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TechnoratiG8 Accused of 'Failing the World' on Carbon Cuts
TOYAKO, Japan - Leaders of the world's richest nations have kept alive hope of a global agreement to combat climate change by agreeing to cut their carbon emissions by at least 50 per cent by 2050.
Environmental groups said the agreement at the G8 summit in Japan did not go far enough, and the search for a deal moves to the talks about a "son of Kyoto" global agreement in Copenhagen next year.
George Bush, who had previously stalled progress by agreeing only to "seriously consider" a 50 per cent cut, finally gave a little ground yesterday, knowing his two possible successors as US President, Barack Obama and John McCain, were ready to go further.
However, the G8 leaders failed to agree on an interim target to cut emissions by 2020 or the start date from which the 50 per cent cut would be measured.
Five big emerging countries - China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa - will urge G8 leaders today to agree to reduce their emissions by 80 to 95 per cent by 2050, and to set a medium-term target of a 25 to 40 per cent cut below 1990 levels by 2020. G8 leaders acknowledged the need for interim goals but officials said they would not be agreed until next year's talks.
G8 leaders approved a $150bn (£75bn) plan to help developing countries "go green" to make them more likely to meet the proposed global target. The aim is to stop them building coal and oil-fired power stations and reduce deforestation.
The summit also backed 25 measures to encourage householders and business to help save the planet, saying the blueprint could cut 20 per cent of the world's energy consumption - the amount currently soaked up by America.
Gordon Brown, who pressed the proposals, outlined his vision of a "green" Britain in which all new family cars could be electrically powered by 2020. He is urging the European Union to agree a 60 per cent improvement in fuel efficiency by then. In the short term, the Government will launch an "eco-driving" campaign to tell drivers about accelerating, braking and tyre pressures.
The measures, which could eventually become worldwide, include mandatory "stand-by" consumption of one watt for electrical appliances; targets to cut energy consumption from new buildings and an end to traditional lightbulbs, which are already being phased out in Britain by 2011.
Mr Brown said the oil price rise had made the need to combat global warming more urgent. "There has been major progress on the climate change agenda, beyond which people would have thought possible a few months ago," he said. "It is a big shift."
Green groups said the G8 leaders had missed a golden opportunity. "It is pathetic that they still duck their historic responsibility," WWF said. "The G8 nations are responsible for 62 per cent of the carbon dioxide accumulated in the earth's atmosphere, which makes them the main culprit of climate change and the biggest part of the problem."
John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, accused them of "vacuous back-slapping." He said: "They have failed the world again. We needed tough targets for the richest countries to slash emissions in the next 100 months, but instead we got ambiguous long-term targets for the world in general."
Friends of the Earth criticised the decision to channel some of its "climate investment funds" for developing countries through the World Bank, saying it was a "fossil fuel financier and major deforester".
A spokeswoman said: "G8 leaders have left the fox to guard the hen house."
© 2008 The Independent
23 Comments so far
Show AllRather scary that the entire world depends on the benevolence of a bunch of spoiled prima donnas! None of these 'leaders' have ever experienced war, poverty or hunger...and yet they want to 'rule'???
M i M i C c S,
What a lovely and thought provoking reference(s). Thank you.
I especially enjoy the humor of one possible cause of Global Warming:
"[RSJ: The true hazard of Global Warming: getting burned by a colleague. The main _cause_ of _warming_ appears to be _friction_ between believers and skeptics."
As it appears "more heat than light" is also being generated here on CD ( believers-consensus v. contrarian-deniers ).
The proper framing of the debate as done in two stages :
====== F I R S T ======
acknowledging or recognizing v. BIG egregious denying of the actual observed climatic warming ( Denying these facts is IDIOTIC, SO don't bother w/ any discussion ) and
as contrasted by
====== S E C O N D ======
the agreement or lack thereof, that the models ( CO2 causes global warming ) in fact prove that man is the cause. Denying ( or being contranian ) here is actually about the science of working out the details, and challenging the uphill gradient of the accepted consensus model.
W H A T __ D O E S __ P E E R __ R E V I E W __ M E A N __ ?
The larger arch of the scientific method encourages all valid opinions be evaluated purely on the rules of OBJECTIVE science and rigor of method, model, and data quality ( NOT requiring consensus of majority opinions ).
In the short term, the "peer review" community is liken to the Catholic Church's centuries long FROZEN adherence against the heliocentric solar system, which eventually took sway, even though GALILEO was the laughing stock of ridicule up until that point of acceptance.
