Within the next seven days the world will decide on what will happen with stock markets around the world. Within 12 hours from now the Australian Stock Exchange will open for business on Monday August 8^th.

For some time I have argued and promoted that economic growth; consuming out of balance without consideration of sustainable resources; is a designed for demise model. The world is living on a credit card that it cannot and does not intend to repay.

There are many such issues with the current ‘business and living as usual model’ that we are now encountering. Climate change is accelerating out of balance with how we can adapt. Resources are being depleted out of balance with how the future generations will continue to need to consume. We are living on a global credit card with a finite credit limit.

As the Cree Indian prophecy proclaimed “Only after the last tree has been cut down, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”

Within the next week the economic domino may fall. It may only wobble. But the certainty is that if we continue on the current path of demanding economic growth without regard to the finite outcome…….it will fall.

Excerpt from the book ZERO Greenhouse Emissions. 

They could see that the business as usual model adopted and passed onto developing nations, irrespective of any of the Kyoto protocol aspirations, presents a high threat of pushing the global thermometer to four, five or even six degrees of warming by 2100. They now knew as with finite resources it was not if, it was when. And it wasn’t going to be later, it was sooner. When would the circle of economic dominos start to fall, and just like a hurricane, where would it strike first?

Around the world the business-as-usual model of the economically powerful was at risk.

What would be the eventual effect of increased concern for the security of investments? What about the global investment domino? Which investments would be safe and which at risk of panic? Who would panic first? All linked through the Dow Jones, the S&P 500, Nasdaq, the FT100, Nikkei, Hang Seng, the Dax and All Ordinary Index, who would blink first? Which of the growing market concerns would start the selling? What would be the tsunami effect of a market panic? With corporate globalization comes its risks, with corporate diversification of interests, comes cross losses. Who would report the story: “Blue-chip stocks are no longer a good investment for the long haul, the long haul looks a bit shaky! You need to get in quick for a high return and get out of the market before it crashes!” And what of the term “Market Correction?” When I was at school and the math teacher corrected my work, it meant that I had done my sums wrong! How many chances to get it right do these experts in economic finance need?

Are those industries that are exploiting resources identified as in decline at highest risk, or will they be the ones who initially profit from the demand in commodities as the prices rise, while there are still reserves available?

End excerpt

Well within the next week we shall see if the domino wobbles or falls.

Should we try to change their minds? Send me your thoughts.

We need to accept this moral responsibility. The following article which appeared in the Guardian I believe comes straight from James’s heart. Do you care enough to take an activist stance while we have the time?

Thank you – Bob Williamson Founder & Chair Greenhouse Neutral Foundation.

“How did you become an activist?” I was surprised by the question. I never considered myself an activist. I am a slow-paced taciturn scientist from the Midwest US. Most of my relatives are pretty conservative. I can imagine attitudes at home toward “activists”.

I was about to protest the characterisation – but I had been arrested, more than once. And I had testified in defence of others who had broken the law. Sure, we only meant to draw attention to problems of continued fossil fuel addiction. But weren’t there other ways to do that in a democracy? How had I been sucked into being an “activist?”

My grandchildren had a lot to do with it. It happened step by step. First, in 2004, I broke a 15-year self-imposed effort to stay out of the media. I gave a public lecture, backed by scientific papers, showing the need to slow greenhouse gas emissions – and I criticised the Bush administration for its lack of appropriate policies. My grandchildren came into the talk only as props – holding 1-watt Christmas tree bulbs to help explain climate forcings.

Fourteen months later I gave another public talk – connecting the dots from global warming to policy implications to criticisms of the fossil fuel industry for promoting misinformation. This time my grandchildren provided rationalisation for a talk likely to draw ire from the administration. I explained that I did not want my children to look back and say: “Opa understood what was happening, but he never made it clear.”

What had become clear was that our planet is close to climate tipping points. Ice is melting in the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica, and on mountain glaciers worldwide. Many species are stressed by environmental destruction and climate change. Continuing fossil fuel emissions, if unabated, will cause sea levels to rise and species to become extinct beyond our control. Increasing atmospheric water vapour is already magnifying climate extremes, increasing overall precipitation, causing greater floods and stronger storms.

