UN starts climate talks in Poland to seek deal in Copenhagen

[struggle4progress]

Source: Xinhua

2008-12-01 17:47:41 Print

POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations started this year's climate change talks in central Poland Monday to seek a deal next year to succeed Kyoto Protocol that is to expire in 2012.

Over 9000 participants from governments, non-government organizations gathered here for two weeks starting from Dec. 1 to build momentum toward Copenhagen meeting next December.

Addressing the conference, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he is convinced that the Poznan conference will serve as the basis for the success of the Copenhagen meeting.

"Combating climate change is timeless and permanent and should not be forgotten due to economic problems," Tusk said, noting the no single country can cope with the problem alone ...

Read more: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/01/content_10440318.htm

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Curtain set to rise on marathon climate talks

... Rich countries hold most of the world's wealth and consume most of its resources, but are pushing for concessions from China and India, which are becoming major polluters in their own right.

Developing countries, meanwhile, want the West to help pay for them to grow their economies in a sustainable manner and stump up cash to shore up the defences of poor countries most vulnerable to climate change.

Delegates in Poland will be examining an 82-page document containing a range of differing and complex proposals for long-term cooperative action.

By the end of the talks on December 12, it is hoped that this will have been condensed into a workable blueprint for negotiations culminating in a deal in Copenhagen ...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5giiQAGePuI_Iizd8yVzP0KJg3c5g

Backgrounder: Major parties' stances on fighting global warming
www.chinaview.cn 2008-12-01 13:10:33

... For the EU, the 27-member bloc promises to lead the fight against climate change by quantifying the green house gas emission cuts.

According to a strategic energy plan adopted in March 2007, EU proposed to reduce 20 percent of its carbon dioxide emissions below the 1990 levels by 2020 and increase its renewable energy percentage to 20 percent. The bloc is scheduled to pass the plan in December.

Though expecting to push for a global deal for green house gas emission curbs, the bloc found itself disunified on the issue. Seven Eastern European countries oppose such a plan, fearing it may hurt their economies, which rely heavily on coal-fired energy ...

Fifty-three African nations adopted the Algiers Declaration on climate change on Nov. 19, 2008 and agreed to negotiate as a bloc in talks on a new global warming treaty, a move meant to give the continent highly threatened by climate change a greater say in the future pact ...

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-12/01/content_10438892.htm

Japan, U.S. Seek to Divide Developing Nations at Climate Talks
By Alex Morales

... The U.S. is the only industrialized nation with no limits, having never ratified Kyoto, saying it was unfair for poorer nations to have no caps. Still, the U.S. is joining the talks for a new treaty. Proposing that poorer countries be split into different groups is already raising the hackles of some of them.

“There is no chance whatsoever that any developing country will agree to that proposal,” Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, South Africa’s environment minister, said in an interview in London. “None of the developing countries -- all of us have said that up front -- are willing to commit to specific targets.”

Nations with low per-capita income including China say that developed countries should continue bearing the burden because their factories and power plants over the last century spewed most of carbon dioxide that’s now in the atmosphere ...

Japan’s proposal to the United Nations, which is not formally endorsed by the U.S., would divide the developing world into three groups: countries most vulnerable to climate change, such as small islands at risk of rising sea levels; an intermediate group; and the most-polluting of the developing nations. The last group would be forced to slash emissions based on pollution per capita or per unit of economic output, Takiguchi said, without naming specific countries ...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601080&sid=aw.CcrBY_WVk&refer=asia

FACTBOX - India sets out demands in climate change fight
Mon Dec 1, 2008 3:17pm IST

... The United States, China, India and Brazil are currently outside Kyoto's first phase till end-2012. Kyoto only commits 37 rich nations to binding emissions targets.

With greenhouse gas levels rising quickly, India has said any stabilization target should be decided on the principle that each person on the planet has an equal right to the atmosphere.

But India believes industrialised nations have a historic responsibility for the bulk of the greenhouse pollution and should curb their own emissions first and help the developing world clean up their economies without harming development.

"Equitable sharing of the carbon space, therefore, needs to be urgently agreed by the international community," the government said in an October submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto's parent treaty ...
http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idINIndia-36801020081201?sp=true

Polluting gases will heat planet 'for ever'
BY GEOFFREY LEAN
1/12/2008 1:00:00 AM

... But one of the main researchers, Professor David Archer of Chicago University, warns ''the climatic impacts of releasing fossil-fuel carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will last longer than Stonehenge, longer than time capsules, far longer than the age of human civilisation so far''.

Carbon dioxide mainly leaves the atmosphere by being soaked up by the oceans, but Professor Archer says the notion this happens relatively quickly is no longer valid. In a paper to be published in the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, he says, ''The ocean is getting fed up with absorbing our CO2.'' Surface waters which used to sop up the gas quite fast, are getting saturated with it turning acid in the process and, so, decreasing their uptake. They need to be replaced with fresh water from deep down, but this circulation ''takes centuries or a millennium''.

Global warming is expected to slow this down: the hotter the surface layer becomes, the longer the replenishment takes.

The paper says research shows this renewing process will not be enough to remove the vast amounts of carbon dioxide. Much will have to wait hundreds of thousands of years before being removed by another, much slower, process: the natural weathering of rocks, which incorporates the gas into other substances ...

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/local/news/environment/polluting-gases-will-heat-planet-for-ever/1374287.aspx?storypage=0

U.N. climate boss warns of "cheap, dirty" energy fix
Mon Dec 1, 2008 8:48am IST
By Alister Doyle and Gerard Wynn

... Yvo de Boer said the world risked a second financial crisis if governments reacted to economic slowdown by building cheap, high-polluting coal-fired power plants that might then have to be scrapped as climate impacts hit.

"What concerns me most is that the financial crisis will lead to a second set of bad investment decisions," he told a news conference before Dec. 1-12 talks involving 186 nations working on a new climate treaty.

"I hope that the second financial crisis is not going to have its origins in bad energy loans," he said.

Short-sighted investments could lead to a need to build new low-carbon solar or wind power plants in 10-20 years ...

http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-36793720081201?sp=true

Interfaith Leaders Sign Climate Change Manifesto of Hope

UPPSALA, Sweden, November 30, 2008 (ENS) - Faith leaders concluded their two-day Interfaith Summit on Climate Change in Uppsala on Satuday by signing a manifesto demanding quick and extensive reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the wealthy parts of the world.

Christian, Buddhist, Daoist, Sikh, Muslim, Jewish and Native American leaders signed the declaration that states, "We all share the responsibility of being conscious caretakers of our home, planet Earth. We have reflected on the concerns of scientists and political leaders regarding the alarming climate crisis. We share their concerns."

"The situation is critical," the manifesto states. "Glaciers and the permafrost are melting. Devastating drought and flooding strike people and ecosystems, especially in the South. Can planet Earth be healed? We are convinced that the answer is yes."

Hosted by the Church of Sweden, the interfaith leaders were welcomed with an opening address by Swedish Archbishop Anders Wejryd, who said, "We are not at this meeting to find special religious answers to the environmental crisis. We have to share the realities of technology, economy and politics with all people ...

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2008/2008-11-30-01.asp