Galileo had to hide science inside a "joke" book, to avoid direct confrontation with the quite powerfully opinionated Catholic Church, and its "convincing" too - the Inquisition ( and that only worked to avoid the pain, not the house arrest until death ).
_____T H E __ M O D E L S __ M O R P H I N G __ N A M E
____ [ G _ C _ M ] ____
Was ___ G_LOBAL ______ C_LIMATE ______ M_ODEL
Now ___ G_REENHOUSE __ C_ATASTROPHE __ M_ODELS
Namaste « Presence »
« We must be the change we wish to see in the world » — Gandhi
« There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed » — Gandhi
« We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself » — ML King
Actually, they are not digging their own graves.
They are merely digging ours.
When your only promise is 42 years away, you don't have to do anything at all for 41 years. So put up some more coal plants!
PaulK " Where does the carbon ultimately stay?". This is a very good question.
Here are the players in the carbon cycle and how much carbon they hold.
the atmosphere 760 gigatons (increasing at a rate of about 3 gigatons per year)
the ocean surface layers 800 gigatons
the deep ocean 38,000 gigatons
plants and soils 2,000 gigatons
Man emits about 7 gigatons of CO2 each year. So every year, man emits CO2 into the atmosphere that is equal to 1% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere. The total emissions from all sources are about 210 gigatons , and each year there is a net uptake of about 3 gigatons. So 98.5% of all CO2 emissions are absorbed into the various sinks as part of the carbon cycle. How exactly is mans CO2 emissions due to energy consumption contributing 50% or more to the 3 gigaton uptake. Shouldn't our share be 3% of this, or 0.09 gigatons? If we reduce that by 50%, so what, we might lower CO2 levels by 2 ppm.
But you know what they say? IPCC says mans CO2 stays in the air and gets left behind for over 100 years. The plants won't eat mans CO2, the oceans won't absorb mans CO2. Hold your breath and think about that for a minute. Does it make any sense? If it does not make sense to you, there is hope.
Now consider this comment from a New Zealand scientist.
http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html#more
"I have been pulling together numbers on the total sources of world carbon and was astonished to find that if the total known world reserves of fossil fuels (a bit over 1000Pg) was released into the system, the carbon stocks in the biosphere (90% in water) would increase by about 2.5%. Thats not going to make headlines in the world press. "
Now, even if you decide to accept man is behind CO2 increases in the atmosphere, temperatures indicate a catastrophic effect on climate is improbable.
Surface temperature warmed approximately 0.7 degrees Celsius from 1910 to 1945, cooled ~0.4 C from 1945 to 1975, warmed 0.6 C from 1975 to 1997, and has not warmed significantly from 1997 to 2008.
CO2 emissions due to fossile fuels rose gradually from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, reaching 1 billion tonnes per year by 1945, and then accelerated to 7 billion tonnes per year by 2008. Since 1945 when CO2 emissions accelerated, earth has experienced 22 years of warming, and 41 years of either cooling or absence of warming.
The IPCC's position that increased CO2 is the primary cause of global warming is not supported by the temperature data.
When you question the consensus you get told your a fool and they tell you there is another layer that the famous scientist didn't explain, and links to an endless series of papers in journals are provided that you can not get access to without a paid subscription, and each one gives one tiny bit of the jigsaw puzzle. The fact that they can not clearly explain the science and convince engineers and those outside the field of climate science proves they do not understand the science well enough to prove their point.
craig:
Intelligence has nothing to do with it. Many of those so called "social elites" are indeed "intelligent", but they had all their "intelligence" went into things that are causing all these problems.Same thing can be said with responsibility - but just in different areas. I think, that our social structure that allowed groups of people to be completely devoted to matters other than "survival", had dulled the those people's ability to conceptualize the problems that seemed so obvious to others. I mean, should our president actually had life experiences as a fisherman who noticed the problems with disappearing fish stocks over 20~30 years of direct fishing experiences at sea, you'd think he would act more aggressively to address the problem?
Instead, we had "professional statesmen" who's had whole life's worth of experiences in the political arena. Given the "political environment", what do you think he'd be concerned with?
Great job G8, 50% by 2050?
By that point we'll be at what like 450ppm? This is so disheartening it makes me wonder why even bother with my environmental advocacy? Sure I can run around in the prairie planting milkweeds and such but really what's the point?
