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  • As climate talks drag on, low-lying atolls are already beimg flooded

     

    I am scared, and so too are the people from these atolls about what this means for our culture, our communities and our identity.

    Because of climate change, I am uncertain about what is to come. How can I feel that my future is safe? How can I be sure that my home village won’t disappear in 10 years’ time? How can I be sure that my community won’t have to find a new home? How can I be sure that I will be able to raise my children in the same place that my mother and father raised me? I am not sure. I am scared and worried.

    At the global negotiations, many nations, including Australia, have focused on avoiding 2 degrees of global warming. While this may not sound like much, it will threaten the survival of many small island nations.

    Sea-level rise and unprecedented storm surges caused by climate change are already affecting communities across the Pacific and are expected to get significantly worse if climate change is not immediately and adequately tackled.

    Consequently, small island governments, like my own, are asking the global community to prevent global warming above 1.5 degrees. This means a global emission stabilisation target of below 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent in the atmosphere.

    Throughout my life, flags have been raised at the United Nations as the global community has recognised new nations. The global community cannot allow flags to be taken down as nations and cultures vanish beneath the ocean.

    I came to the climate change conference because, as a young person, I believe that there must be urgent action to protect my future. I am here with Project Survival Pacific, an initiative of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, and working with a team of young Australians and 10 other youth from diverse Pacific island countries to raise the concerns of people from vulnerable island nations.

    I am also working with my Government to support it in negotiations for a strong agreement for my people.

    Since arriving in Copenhagen, I have been working with young people from all over the world and this has given me hope that together we can build a better future.

    Developed countries at this conference must commit to a legally binding agreement that will ensure the world’s most vulnerable nations are protected from climate change.

    Solomon Islands, as a small island nation, is one of the smallest emitters of greenhouse gas in the world, and yet we are being hit the hardest and the fastest by climate change. I ask Australia, as our closest developed neighbour, to please help us: assist us financially in adapting to climate change and commit to strong mitigation targets to ensure the lowest temperature rise.

    This conference has the power to transform the way the world responds to climate change, but only if all countries realise the true urgency of the problem and commit to an ambitious, fair and legally binding agreement now.

    For my entire life, world leaders have been negotiating a climate agreement. They cannot tell me they need more time. There is no more time. I hope world leaders realise this week that my generation’s future is in the palm of their hands.

    Christina Ora is a youth delegate at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.

  • Vulnerable nations at Copenhagen summit reject 2C target

     

     

    Holding temperatures to an increase of 1.5C compared to preindustrial levels would mean stabilising carbon concentrations in the atmosphere at roughly 350 parts per million (ppm), down from a present 387ppm. No technology currently exists to feasibly remove CO2 from the atmosphere on a large scale.

     

    The temperature issue was starkly highlighted yesterday when Tuvalu, one of the world’s most climate-threatened countries, formally proposed that countries sign up to a new, strengthened and legally binding agreement that would set more ambitious targets than what is presently being proposed. This divided G77 countries, some of whom led by China and India argued against it, fearing that it would replace the Kyoto protocol.

     

    But they were supported by many of the vulnerable countries, from sub-Saharan Africa as well as the small island states, with passionate and powerful statements about the catastrophic impact of climate change on their people.

     

    “Tuvalu has taken a strong stand to put the focus back on their bottom line. Nothing but a legally binding deal will deliver the strong commitments to urgent action that are needed to avoid catastrophe, especially to the most vulnerable countries and people,” said the Oxfam spokesman Barry Coates.

     

    Today the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis), a grouping of 43 of the smallest and most vulnerable countries, including Tuvalu, said any rise of more than 1.5C was not negotiable at Copenhagen. They are backed by 48 of the least developed nations.

     

    But the UN conference chief, Yvo de Boer, implied this morning that the proposal had little chance of being adopted. “It is theoretically possible that the conference will agree to hold temperatures to 1.5C but most industrialised countries have pinned their hopes on 2C,” he said.

     

    The 2C figure, which was included in the leaked draft negotiating text prepared by the summits host Denmark has emerged as the figure favoured by large economies and the likeliest to be adopted. But the poorest countries say that latest science implies that a 2C warming would lead to disastrous consequences – for example from sea level rise.

     

    “We have two research stations, one in the Pacific and one in the Caribbean. They both suggest a rise of 2C is completely untenable for us,” said Dessima Williams, a Grenadian diplomat speaking for Aosis.