Stabilising climate requires restoring our planet’s energy balance. The physics is straightforward. The effect of increasing carbon dioxide on Earth’s energy imbalance is confirmed by precise measurements of ocean heat gain. The principal implication is defined by the geophysics, by the size of fossil fuel reservoirs. Simply put, there is a limit on how much carbon dioxide we can pour into the atmosphere. We cannot burn all fossil fuels. Specifically, we must (1) phase out coal use rapidly, (2) leave tar sands in the ground, and (3) not go after the last drops of oil.

Actions needed for the world to move on to clean energies of the future are feasible. The actions could restore clean air and water globally. But the actions are not happening.

At first I thought it was poor communication. Scientists must not have made the story clear enough to world leaders.

So I wrote letters to national leaders and visited more than half a dozen nations, as described in my book, Storms of My Grandchildren. What I found in each case was greenwash – a pretence of concern about climate but policies dictated by fossil fuel special interests.

The situation is epitomised by my recent trip to Norway. I hoped that Norway, because of its history of environmentalism, might be able to take real action to address climate change, drawing attention to the hypocrisy in the words and pseudo-actions of other nations.

So I wrote a letter to the prime minister suggesting that Norway, as majority owner of Statoil, should intervene in its plans to develop the tar sands of Canada. I received a polite response, by letter, from the deputy minister of petroleum and energy. The government position is that the tar sands investment is “a commercial decision”, that the government should not interfere, and that a “vast majority in the Norwegian parliament” agree that this constitutes “good corporate governance”. The deputy minister concluded his letter: “I can however assure you that we will continue our offensive stance on climate change issues both at home and abroad.”

A Norwegian grandfather, upon reading the deputy minister’s letter, quoted Saint Augustine: “Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.”

The Norwegian position is a staggering reaffirmation of the global situation: even the greenest governments find it too inconvenient to address the implication of scientific facts.

It becomes clear that concerted action will happen only if the public, somehow, becomes forcefully involved. One way citizens can help is by blocking coal plants, tar sands, and the mining of the last drops of fossil fuels.

However, fossil fuel addiction can be solved only when we recognise an economic law as certain as the law of gravity: as long as fossil fuels are the cheapest energy they will be used. Solution therefore requires a rising fee on oil, gas and coal – a carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies at the domestic mine or port of entry. All funds collected should be distributed to the public on a per capita basis to allow lifestyle adjustments and spur clean energy innovations. As the fee rises, fossil fuels will be phased out, replaced by carbon-free energy and efficiency.

A carbon fee is the only realistic path to global action. China and India will not accept caps, but they need a carbon fee to spur clean energy and avoid fossil fuel addiction.

Governments today, instead, talk of “cap-and-trade with offsets”, a system rigged by big banks and fossil fuel interests. Cap-and-trade invites corruption. Worse, it is ineffectual, assuring continued fossil fuel addiction to the last drop and environmental catastrophe.

Because the executive and legislative branches of our governments turn a deaf ear to the science, the judicial branch may provide the best opportunity to redress the situation. Our governments have a fiduciary responsibility to protect the rights of young people and future generations.

I look forward to standing with young people and their supporters, helping them develop their case, as they demand their proper due and fight for nature and their future. I guess that makes me an activist.

• The full version of this essay, entitled “Activist”, will appear in the book The Day After Tomorrow; Images of Our Earth in Crisis by J Henry Fair, to be published in November by PowerHouse Books. Dr James Hansen’s latest book is called Storms of my Grandchildren.

Sometimes the most important news is what is not happening.

This summer has given us one such example: the climate change bill, for which the US President Barack Obama had pushed so hard, will not even be presented to the US Senate because it stands no chance of passage.

This means the US is about to repeat its “Kyoto experience”. Twenty years ago, the US participated (at least initially) in the first talks aimed at achieving a global accord to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

At the time, the EU and the US were by far the greatest emitters so it seemed appropriate to exempt the world’s emerging economies from any commitment.

