POZNAN, Poland, December 9, 2008 (ENS) – Bearing banners with the message “World Bank Out Of Climate,”and “Climate Justice Now” environmentalists protested outside the main entrance to the UN climate conference on Tuesday in an attempt to keep the bank from controlling climate change finance.

Today, 142 nongovernmental organizations issued a joint statement rejecting any such role for the World Bank.

International Finance Campaigner Karen Orenstein with Friends of the Earth US said, “The World Bank is not a credible institution to play any role in addressing the climate crisis. Its Climate Investment Funds are irreparably flawed and should be shut down.”

“Developing countries urgently need billions of dollars – to cope with the increase of storms, droughts, famines and floods that they face due to climate change, and to build low carbon economies. But these funds must come through financial mechanisms controlled by the UN climate convention, in which all parties have equal say,” declared Orenstein.

NGOs demonstrate outside the UN climate talks in
Poznan. December 8, 2008 (Photo courtesy
Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

The Adaptation Fund was approved at the Bali talks last December. Theoretically, the multi-billion dollar fund provided by industrialized countries is supposed to help least developed countries cope with the potentially disastrous effects of climate change and build low carbon economies.

The least developed countries countries want “direct access” to this money without having to go through the World Bank, headed by former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick.

Although some industrialized countries are not comfortable with allowing such direct access, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said Tuesday, “We have agreed on direct access to the fund through accredited national agencies.”

Yet some least developed countries have no “accredited national agencies,” and the debate about whether their governments will be able to access these funds directly is ongoing. De Boer said the issue may be left up to the ministers to decide when they arrive for the high-level part of the climate talks on Thursday and Friday.

The NGOs are critical of the World Bank in part because they say least developed countries deserve grants, not loans, to adapt to global warming caused by the greenhouse gas emissions of the industrialized economies.

“World Bank climate funds force developing countries to pay for the industrialized world’s pollution by providing loans for them to adapt to a climate crisis they did not create,” the NGOs said in their joint statement.

NGO banners displayed in front of the Poznan
conference hall. (Photo courtesy ENB)

“This contravenes the UN climate change convention obligation that industrialized countries are obligated to provide finance for mitigation and adaptation, and compete with UN schemes for money,” they said.

“The World Bank has serious conflicts of interest with tackling climate change,” the NGOs state. “As a major climate polluter and a major deforester, the World Bank is in no position to address the climate crisis that it is helping to cause. The Bank increased its lending for fossil fuels by 94 percent between 2007 and 2008; coal lending alone increased 256 percent. It is even financing coal in the name of fighting global warming.”

Lidy Nacpil, coordinator of the Jubilee South – Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development, said, “It is simply outrageous for climate financing to be given to southern countries in the form of loans. Peoples of the South are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change because of poverty and lack of government programs and resources, which is in no small part due to the debt they are forced to pay to northern countries.”

“Now the World Bank and northern governments, who bear overwhelming responsibility for the climate crisis, want our people to assume the cost of dealing with its impacts and add to our debt burdens,” said Nacpil. “This is unjust on many levels.”

In addition to the NGOs, the G-77 and China bloc of developing countries – representing 133 developing countries at the UN climate talks – also favor climate funds under the UNFCCC rather than the World Bank.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer discusses
the status of negotiations. (Photo courtesy ENB)

But de Boer acknowledged access to the Adaptation Fund to be a difficult issue among other tough decisions that may not even be decided by next December when the UN holds its annual climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is the crunch meeting that is supposed to conclude with an agreement limiting greenhouse gas emissions after the current Kyoto Protocol commitment period expires in 2012.

During the daily noon briefing on the status of negotiations, De Boer said, “I don’t think it will be feasible to have a fully elaborated long-term response to the climate crisis by the Copenhagen summit. We should be careful not to reach too far and achieve nothing.”

The UN climate chief said he does expect a “clarity on commitments from industrialized countries, including on numbers, for the Copenhagen summit, plus some form of engagement on mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from major developing countries. Though what form it will take is not clear to me,” he said.