     

    “Our islands are disappearing, our coral reefs are bleaching, we are losing our fish supplies. We bring empirical evidence to Copenhagen of what climate change is doing now to our states,” she said.

     

  • Brazil defends biofuels at Copenhagen summit

     

    Brazilian delegates were at pains to show that not only is biofuel production the best way to reduce greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions but can also combat poverty as exemplified by the country’s scheme to promote micro-distilleries to provide additional income for rural families.

    Biofuels have, however, come under serious attack in recent years for eating into farmlands meant for food production. As a result, the European Union backed out, last year, from a commitment to introduce a 10 percent mandatory quota of biofuels in all transportation by 2020.

    In Brazil itself environmentalists have pointed to biofuel production as one of the key reasons for the steady deforestation of the Amazon basin.

    Countering such criticism Jose Migues from the Brazilian ministry of science and technology said: “We were told that biofuels lead to deforestation in the Amazon, but the ethanol production areas are 3,000 km away from the Amazon.”

    Migues referred to Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC), a phrase describing the effects of biofuel production, which pushes human activities towards the Amazonian forests. In the Sao Paulo area, where most ethanol production is concentrated, there has been a significant decrease in cattle raising and agricultural production.

    “But is it fair to say that all of these activities are now moving to the Amazon?” asked Thelma Krug, another representative of the ministry. “There is much room for making agriculture and cattle raising more efficient in Brazil.”

    While the question of where Sao Paulo’s farmers moved remained unanswered in Copenhagen, the planned expansion of the ethanol industry threatens further displacement. Over six million hectares are under sugar cane in Brazil but Krug said there were plans to make ”64 million ha available for expanding sugar cane production.”

    Krug said the government is working on using satellite imagery to monitor the loss of forest cover and keep deforestation under check. A representative of Nature Conservancy a Brazilian non-governmental organisation (NGO) spoke of the thoroughness of forest protection laws.

    As for food security issues linked to biofuel production, Andre Correa do Lago, director general of the energy department in the ministry of foreign affairs, stopped short of an outright denial that biofuels were to blame for the 2008 rise in food prices.

    “Food security is one of the main concerns of our government,” he said. “Biofuels, like any other human endeavour, can be done in a better way. So we should not use the worst case as a general reference point.”

    Legislation is under consideration to prevent biomass burning, which is responsible for large amounts of GhG emissions.

    Much of the waste, especially bagasse, is replacing polluting nitrogenous fertilisers and the production process streamlined with nine units of energy being produced from bagasse against every unit from fossil energy.

    While admitting that “biofuels are no silver bullet,” Brazilian authorities insist that biofuels are the best way forward for developing countries.

    • This article was shared by our content partner IPS, part of the Guardian Environment Network

  • Ocean acidification rates pose disater for marine life, major study shows

     

     

    A report by more than 100 of Europe’s leading marine scientists, released at the climate talks this morning, states that the seas are absorbing dangerous levels of carbon dioxide as a direct result of human activity. This is already affecting marine species, for example by interfering with whale navigation and depleting planktonic species at the base of the food chain.

     

    Ocean acidification – the facts says that acidity in the seas has increased 30% since the start of the industrial revolution. Many of the effects of this acidification are already irreversible and are expected to accelerate, according to the scientists.

     

    The study, which is a massive review of existing scientific studies, warns that if CO2 emissions continue unchecked many key parts of the marine environment – particularly coral reefs and the algae and plankton which are essential for fish such as herring and salmon – will be “severely affected” by 2050, leading to the extinction of some species.

     

    Dr Helen Phillips, chief executive of Natural England, which co-sponsored the report, said: “The threat to the delicate balance of the marine environment cannot be overstated – this is a conservation challenge of unprecedented scale and highlights the urgent need for effective marine management and protection.”

     

    Although oceans have acidified naturally in the past, the current rate of acidification is so fast that it is becoming extremely difficult for species and habitats to adapt. “We’re counting it in decades, and that’s the real take-home message,” said Dr John Baxter a senior scientist with Scottish Natural Heritage, and the report’s co-author. “This is happening fast.”

     

    The report, published by the EU-funded European Project on Ocean Acidification, a consortium of 27 research institutes and environment agencies, states that the survival of a number of marine species is affected or threatened, in ways not recognised and understood until now. These species include:

    • whales and dolphins, who will find it harder to navigate and communicate as the seas become “noisier”. Sound travels further as acidity increases. Noise from drilling, naval sonar and boat engines is already travelling up to 10% further under water and could travel up to 70% further by 2050.