Over time, it became apparent that the US would not live up to its commitment owing, as now, to opposition in the Senate. The EU then went ahead on its own, introducing its path-breaking EU Emission Trading System in the hope that Europe could lead by example.

Without the American climate change package, the promises made by the US administration only seven months ago at the Copenhagen summit have become worthless. The European strategy is in tatters – and not only on the transatlantic front.

China’s commitment to increase the carbon dioxide efficiency of its economy by about 3 per cent a year is of no help because annual GDP growth rates of close to 10 per cent mean the country’s emissions will soar this decade.

By 2020, Chinese emissions could be more than triple those of Europe and even surpass those of the US and Europe combined. Exempting emerging markets from any commitments, as the Kyoto Protocol sought to do, no longer makes sense.

Why has every attempt to set prices for global carbon emissions failed? The answer is cheap and abundant coal.

Burning hydrocarbons (natural gas and petrol) yields water and carbon dioxide. By contrast, burning coal yields only carbon dioxide. Moreover, compared with natural gas and crude oil, coal is much cheaper for each tonne of carbon dioxide released.

This implies that any tax on carbon has a much higher impact on coal than on crude oil (or gas). Owners of coal mines and their clients are thus strongly opposed to any tax on carbon.

They constitute a small but well organised group that wields immense lobbying power to block efforts to limit carbon dioxide emissions by putting a price on them, as the planned US cap-and-trade system would have done.

In Europe, indigenous coal production no longer plays an important economic role. Therefore, it is not surprising that Europe could enact a cap-and-trade system that imposes a carbon price on a large part of its industry.

The tax seems to fall mostly on foreign suppliers of coal and to a lesser extend on foreign suppliers of hydrocarbons in the Middle East and Russia.

By contrast, opposition by US states with economies that rely significantly on coal production proved decisive for the fate of Mr Obama’s climate change bill.

The US experience has wider implications. If it proved impossible to introduce a moderate carbon tax in a rich economy, it is certain no commitment will be coming for the next generation from China, which remains much poorer and depends even more on indigenous coal than the US. And, after China, India looms as the next emerging coal-based industrial superpower.

Without any significant commitment from the US, the Copenhagen Accord, so laboriously achieved last year, has become meaningless.

Business will now continue as usual in terms of climate change diplomacy, with its wandering circus of big international meetings, and of rapidly increasing emissions.

The meetings are aimed at creating the impression that the world’s leaders are still working on a solution to the problem. But rising carbon dioxide emissions constitute what is really happening on the ground: a rapidly growing industrial base in emerging markets is being hard-wired to intensive use of coal. This will make it exceedingly difficult to reverse the trend in the future.

A planet composed of nation-states that in turn are dominated by special interest groups does not seem capable of solving this problem.

Unfortunately, there is enough cheap coal around to power ever-higher emissions for at least another century. So the world will become warmer. The only uncertainty is how much warmer.

Determined action at the global level will become possible only when climate change is no longer some scientific prediction but a reality that people feel.

But at that point, it will be too late to reverse the impact of decades of excessive emissions. A world incapable of preventing climate change will have to live with it.

* Project Syndicate

Daniel Gros is the director of the Centre for European Policy Studies.

Writing in the journal Nature, analysts at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany say a rise of at least 3C by 2100 is likely.

The team also says many countries, including EU members and China, have pledged slower carbon curbs than they have been achieving anyway.

They say a new global deal is needed if deeper cuts are to materialise.

“There’s a big mismatch between the ambitious goal, which is 2C… and the emissions reductions,” said Potsdam’s Malte Meinshausen.

“The pledged emissions reductions are in most cases very unambitious,” he told BBC News.

In their Nature article, the team uses stronger language, describing the pledges as “paltry”.

“The prospects for limiting global warming to 2C – or even to 1.5C, as more than 100 nations demand – are in dire peril,” they conclude.