Hopefully evolution will do a better job of creating a more responsible intelligent species next time around. We don't deserve this planet.
The deliberate delays and blockages of vital environmental measures by the U.S. under this administration defies logic and honor. Their unprecedented manipulation of science and deception to achieve these misdeeds is akin to treason. The resulting damage to our planet is immeasurable, and we will be paying for these outrageous acts in health, economy, and security for generations.
Look the big corps snap the fingers and these yes men walk the line.
2050 to a kid born today will be 42 years old by the time the get around to making cuts?
50% by 2050?
Kiss your grandchildren goodbye at an early age and don't expect your great grandchildren to last very long on this earth!
Greed and Stupidity Rule!
Kissin' it goodbye, boss!
" PaulK July 9th, 2008 12:41 pm
Planting trees means nothing if the forest burns up later. It's a copout."
It's not a copout; it's a stage act and meant to [deceive] all the good wishers of the world into believing that they should keep electing these state "leaders", i.e., hooligoons, fiends, liars, ..., to office; again and again and ... forever.
It'd only be a copout if they had been honestly intentional, minded, souled, ... to begin with and then chose to do the opposite of what they really wanted to do, at first. We have to be fools to believe that these state leaders are anything but about GREED, deceiving the world public, etcetera; imo.
¿ Was geo shoveling fertilizer in that PIX ?
Same 'ol Same 'ol
shoveling the bu$h!t
Different day,
same 'ol bu$h!t
But that's the way governments and the people in them are, Frankr29! The elected officials look into the future only as far as the next election, and their main goal is getting elected or re-elected, not solving problems (unless those problems impinge upon those election or re-election efforts). And the bureaucrats? As long as they get their paychecks, they'll let things ride.
Don't laugh. The picture probably shows the the totality of Bush's effort to combt global warming. He's probably trying to figure out how he can sell "his" tree to a paper mill.
Paul_GA: You've turned the Keynes quote on its head. Keynes meant that we should act now to solve problems, not wait until the market sorts things out in the long run.
What a joke! We'll all be toast by 2050. Like elmysterio says, that will be much too late.
And the photo-op of these numb nuts planting trees as a symbol of their so-called commitment to reducing global warming - makes me want to barf. The time to act is NOW! Get your heads out of your asses, G-8 leaders.
I'm sure T. Boone Pickens has ulterior (profit) motives for his big alternative energy PR campaign that he launched yesterday, but the one thing I found encouraging in the ad I saw was his acknowledgment that THIS IS A CRISIS. Even right wing corporate greedies like Pickens apparently see the writing on the wall. Hopefully more and more people will bypass our sad excuse for leaders/government and start doing what they can to find solutions to this crisis.
I will say again - and I'd shout it from the rooftops if I could get my old bones up there - spread the word to the children. Tell your children, and your grandchildren what they face if we continue down this path. They have a right to know what we've done to the world and how it will affect them. They'll spread the word, and soon it'll be like a wild fire spreading across the country.
As Paul_GA quotes, "In the long run, we're all dead." But the children won't be. And they won't want to just sit around waiting for their world to be destroyed.
We all know why TV commercials are aimed at the children. When kids begin to demand their parents stop doing all the things that are causing the damage to the planet, and threatens their future, things will begin to change. And it'll certainly be sooner than 2050!
We need to phase out fossil fuels as fast as possible, in the U.S., and globally. The national network I direct, GlobalWarmingSolution.org, released its emissions reduction proposal, "Rosie Revisited: A U.S.-Led Solution to GlobalWarming", www.globalwarmingsolution.org , in July, 2007. (DVD also available) The report demonstrates the technological and economic feasibility of reducing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2025. In addition, the straightforward methodology we employed for the U.S. energy system could be applied in countries around the world so that these urgently needed emissions reductions are global…as they must be. It is the most aggressive emissions reduction proposal of any U.S. national environmental group. Help us make it happen!
Re: the photo. They are digging their own graves.
Now you understand why big, powerful governments love John Maynard Keynes, Elmysterio. Economist Keynes was the one who said so famously, "In the long run, we're all dead."
Planting trees means nothing if the forest burns up later. It's a copout. We need to think things all the way through. Where does the carbon ultimately stay?
What a bunch of idiots! Reduce emissions by 50% by 2050... well, 2050 is MUCH TOO LATE. And of course these assholes will agree to something as stupid as this because by 2050 they will be dead, and therefore it doesn't matter what the state of the world is.