    • brittle stars (Ophiothrix fragilis) produce fewer larvae because they need to expend more energy maintaining their skeletons in more acid seas. These larvae are a key food source for herring.

     

    • tiny algae such as Calcidiscus leptoporus which form the basis of the marine food chain for fish such as salmon may be unable to survive.

    • young clownfish will lose their ability to “smell” the anemone species that they shelter in. Experiments show that acidification interferes with the species’ ability to detect the chemicals that give “olfactory cues”.

     

    The report predicts that the north Atlantic, north Pacific and Arctic seas – a crucial summer feeding ground for whales – will see the greatest degree of acidification. It says that levels of aragonite, the type of calcium carbonate which is essential for marine organisms to make their skeletons and shells, will fall worldwide. But because cold water absorbs CO2 more quickly, the study predicts that levels of aragonite will fall by 60% to 80% by 2095 across the northern hemisphere.

     

    “The bottom line is the only way to slow this down or reverse it is aggressive and immediate cuts in CO2,” said Baxter. “This is a very dangerous global experiment we’re undertaking here.”

     

    Written for policy makers and political leaders, the document is being distributed worldwide, with 32,000 copies printed in five major languages including English, Chinese and Arabic. Every member of the US congress, now struggling to agree a binding policy on CO2 emissions, will be sent a copy.

     

    Congressman Brian Baird, a Democrat representative from Washington state, who championed a bill in Congress promoting US research on ocean acidification, said these findings would help counter climate change sceptics, since acidification was easily and immediately measurable.

     

    “The consequences of ocean acidification may be every bit as grave as the consequences of temperature increases,” he said. “It’s one thing to question a computer extrapolation, or say it snowed in Las Vegas last year, but to say basic chemistry doesn’t apply is a real problem [for the sceptics]. I think the evidence is really quite striking.”

     

  • Copenhagen is a world and a decade away from Kyoto

     

     

    But the deficiencies of the protocol are also well known. To name only three: the reductions required are small when compared to what climate science is now telling us; the most rapidly developing economies are not required to achieve any measurable emissions reductions, and it provides no real guidance to business needing to plan for the long term.

     

    It isn’t as if the world has been blind to these deficiencies. Since the United Nations climate conference in Bali in 2007, over the past two years climate negotiators from more than 190 countries have been meeting to overcome these constraints and establish a more effective global climate treaty. And this task is meant to conclude in less than 10 days at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen.

     

    Already the Scandinavian city made famous by Hans Christian Andersen is becoming shorthand for the success or failure of our collective efforts to combat climate change. If Copenhagen ends in “success” then we will have succeeded in avoiding the danger of global warming and climate destabilisation; if it is a “failure” then we too will have failed to address this most wicked of problems.

     

    If only it were so simple. If only tools such as text and agreement actually achieved the measureable, reportable and verifiable emissions reductions that all economies must achieve over the coming years. For Copenhagen can only be a beginning: the start to investment in modern low emissions technology and infrastructure and the imposition of costs on the old, polluting industries of the past.

     

    The stakes at Copenhagen are high. The peer reviewed science has only firmed since Kyoto. There is now a consensus that the level of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that the atmosphere can bear before warming triggers unpredictable and potentially catastrophic changes to the global climate system is considerably lower. Climate scientists who only a decade ago would have argued that the amount of greenhouse gas should be 550 parts per million, now argue that even 450pmm may be too much.

     

     

    Our understanding of the climate problem and our experience of developing effective climate policy have progressed enormously over the past twelve years. The world is now a lot clearer about the policies and incentives that can reduce emissions, maintain economic growth and get our carbon cycle into greater balance. Prior to 1997 no one could refer to the learning from an emissions trading system in Europe, or the rapid move to renewable energy in Germany.

     

    And perhaps more important than all of this is how public sentiment, and with it our politics, has shifted. Kyoto was before An Inconvenient Truth , the Stern review, hurricane Katrina, the 2003 European heatwave and Australia’s worst drought on record. In many countries climate change is now an issue which bridges the standard political divide. Some of the most progressive leaders on the issue come from the right of politics: Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and even an actor turned politician not known for his warm hearted roles: Arnold Schwarzenegger. Climate change is now a fixed agenda item for any meeting between heads of state: how to maintain economic growth, energy security and reduce emissions. And no longer is the President of the United States sceptical of the problem: in Barack Obama the White House is occupied by a man who has made tackling climate change a core part of his political narrative.