Between now and 2020, global emissions are likely to rise by 10-20%, they calculate, and the chances of passing 3C by 2100 are greater than 50%.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this implies a range of serious impacts for the world, including

• significant falls in crop yields across most of the world
• damage to most coral reefs
• likely disruption to water supplies for hundreds of millions of people.

Chances of a 3C rise are higher than evens, the team calculates (simplified from Potsdam Institute’s Nature paper)

More than 120 countries have now associated themselves with the Copenhagen Accord, the political document stitched together on the summit’s final day by a small group of countries led by the US and the BASIC bloc of Brazil, China, India and South Africa.

The accord “recognises” the 2C target as indicated by science. It was also backed at last year’s G8 summit.

Many of those 120-odd have said what they are prepared to do to constrain their greenhouse gas emissions – either pledging cuts by 2020, in the case of industrialised countries, or promising to improve their “carbon intensity” in the case of developing nations.

Some of the pledges are little more than vague statements of intent. But all developed countries, and the developing world’s major emitters, have all given firm figures or ranges of figures.

The EU, for example, pledges to cut emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020; China promises to improve carbon intensity by 40-45% by 2020 compared against 2005; and Australia vows an emission cut of 5-25% on 2000 levels by 2020.

The Potsdam team concludes that many of the detailed pledges are nowhere near as ambitious as their proponents would claim.

They calculate that the EU’s 20% pledge implies an annual cut of 0.45% between 2010 and 2020, whereas it is already achieving annual reductions larger than that.

The Potsdam team calculates that the EU’s emissions have fallen on average by 0.6% per year since 1980

During 2009, emissions from the bloc’s power sector alone fell by 11% owing to the recession

Consequently, the current 20% by 2020 pledge equates to 0.45% per year – less than the historical average

China’s 40% minimum pledge also amounts to nothing more than business as usual, they relate; and among developed countries, only pledges by Norway and Japan fall into the 25-40% by 2020 range that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends as necessary to give a good chance of meeting the 2C target.

Hot air

Whereas many countries, rich and poor, have indicated they are willing to be more ambitious if there is a binding global deal, the Potsdam team notes that in the absence of a global deal, only the least ambitious end of their range can be counted upon.

Writing in the BBC’s Green Room this week, Bryony Worthington from the campaign group Sandbag argues that the EU can easily move to its alternative higher figure of 30% – and that it must, if it wants to stimulate others to cut deeper.

“Many countries are looking to Europe to show how it is possible to achieve growth without increasing emissions,” she said.

“Only when they see that this is possible will they be inclined to adopt absolute reduction targets of their own.”

An additional factor flagged up in the analysis is that many countries have accrued surplus emissions credits under the Kyoto Protocol.

Countries such as Russia and other former Eastern bloc nations comfortably exceeded their Kyoto targets owing to the collapse of Communist economies in the early 1990s.

Without a binding global agreement preventing the practice, these nations would be allowed to put these “banked” credits towards meeting any future targets – meaning they would have to reduce actual emissions less than they promised.

These “hot air” credits could also be traded between nations.

Stern words

This is not the first analysis of the Copenhagen Accord pledges, but it is one of the starkest.

Lord Stern’s team at the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in London has also run the figures; and although their conclusions on the numbers are similar, they do not see things in quite such a pessimistic light.

“You cannot characterise an emissions path for a country or the world by focusing solely on the level in 2020 or any other particular date,” said the institute’s principal research fellow Alex Bowen.

“It is the whole path that matters, and if more action is taken now to reduce emissions, less action will be required later, and vice versa.”

The Potsdam team acknowledges that if emissions do rise as they project, it would still be possible to have a reasonable chance of meeting 2C if very strict carbon curbs were applied thereafter, bringing emissions down by 5% per year or so.

“In an ideal world, if you pull off every possible emission reduction from the year 2021 onwards, you can still get to get to 2C if you’re lucky,” said Dr Meinshausen.

“But it is like racing towards the cliff and hoping you stop just before it.”

They argue that positive analyses may “lull decision-makers into a false sense of security”.