In October, the World Bank Group released a Strategic Framework for dealing with the demands of climate change. The bank said it would:

* Support climate actions in country-led development processes
* Mobilize additional concessional and innovative finance
* Facilitate the development of market-based financing mechanisms
* Leverage private sector resources
* Support accelerated development and deployment of new technologies
* Step up policy research, knowledge, and capacity building

The World Bank Group said it will increase financing for energy efficiency and new renewable energy by an average 30 percent a year, from a baseline of US$600 million, and expand lending to hydropower, with the share of low-carbon projects rising from 40 percent in fiscal years 2006–08 to 50 percent in fiscal year 2011.

The bank said it will scale up support to sustainable forest management, sustainable agriculture and food production, transport and urban development programs.

But nowhere did the bank say that least developed countries would not have to pay back money they receive to adapt to climate change.

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POZNAN, Poland, December 5, 2008 (ENS) – For the first time, a solar-powered car has traveled around the world, arriving at the UN climate conference in Poznan Thursday with the United Nations’ top climate official Yvo de Boer onboard for the last few meters to mark the historic moment.

The solar taxi pulls up in front of the
Poznan conference hall. December 4, 2008
(Photo courtesy Louis Palmer)

Owner and driver Louis Palmer, a Swiss schoolteacher, will keep his “solar taxi” at the conference until it closes on December 12, offering rides to delegates, ministers and the press, before he heads back to Switzerland.

The solar taxi has been on the road for almost 18 months and has covered around 54,000 kilometers (33,550 miles) through 38 countries to claim a world record. Palmer undertook the trip to demonstrate that clean technologies are available now to curb global warming.

Inside the conference hall, countries, UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations are making commitments and launching publications in an effort to limit climate change.

Earlier this week, Brazil set an ambitious target of reducing its deforestation rate by 70 percent over the next 10 years. Brazil is the world’s fourth largest emitter of global warming pollution, and about 80 percent of Brazil’s global warming emissions come from clearing of the Amazon rainforest and the Atlantic coastal forest.

At Poznan today, the World Resources Institute and the Environmental Investigation Agency launched a partnership to combat illegal logging worldwide and clean up timber supply chains. These efforts are intended to limit climate change, which is linked to deforestation because trees absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

The partnership focuses on a 100 year old U.S. wildlife trafficking law known as the Lacey Act, which was just amended to include plant products, including timber and wood.

“The Lacey Act, if enforced, has the potential to send a powerful signal around the world that the U.S. is serious about curtailing illegal logging. Increasingly, illegal logging and deforestation contribute to climate change,” said Jonathan Lash, president of World Resources Institute, a Washington, DC based research and advocacy organization.

Said Alexander von Bismarck, executive director at Environmental Investigation Agency, based in Washington and London, “The bill marks the first time that a major consuming country has made the trade in illegally logged wood a crime. It provides a precedent-setting tool to change the face of a $1 trillion industry, reduce deforestation, and improve forestry governance.”

A side event organized by Friends of the
Earth presents a critical analysis of REDD:
international finance, human rights and
false promises of carbon markets. (Photo
courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

December 6 is the official Forest Day for delegates at the UN climate conference, where both organizations will be holding events to explain the links between deforestation and climate change.

Close to 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions are a result of deforestation, climate experts calculate. At Poznan, negotiators are seeking to advance plans to fund a mechanism called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, REDD, as part of the post-2012 climate deal that is the object of this UN conference.

Today at Poznan, the UN Environment Programme, UNEP, released the first atlas with maps pinpointing overlaps of high carbon emissions and high biodiversity.

The research gives preliminary indications of where investments to cut emissions from deforestation can aid in combating climate change and also help the conservation of biodiversity, from amphibians and birds to primates.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said, “At a time of scarce financial resources and economic concerns, every dollar, Euro or rupee needs to deliver double, even triple dividends. Intelligent investment in forests is a key example where climate benefits and ecosystem benefits can be achieved in one transaction.”

Steiner said a successful REDD mechanism must ensure that local and indigenous people can benefit.

The Great Apes Survival Partnership is set to launch pilot activities to test the potential of achieving these “multiple benefits” from REDD in Central Africa and Southeast Asia, said Steiner.

