The atmosphere is to the earth as a layer of varnish is to a desktop globe. It is thin, fragile and essential for preserving the items on the surface.150 years of burning fossil fuel have overloaded the atmosphere to the point where the earth is ill. It now has a fever. Read the detailed article, Soothing Gaia’s Fever for an evocative account of that analogy. The items listed here detail progress on coordinating 6.5 billion people in the most critical project undertaken by humanity.Â
From Young Climate Action Group in Poznan
Well, that was actually even worse than I was expecting. Sure, I wasn’t holding my breath for anything particularly ambitious from the notoriously risk-averse Australian government – but this is ridiculous.
The world’s largest community event, Earth Hour 2009, will launch today in Poland (December 10). One billion people in more than 1,000 cities are expected to participate in the Australia-originated campaign to raise climate change awareness.
Austrade’s Chief Economist Tim Harcourt said the outstanding success of Earth Hour also served to enhance Australia’s national brand and green export credentials.
Gordon Brown faces a bruising battle at Thursday’s EU summit to persuade his fellow European leaders to back his proposal for subsidies to kickstart carbon capture and storage (CCS).
He wants more than 10bn euros for the technology, which would bury the emissions from burning fossil fuels, preventing them from contributing to global warming.
CCS is a key element of the climate package EU leaders are battling over, which aims to ensure the bloc meets its ambitious carbon-cut targets of 20% by 2020. The British prime minister is demanding that the EU sets aside 500m pollution permits from a special pot under the emissions trading scheme (ETS) to provide as much as 15bn euros to fund up to 12 CCS demonstration projects by 2015.
by Wei Jianhua & Zhang Zhan, Xinhua – China View POZNAN, Poland, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) — Delegates from some 190 countries continued to focus on a shared vision on fighting climate change and adaptation to its adverse effects on Friday, but differences remained largely unresolved between developed and developing nations. Countries were still wrangling over Continue Reading →
Climate talks in Poland this week have been characterised by a widely different agendas and a failure to reach agreement on the hard targets necessary to halt emissions and reverse global warming. This debate is taking place in the Polish city of Poznan against protests by thousands of young people from across Europe. Promoters of Continue Reading →
it is futile for governments to plan for life under a global four degree temperature rise, author Oliver Tickell wrote in the Guardian last week, because it would lead to mass extinctions and sea level rises in excess of 70 metres. His comments were made in response to a prediction made last week by one of Britain’s chief scientific advisors, Bob Watson. Watson argued that the EU target of no more than two degrees warming was almost certain to be unattainable and that governments needed to begin planning for a much warmer world. He nominated a four degree rise as a realistic expectation given current progress on climate talks.Tickell is the author of Kyoto 2 and advocates that governments should agree to a global per capita cap now, and auction permits to raise the funds to invest in low carbon infrastructure. He believes that we must reach agreement or die.