The UN climate process continues through this year, with many countries saying they still want to reach a binding global agreement by December.

But stark divisions remain between various blocs over emission cuts, finance, technology transfer and other issues; and it is far from certain that all important countries want anything more binding than the current set of voluntary national commitments.

Source BBC News

Want a weekly update of all the greatest posts on the web? Subscribe for the weekly VOICE FOR CHANGE Newsletter and never miss a story! CLICK Bob Williamson and in the subject line type SUBSCRIBE

Speaking in an unusually candid manner during a European Parliament hearing on Wednesday (14 April), De Boer said the UN climate negotiations in Copenhagen last year had been dominated by a sense of “suspicion”.

The December UN conference ended with a loose agreement, the Copenhagen Accord, which left Europeans “disappointed” because it contained no firm commitment from world nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“A lot of the reason why this process has been moving so slowly is because of suspicion, especially on the part of developing counties,” said De Boer, who will step down from the UNFCCC in July to take an advising role at consulting firm KPMG.

“Trust just isn’t there.”

European leaders routinely refer to the EU’s 2020 target to reduce emissions by 20% on 1990 levels as the most ambitious in the world.

But the UN climate chief suggested that the target will in fact be easy to achieve, raising suspicion from developing countries that it is only a smokescreen.

“Many of the discussions that you have in Europe are not terribly private,” he said. “And the rest of the world knows that the European Commission said to EU countries that achieving the minus 20% was a piece of cake and that achieving minus 30% isn’t going to ruin the European economy.”

“So countries in the rest of the world are asking themselves: ‘If that’s true, then why is this minus 30 now being taken off the table?’”

EU divided over move to 30%

The WWF’s Stefan Singer says the EU will easily reach its 20% objective for 2020, thanks mainly to the de-industrialisation that has taken place in ex-Soviet states since the fall of communism and offset projects in developing countries (EurActiv 14/04/09).

Moreover, emissions dropped steeply last year – by 11% – due to the economic recession, making the 2020 objective that much easier to attain (EurActiv 2/04/10).

But the EU’s possible move to a 30% reduction target for 2020 is causing internal divisions among the 27 member states, with Eastern European countries saying the EU must first analyse how other countries’ pledges compare before making a decision.

By contrast, the European Commission and most Western EU member states including the UK, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, argue that the move to 30% will stimulate green economic growth and innovation, creating new jobs along the way.

“If Europe is a strong believer in the green economic growth story, then those targets are imperative to achieve that sense of change of direction,” De Boer stressed.

‘Climate-wash’

De Boer said another major point of contention relates to the 100 billion dollars in annual climate aid that industrialised countries pledged for poor nations in Copenhagen.

“Is that going to be climate-wash or real and additional finance?” he asked. “Quite frankly, the track record is not quite there [to prove it],” he said.

Under existing arrangements, developing countries were asked to produce technology need assessments in their effort to fight climate change, De Boer explained. But these were rarely followed up and the promised funding was kept under wraps for the most part.

“Many among developing nations feel, with some justification, that these financial resources are not being provided. And that if financial resources are provided, they are often ‘climate-wash’,” he said, meaning development assistance re-labelled as climate aid. “So the money that was originally intended for poverty eradication now magically becomes climate change money.”

To break the deadlock, De Boer suggests giving developing countries responsibility for managing the aid. “What they would really like to see is that these huge sums of money are going to be distributed according to the priorities of the countries rather than according to the priorities of the donators.”

His proposal is to create a financial governance mechanism at the next UN summit in Cancún “that will really give developing countries the feeling that they are in control or in co-control of the money that is intended to help them green their economic growth”.

According to the Dutchman, developing countries are ready to accept that the money will be channelled through existing institutions like the World Bank, regional development banks or cooperation agencies.

Kyoto pledges not met

Speaking in the European Parliament, De Boer said the sense of suspicion had been heightened by the fact that industrialised nations had shown little willingness to meet their emission reduction pledges under the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

“The first suspicion relates to the fact that, yes, although Europe as a whole is on track to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, there are individual countries within the European Union which are having a little more difficulty – at least for the time being – achieving their targets under Kyoto.”

