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Obama Most Important Factor to Tackling Climate Change
January 02, 2009 11:05 AM
The News
See complete article from Financial Times on link below
By Fiona Harvey
Published: January 1 2009 19:49 Financial Times
Poznan, a grey industrial city in the west of Poland, was the appropriately bleak venue for United Nations talks last month that marked the halfway point in a two-year effort to forge a new global response to climate change. Delegates from the 180 nations represented were acutely aware that negotiations were stuck in a holding pattern.
Only one topic of conversation had the power to quicken people’s interest – Barack Obama. The US president-elect did not, of course, attend – that would have been an unthinkable breach of protocol. Yet his presence seemed pervasive. The change in the White House promises to be the single most important factor governing the world’s approach to tackling what many governments and scientists regard as the biggest problem of the century.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/662b698e-d837-11dd-bcc0-000077b07658.html?nclick_check=1
Obama Most Important
January 02, 2009 11:03 AM
The News
Poznan, a grey industrial city in the west of Poland, was the appropriately bleak venue for United Nations talks last month that marked the halfway point in a two-year effort to forge a new global response to climate change. Delegates from the 180 nations represented were acutely aware that negotiations were stuck in a holding pattern.
Only one topic of conversation had the power to quicken people’s interest – Barack Obama. The US president-elect did not, of course, attend – that would have been an unthinkable breach of protocol. Yet his presence seemed pervasive. The change in the White House promises to be the single most important factor governing the world’s approach to tackling what many governments and scientists regard as the biggest problem of the century.
Confederation of British Industry Pushes Climate Change Agenda
January 02, 2009 09:24 AM
The News
CBI sets out four priorities for new global climate change agreement
10 December 2008
To coincide with the UN climate change talks in Poznan, Poland, the CBI today released a position paper setting out its priorities for the agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.
The paper, "Opportunity Knocks: Business expectations for a global climate change agreement in 2009" (link below), identifies four priorities for British business within the talks that are set to culminate in Copenhagen in December 2009:
1. Creating business opportunity by providing long term confidence through long term emission reduction targets.
2. Improving and expanding market mechanisms to deliver efficient low carbon growth through moving towards a global carbon market that expands the Clean Development Mechanism and envisages the linkage of emissions trading schemes.
3. Building a level playing field to enhance UK competitiveness through recognising the challenge presented by carbon leakage and utilizing sectoral agreements.
4. Unlocking investment to deliver low-carbon innovation through providing public finance for the commercialisation of key technologies such as carbon capture and storage and ensuring the protection of intellectual property rights.
Our Take
The CBI takes on climate change head-on by first recognizing it, then proposing solutions to deal with it. Compare this to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the US equivalent of the CBI, but an organization that refuses to even acknowledge the climate change is an issue. We suspect that the US Chamber of Commerce might have to rethink its position to remain relevant.
Huge Year for Natural Disasters
December 30, 2008 11:01 AM
The News
'Huge year for natural disasters'
The past year has been one of the most devastating ever in terms of natural disasters, one of the world's biggest re-insurance companies has said.
Munich Re said the impact of the disasters was greater than in 2007 in both human and economic terms.
The company suggested climate change was boosting the destructive power of disasters like hurricanes and flooding.
It has called for stricter curbs on emissions to prevent further uncontrollable weather scenarios.
Although there were fewer "loss-producing events" in 2008 than in the previous year, the impact of natural disasters was higher, said Munich Re in its annual assessment.
More than 220,000 people died in events like cyclones, earthquakes and flooding, the most since 2004, the year of the Asian tsunami.
Meanwhile, overall global losses totalled about $200bn (£137bn), with uninsured losses totalling $45bn, about 50% more than in 2007.
This makes 2008 the third most expensive year on record, after 1995, when the Kobe earthquake struck Japan, and 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina in the US.
Torsten Jeworrek of Munich Re said the pattern continued a long-term trend already observed.
"Climate change has already started and is very probably contributing to increasingly frequent weather extremes and ensuing natural catastrophes," he said.
Uninsured
Asia was the continent worst hit by natural disasters in 2008, Munich Re reported.
Cyclone Nargis in Burma killed an estimated 130,000 people and devastated much of the low-lying Irrawaddy Delta region, while the earthquake which struck China's Sichuan province in May left an estimated 70,000 dead and millions homeless.
Munich Re said the losses of $85bn made Sichuan the second most expensive earthquake after Kobe.
Although Nargis and the Sichuan quake brought the biggest cost in terms of human lives, the economic losses were mostly uninsured.
The most expensive single event in 2008 was Hurricane Ike, which brought $30bn in losses. It was one of five major hurricanes in the North Atlantic over the year, which saw a total of 16 tropical storms.
In addition, roughly 1,700 tornadoes across the US caused several billion dollars of damage, as did periods of low pressure weather activity in Europe.
Munich Re quoted World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) figures showing that 2008 was the 10th warmest year since reliable records began, meaning that the 10 warmest years on record all occurred in the past 12 years.
"It is now very probable that the progressive warming of the atmosphere is due to the greenhouse gases emitted by human activity," said Prof Peter Hoppe, head of Munich Re's Geo Risks Research.
"The logic is clear: when temperatures increase there is more evaporation and the atmosphere has a greater capacity to absorb water vapour, with the result that its energy content is higher.
"The weather machine runs into top gear, bringing more intense severe weather events with corresponding effects in terms of losses."
The company said world leaders must put in place "effective and binding rules on CO2 emissions" to curb climate change and ensure that "future generations do not have to live with weather scenarios that are difficult to control".
"If we delay too long, it will be very costly for future generations," said Mr Jeworrek.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/7803624.stm
Published: 2008/12/29 18:30:09 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
COMPARISON OF LEGISLATIVE CLIMATE CHANGE TARGETS
December 29, 2008 02:28 PM
The News
The World Resources Institute’s analysis of emissions targets and cumulative emissions budgets attempts to objectively, fairly and accurately compare GHG reductions from explicit carbon caps and complementary policies contained in climate proposals submitted in the 110th Congress. Emissions from capped sectors are calculated based
on the text of the respective legislation. For sectors that are not covered by the legislation, emissions are estimated to continue uncontrolled in line with projections published by EPA. This analysis uses a single set of carefully selected data and methods to provide a consistent comparison across all climate proposals in the 110th Congress. This analysis is not a projection of actual future emissions under the various proposals nor is it an analysis of economic impacts resulting from the enactment of these policies.