     

    In accounting for Kyoto’s ineffectiveness, in 1997 one could easily cite the lack of public understanding; a lack of clarity in the science; a lack of effective politics or an immaturity in our experience of effective climate policy. None of these excuses now apply.

     

     

     

    Whether the final chapter in a story that started in Bali two years ago is one of resolution and joy, or confusion and despair, remains unknown. An unambiguous political agreement establishing how the new binding international rules can be agreed may still mean that Copenhagen becomes shorthand for describing when a new and powerful approach to tackling this most wicked of global problems was begun. That would be cause for celebration by this and all future generations.

     

    • Erik Rasmussen is the founder of the Copenhagen Climate Council.

    Professor Tim Flannery is chairman of the Copenhagen Climate Council and author of The Weather Makers

  • Hamilton at Copenhagen- Lulus-back-in-town

     

    This loophole is so big that it undoes much of the effort by Western European nations to cut their emissions under the protocol. The Russian surplus is enough to cause a collapse in the price of international emission permits should Russia decide to flood the market.

    It was therefore with some excitement that the old hands at Copenhagen pricked up their ears when they heard a rumour that the Medvedev government is considering giving the world an early Christmas present by renouncing its surplus allowances awarded at Kyoto.

    The second Kyoto loophole also took the form of a gift extracted from reluctant givers by a nation playing hard ball. At 2am on the Saturday morning, after the clock had been stopped to allow the conference to continue beyond its mandated closing time, the conference chair was gaveling through the treaty finally agreed.

    In those dying minutes, when all else had been agreed and the thoughts of exhausted delegates turned to their beds, Australia’s environment minister, Robert Hill, rose to his feet and declared that Australia would refuse to join the consensus unless the parties agreed to include in the accounting carbon emissions from land-clearing.

    The blackmail worked and article 3.7 was duly incorporated into the agreement. It was immediately dubbed “the Australia clause” because it would apply to no other country. As the delegates trooped out a senior European negotiator told the press that “the Australian deal is a disgrace and will have to be changed”.

    Although it was to generate years of dissension, Robert Hill returned a hero to the Howard government, receiving a standing ovation at his first cabinet meeting after Kyoto. The reason for the bitterness abroad and the jubilation at home was the same. Emissions from land-clearing in Australia had declined sharply after 1990 due to changes in the economics of beef farming, so that the Australia clause turned Australia’s headline emissions target of an 8% increase into a de facto 30% increase in fossil emissions over the 1990-2010 period.

    It is for this reason, and this reason alone, that before the last election the Howard government could claim that Australia would meet its Kyoto target even though it had implemented no policies that reduced emissions.

    History matters in international climate negotiations. History builds or destroys trust. And what a nation has done in the past conditions how others receive what it proposes to do in the future. So the Australian delegation in Copenhagen, new as their faces are, should not be surprised if the rest of the world takes a jaundiced view of any arguments it advances for the treatment of land-based emissions, including forests.

    At Copenhagen, a good deal of suspicion surrounds developed country proposals to meet emission reductions by the use of accounting tricks through provisions covering “land use, land-use change and forestry” or LULUCF (pronounced “loo loo CF”).

    The G77 group of developing countries wants a cap on the ability of rich countries to meet any targets through changes in forest and land use instead of cutting fossil emissions. Australia is arguing that it should be able to count reforestation as a credit against fossil emissions but that emissions from cutting forests down should be excluded. So forests would be counted as a carbon sink but not a carbon source, a provision that would encourage intensified harvesting.

    The desire to have it both ways naturally raises suspicions, and Australia’s track record with article 3.7 does not help.

    The history of LULUCF should be remembered too when assessing Tony Abbott’s argument that the Opposition wants to refocus greenhouse policy on land-based emissions. It’s an excuse to do nothing about the real culprit, burning fossil fuels, deferring to the next generation the hard tasks, while pandering to a rural constituency that has reverted to its customary stance of angry whingeing and demands for special treatment.

    In this case, the farmers want all the financial benefits to be had from augmenting land-based carbon stores — from tree-planting, changed tillage methods and biochar — while shirking responsibility for emissions from livestock, rice cultivation and fertiliser use.

    Of course, when the agricultural sector does not pull its weight, it free-rides on the rest of the community, which has to do more to make up the difference. If the coalition gets its way, instead of referring to primary producers as “rural socialists” they will perhaps be better described as “climate bludgers”.

    http://www.crikey.com.au/2009/12/10/hamilton-at-copenhagen-lulus-back-in-town/