Although the EU as a whole is set to overshoot its collective emission reduction target under the Kyoto Protocol, a recent report by the European Environment Agency (EEA) showed the ‘older’ EU-15 member states will fall short of their targets without new policies or offset credits (EurActiv 13/11/09).

Moreover, under the UNFCCC, rich countries were supposed to return their emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000, De Boer said. “But in fact, only four individual countries met that goal,” he pointed out.

De Boer singled out Canada, which announced it will not meet its Kyoto target but nevertheless refuses to withdraw from the treaty. Developing countries have not heard any reaction to that statement, De Boer said, adding to their suspicion. 

“So there is not that much confidence that industrialised countries will meet their targets under the Kyoto Protocol,” he explained.

Source Euractiv

Pledges Post Copenhagen Unlikely to Keep Temperatures Below 2 Degrees Celsius by Mid Century

UNEP Year Book Also Launched Today Outlines Growing Governance Challenge from Climate to Chemicals

Bali (Indonesia), 23 February 2010 - Countries will have to be far more ambitious in cutting greenhouse gas emissions if the world is to effectively curb a rise in global temperature at 2 degrees C or less.

This is the conclusion of a new greenhouse gas modeling study, based on the estimates of researchers at nine leading centres, compiled by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

The experts (see notes to editors) suggest that annual global greenhouse gas emissions should not be larger than 40 to 48.3 Gigatonnes (Gt) of equivalent C02 in 2020 and should peak sometime between 2015 and 2021.

They also estimate that between 2020 and 2050, global emissions need to fall by between 48 per cent and 72 per cent, indicating that an ambition to cut greenhouse gases by around three per cent a year over that 30 year period is also needed.

Such a path offers a ‘medium’ likelihood or at least a 50/50 chance of keeping a global temperature rise at below 2 degrees C, says the new report.

The new study, launched on the eve of UNEP’s Governing Council/Global Ministerial Environment Forum taking place in Bali, Indonesia, has analyzed the pledges of 60 developed and developing economies.

They have been recently submitted to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) following the UN climate convention meeting in Copenhagen in December.

The nine modeling centres have now estimated how far these pledges go towards meeting a reasonable ‘peak’ in emissions depending on whether the high or the low intentions are met.

“The expected emissions for 2020 range between 48.8 to 51.2 GT of CO2 equivalent based on whether high or low pledges will be fulfilled,” says the report.

The report, as noted earlier, says that in order to meet the 2 degree C aim in 2050, emissions in 2020 need to be between 40 Gt and 48.3 Gt.

Thus even with the best intentions there is a gap of between 0.5 and 8.8Gt of CO2 equivalent per year, amounting to an average shortfall in emission cuts of 4.7 Gt.

If the low end of the emission reduction pledges are fulfilled, the gap is even bigger-2.9 Gt to 11.2 Gt of CO2 equivalent per year, with an average gap of 7.1 Gt says the report How Close Are We to the Two Degree Limit?

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, said: “There are clearly a great deal of assumptions underlying these figures, but they do provide an indication of where countries are and perhaps more importantly where they need to aim.”

“There clearly is ‘Gigatonne gap’ which may be a significant one according some of the modelers. This needs to be bridged and bridged quickly if the international community is to pro-actively manage emissions down in a way that makes economic sense,” he added.

“There are multiple reasons for countries to make a transition to a low carbon, resource efficient Green Economy of which climate change is a key one. But energy security, cuts in air pollution and diversifying energy sources are also important drivers,” said Mr Steiner.

“This week at the UNEP GC/GMEF we will also shine a light on the opportunities ranging from accelerating clean tech and renewable energy enterprises to the climate, social and economic benefits of investing in terrestrial and marine ecosystems,” he added.

Some of those multiple opportunities for action are showcased in the UNEP Year Book 2010 which is being presented to ministers responsible for the environment who are attending the meeting.

These include Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) which gained political support at the Copenhagen climate change meeting.

