UN Climate Conference 'Very Much a Make or Break'
BONN, Nov 24 (IPS) - International negotiations beginning Dec. 3 in Bali are crucial for saving our planet from the devastating effects of global warming, says Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Some excerpts from the interview: IPS: A lot has happened since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Japan ten years ago. What does it mean for Bali? Yvo de Boer: It means that a lot of pressure is beginning to build on governments to really come to grips with this issue and design a long-term response that measures up to what the scientific community is telling us. A climate change policy is very much a science-based policy. It draws on a better understanding of science. Gradually the intergovernmental panel on climate change has managed to paint a clearer picture of what the impacts of climate change are likely to be. What you now also see is that it is becoming less and less a science that relies solely on models but a science where the models are validated by what is happening all around us. I think what you have seen certainly in the course of this year, is a growing political realization or awareness of that scientific message and an increasing realization that something needs be done in response to it and that applies around the world -- rich, poor, North, South. Realization is growing everywhere. IPS: Are you saying that there is no longer a North-South gap on these issues? YdB: No. There are huge divisions on this issue in the sense that you have the European Union saying that we should limit temperature increase to two degrees, and representatives from small island states saying: "Well if you let that happen then our countries will disappear." You have one group of countries saying "we should act urgently on this issue" and other countries saying "we rely economically entirely on the export of oil. What are our economic prospects?"
We have the people in India saying: "You people mention China and India in the same sentences implying we are the same. But in fact we are completely different." Obviously there are huge divisions on this issue, which is what makes it so complicated. IPS: Won't the tensions that you describe stand in the way of Bali? YdB: I think those tensions will make a decision difficult because countries will rightfully point out that financial commitments in the past have not been met and they don't believe they will be met now. Countries are rightly saying: "Why should we now potentially constrain our economic growth to solve the problem that somebody else has caused?" I think the problems, the tensions are right there with us. But I do have the feeling that seeing the evidence of climate change in everyday life, recognizing the very clear message that the scientists are providing politicians around the world, is saying that we have to stop bickering and start working on solutions. IPS: So what do you expect Bali to result in? YdB: Bali, I hope, would result in a first step on a long road to really come to grips with climate change. I read occasionally in newspapers that people expect Bali to agree on targets and finalize a regime. That's not my expectation. I would be happy leaving Bali if there is a decision to launch negotiations, if the agenda for those negotiations is agreed, and if a date for those negotiations to be completed is agreed. It is after that, real work begins. The real work, just in two years -- before the end of 2009 -- is designing a global agreement that encompasses every country while recognizing the need of different approaches with different people. The interests at stake are very different and you have to find your way through those major conflicting interests. IPS: But what if that objective is not achieved? Will you convene Bali II? YdB: I hope not. I think we have developed a certain critical mass that can either lead to an agreement in Bali or it can cause disintegration in the form of loss of faith in the process, and loss of confidence in the UN process being capable of delivering. So for me Bali is very much a make or a break. IPS: What about the United States? Do you see any change for the better in their attitude? YdB: There is a change in the attitude in that the U.S. is now indicating a willingness to negotiate. But there are still fundamental differences in the approach favored by the U.S. on the one hand and the Europeans and the developing countries on the other. Europeans and many developing countries feel that industrialized countries should take on internationally binding targets. The U.S. still favors an approach whereby a target is adopted voluntarily when written into legislation at the national level. So, in both cases it is legally binding. But the level at which it is binding is different. And that is part of the hard work, which I think has to be done after Bali, in designing a regime.
IPS: The lead author of the [UN's] Human Development Report has said [in an interview with IPS]: "The European Union cannot demand from India that it deprives some 400 million people of access to energy amidst such high levels of poverty." YdB: He is absolutely right. But the question for me is if you have 400 million who don't have electricity at the moment, can you help them to skip the copper age? That is, skip connecting them to the established electricity grid...and get them straight into locally generated, decentralized power, which is much cleaner? Definitely it should not be about denying people access to energy, but supplying people with access to a modern source of energy. India should be allowed the same per capita emissions as industrialized countries -- statements like this from an ethical point of view are perfectly correct. But then think that through: that would imply that India's energy bill will be 11 times what it is today. And, in order to get there India presumably will be burning a high ash-content coal. What would be the air quality consequences? What would be the impact on India's public health bill? From an ethical point of view every human being has the right to emit the same quantity. But my ambition would be for India to become the richest country in the world with the lowest per-capita emissions. I think the ambition should not be to be as wasteful as the West -- the ambition should be to be as wealthy as the West, but to continue a very good tradition more prevalent in developing countries, to be frugal in what you use. -----
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"Carbon Capture - putting off today what others will have to solve tomorrow"Author:
david hill
Time: 11/26/2007 06:13
Comment: Carbon Capture - putting off today what others will have to solve tomorrow
The World Innovation Foundation is the voice of the world's 'INDEPENDENT' scientific community (3,500 eminent scientists, engineers and technologists and counting). It is not dictated too by governments or national academies of science. This independence of mind away from the control of governments and multi-national financially supported entities, gives the WIF the ability to tell the truth. Therefore with regard to just one possible aspect of trying to reduce the effects of global warming, that of carbon capture, what we are doing here is basically putting off as usual, problems that our future generations will have to solve. Therefore carbon capture is just putting off the inevitable and where the big multinationals will make literally billions out of a regime of continuation and where no real solutions are found. Indeed, if this vast amount of carbon leaches out of the ground or oceans in the future, we might as well say goodbye to human life on this planet. Therefore politicians are presently dabbling with humankind's very existence. What in essence should be happening is that governments around the world should be investing in the development of a centralised global centre that solves the world's immense problems, not putting them off for others to solve at a later date. We as independent scientific minds have been telling governments for a decade now to develop the concept of the ORE-STEM complex with its 1000 plus incubator centres around the world. Simply, this mechanism harnesses the world's creative thinking and siphons it into this huge centre to solve the biggest problems that confronts humankind and possibly save it from extinction. It is common sense in reality, as only a mechanism large enough to stop the worst effects of global warming and provide the necessary answers to famine, supporting the population explosion (now predicted to be a minimum of 10 billion by 2050 and possibly even 12 billion) and alternative energy sources (new discoveries) et al. Therefore the world has to force forward what the independent scientific community is saying, for if not, we certainly run the greatest risk of all, the extinction of the human experience itself. Dr David Hill World Innovation Foundation Bern, Switzerland |
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