST include everyone; or.......as with Kyoto, nothing relevant will get done!

Brian, Ottawa, Canada

This statement in your article is baffling: "It was because the US failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol that the treaty will largely fail to achieve its goal: the reduction of greenhouse by an average 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012."

I support reducing GHG emissions, but feel it's a bit rich to blame the US for Kyoto's failure when it did a better job than purported Kyoto supporters in limiting emissions (my home country, Canada, comes to mind). It's even more odd to lay all blame on the US given the fact that the net total of 'average emissions' by definition includes Kyoto-exempt polluters like China and India, who must surely be considered if the 'failure' of the treaty's planetary goals is in mind.

There is a big difference between nominal support for scraps of paper on the one hand, and actual progress on the other. It'd be helpful if reporters could keep their eye on the ball, which is the latter. The goal isn't to reduce American emissions, but to reduce all of them.

Brian, Canada,

The planet doesn't give a damn about the human race. If we can't get our act together about the way in which we dispose af ALL our waste, we will only destroy ourselves. The planet will recover in time and the next species (whatever it may be) will inherit a rejuvenated world, even if it takes a mollion years.
Mankind is acting like two flees fighting over who owns the dog they are living on, the dog (or in this case the planet) couldn't care less about us.

Richard, Oxford, Oxfordshire

A message for Richard Lloyd Perry and the rest of the catastrohists: Have some Kool-Aid.

John Brent, Sanford, Florida

Ban Ki Moon:"I'm king of the world!"

yank4u, st. louis , US

It a shame for American!It is a big country!

A380, BEIJING, China