REDD, which involves supporting developing countries to conserve rather than clear tropical forests, could make an important contribution not only to combating climate change but also to overcoming poverty and to a successful UN International Year of Biodiversity.

. The Year Book estimates that investing $22 billion to $29 billion in REDD could cut global deforestation by 25 per cent by 2015.

It also highlights a new and promising REDD project in Brazil, at the Juma Sustainable Development Reserve in Amazonas.

. Here each family receives US$28 a month if the forest remains uncut, one potential way of tipping the economic balance in favour of conservation versus continued deforestation.

Renewables are also gaining momentum: although still very low compared to the huge potential of renewable energy, the global installed wind generation capacity has grown at the rate of 25 per cent per year over the past five years.

. In China, for example installed capacity has nearly doubled every year since the end of 2004 – and the report notes that the wind energy potential under perfect conditions has been estimated at up to 72,000 GW, nearly five times total energy demand. Probably 20 per cent of this energy potential could be captured in the future, representing almost 15 000 GW.

Managing a response to climate change also echoes the challenge of International Environment Governance, a key theme at this week’s GC/GMEF.

Governance also underpins the international response to other challenges highlighted in the UNEP Year Book 2010.

Read more on this from the United Nations Environment Program

Want a weekly update of all the greatest posts on the web? Subscribe for the weekly VOICE FOR CHANGE Newsletter and never miss a story! CLICK Bob Williamson and in the subject line type SUBSCRIBE

Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

But what a burden would be lifted! We would no longer have to worry that our grandchildren would one day look back on us as a criminal generation that had selfishly and blithely ignored clear warnings that their fate was in our hands. We could instead celebrate the naysayers who had doggedly persisted in proving that every major National Academy of Sciences report on climate change had simply made a huge mistake.

I, for one, genuinely wish that the climate crisis were an illusion. But unfortunately, the reality of the danger we are courting has not been changed by the discovery of at least two mistakes in the thousands of pages of careful scientific work over the last 22 years by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In fact, the crisis is still growing because we are continuing to dump 90 million tons of global-warming pollution every 24 hours into the atmosphere — as if it were an open sewer.

It is true that the climate panel published a flawed overestimate of the melting rate of debris-covered glaciers in the Himalayas, and used information about the Netherlands provided to it by the government, which was later found to be partly inaccurate. In addition, e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skepticsmay not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.

But the scientific enterprise will never be completely free of mistakes. What is important is that the overwhelming consensus on global warming remains unchanged. It is also worth noting that the panel’s scientists — acting in good faith on the best information then available to them — probably underestimated the range of sea-level rise in this century, the speed with which the Arctic ice cap is disappearing and the speed with which some of the large glacial flows in Antarctica and Greenland are melting and racing to the sea.

Because these and other effects of global warming are distributed globally, they are difficult to identify and interpret in any particular location. For example, January was seen as unusually cold in much of the United States. Yet from a global perspective, it was the second-hottest January since surface temperatures were first measured 130 years ago.

Similarly, even though climate deniers have speciously argued for several years that there has been no warming in the last decade, scientists confirmed last month that the last 10 years were the hottest decade since modern records have been kept.

The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere — thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States. Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.

Here is what scientists have found is happening to our climate: man-made global-warming pollution traps heat from the sun and increases atmospheric temperatures. These pollutants — especially carbon dioxide — have been increasing rapidly with the growth in the burning of coal, oil, natural gas and forests, and temperatures have increased over the same period. Almost all of the ice-covered regions of the Earth are melting — and seas are rising. Hurricanes are predicted to grow stronger and more destructive, though their number is expected to decrease. Droughts are getting longer and deeper in many mid-continent regions, even as the severity of flooding increases. The seasonal predictability of rainfall and temperatures is being disrupted, posing serious threats to agriculture. The rate of species extinction is accelerating to dangerous levels.

Though there have been impressive efforts by many business leaders, hundreds of millions of individuals and families throughout the world and many national, regional and local governments, our civilization is still failing miserably to slow the rate at which these emissions are increasing — much less reduce them.

And in spite of President Obama’s efforts at the Copenhagen climate summit meeting in December, global leaders failed to muster anything more than a decision to “take note” of an intention to act.

Read more of this article by Al Gore

Want a weekly update of all the greatest posts on the web? Subscribe for the weekly VOICE FOR CHANGE Newsletter and never miss a story! CLICK Bob Williamson and in the subject line type SUBSCRIBE

How can everything have gone so wrong so quickly? A year ago, the prospects for successful climate change regulation were bright: a new US president promised positive re-engagement with the international community on the issue, civil society everywhere was enthusiastically mobilising to demand that world leaders “seal the deal” at Copenhagen, and the climate denial crowd had been reduced to an embarrassing rump lurking in the darker corners of the internet.

Now there seems to have been a complete reversal. Obama is held hostage by a deadlocked Senate, which will agree to neither domestic climate legislation nor US participation in a new legally binding treaty.Copenhagen was a disaster from start to finish, and even the face-saving Copenhagen accord is winning at best lukewarm support even from the countries that helped draw it up. To add to the sense of crisis, the climate denial lobby is suddenly resurgent, and the conspiracy theories that underlie the hacked climate emails controversy are in danger of becoming popular received wisdom.

These are dark times. And the resignation of Yvo de Boer as executive secretary of the UN climate change secretariat today only compounds the sense of gathering crisis. De Boer has been a steady pair of hands guiding the international negotiations through some very rocky periods — not least the dramatic episode in Bali two years ago where he himself burst into tears on the plenary stage — and his trustworthy, solid presence will be sorely missed. Despite the official denials, there can be little doubt that this resignation indicates his frustration at the general unravelling of the process that was so depressingly evident at Copenhagen.

Whether de Boer himself should shoulder any of the blame for the Copenhagen debacle is arguable. Most of the responsibility for the conduct of the negotiations, which were marked by poor organisation, suspicion, bitterness and almost absurd levels of chaos on the final night, rests with the hosts Denmark. But the secretariat also appeared powerless to navigate past procedural blocking tactics employed by Sudan and other retrogressive developing nations, suggesting a creeping lack of confidence on the part of the UN. De Boer seemed to be losing his touch.

Even after Copenhagen was finally over, things continued to deteriorate. It was unclear what, if any, legal standing the accord actually had given that it was only “noted” by the Conference of Parties rather than adopted as a decision. And a 31 January deadline for countries to decide whether they wanted to be “associated” with the accord was allowed to slip, while governments continued to be confused as to what, if anything, they were supposed to be sending the secretariat.

In the meantime, the prospects for a legally binding new treaty being agreed at Cancun, at the next major UN climate meeting in December, seem to recede by the day. The only countries that support a new round of Kyoto targets are those that would not be bound by them — namely the developing countries.

Even the EU, Kyoto’s most stalwart supporter during the Bush era, is now backing away. The more logical idea of tying the world’s biggest emitters – China, the US, the EU, Russia and India, in descending order – into a single, fair framework for emissions reduction seems even less plausible, given the current political mood.

All in all, the next few months look grim. There is now no serious prospect of Obama getting legislation through the Senate, this year, or possibly ever. Following the sustained attack by climate deniers on both individual scientists and the IPCC, public confidence in climate change as an urgent issue is also steadily eroding, further reducing the room for manoeuvre by politicians. The next round of intermediate negotiations,due to start in Bonn on 31 May, look set to take place in a poisonous atmosphere of bitterness and rancour.

No wonder Yvo de Boer wanted to get out.

Source Mark Lynas Guardian

Want a weekly update of all the greatest posts on the web? Subscribe for the weekly VOICE FOR CHANGE Newsletter and never miss a story! CLICK Bob Williamson and in the subject line type SUBSCRIBE

Source Climate Safety

Want a weekly update of all the greatest posts on the web? Subscribe for the weekly VOICE FOR CHANGE Newsletter and never miss a story! CLICK Bob Williamson and in the subject line type SUBSCRIBE