Experts are examining how investments in conserving carbon-absorbing forests on the Nigeria-Cameroon border may also conserve the habitat of the critically endangered Cross River gorilla. Only 250-300 animals remain.

Delegates at Poznan (Photo courtesy ENB)

And in Indonesia, national and local authorities, communities and the oil palm sector will be engaged to reduce emissions that result from clearing the carbon-rich peat-swamp forest, where endangered orangutans cling to survival.

Electronic copies of the atlas are online at www.unep.org/pdf/carbon_biodiversity.pdf and at www.unep-wcmc.org. A more detailed atlas is expected in 2009 ahead of the UN climate meeting in December in Copenhagen where the final post-Kyoto climate agreement is expected to be finalized.

Agreement on a post-Kyoto climate regime will require the support of the business community, which issued encouraging signals today.

Environment Business Australia issued a statement saying that the organization believes cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 40 percent against today’s baseline are possible. “We would support the Government beginning with a soft start of 25 percent cuts by 2020 but anything below that would be squelchy rather than soft,” said the business group.

“Without immediate and meaningful action to tackle climate change, the biggest economic and security threat that has ever faced humanity will likely evolve to irreversible levels,” said Environment Business Australia.

Not all is serious at Poznan. Delegates bring
a smile to the face of UNFCC chief Yvo
de Boer, right. (Photo courtesy ENB)

EBA suggests commercially viable approaches that will help build new markets, new industry sectors and new employment such as, “Increasing energy efficiency across all sectors of the economy; scaling up sources of renewable energy to supply baseload energy – potentially making Australia a regional hub by 2030 for minerals processing and manufacturing fueled by mega-clean energy parks; making buildings and cities carbon neutral; improving public transport and taking car tailpipes off the road with electric or hydrogen vehicles; recycling materials.”

Yet, despite encouraging signals, there are also obstacles to progress at Poznan – most related to the global financial crisis.

Friends of the Earth International Climate and Energy Campaigner Stephanie Long said industrialized countries are “dodging the issue of funding poorer countries’ adaptation to climate change.”

“Poorer countries face an increase in storms, floods, famines and droughts due to climate change, yet the pot of money that rich countries have put aside to deal with this is almost empty,” she said.

“The Adaptation Fund was finally agreed and established one year ago. Yet to date, developed countries have pledged less than US $300 million to it, a tiny fraction of the US $86 billion the UN says is needed,” said Long.

At the same time that funds are drying up, the situation of small island states is becoming desperate. At least six Caribbean islands – Haiti, Dominican Republic, Dominica, Jamaica, Martinique and Saint Lucia – were on Thursday ranked in the top 40 countries experiencing extreme weather impacts by the 2009 Germanwatch Global Climate Risk Index.

Germanwatch is an independent nongovernmental organization that monitors trade, environment and the relationship between developed and developing countries.

Delegates at Poznan (Photo courtesy ENB)

According to Germanwatch climate modeler Stefan Rahmstorff, Caribbean countries needed to push industrialized countries to address their emissions as the small islands would face the effects of inaction.

“Fundamentally, small countries which don’t contribute to the problem should press those developed countries to help them with their adaptation measures. Those causing the emissions should be the ones that help to deal with issues,” he said after presenting a paper on the effects of rising sea levels due to climate change recorded since 2007.

This week in Poznan, delegates continued their discussions to develop a shared vision of a future climate change agreement. Finding adequate financial resources, technology transfer, and prioritizing adaptation wer emphasized.

South Africa, speaking for the African Group of countries, said a shared vision should address all elements of the Bali Action Plan reached at last year’s UN climate conference in Indonesia.

The European Union said a shared vision requires efforts by all parties. The United States said a shared vision should be optimistic, pragmatic and reflect evolving scientific and economic realities.

The Philippines, speaking for the G-77/China Group, said a shared vision must meet all the commitments that parties have agreed to under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, left, and UNFCCC Executive

Secretary Yvo de Boer at Poznan
(Photo courtesy ENB)

Representatives of the Climate Action Network, a worldwide network of 430 nongovernmental organizations, told Poznan delegates that global emissions must peak and begin declining within 10 years to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

Close to 11,000 participants, including government delegates from 186 Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and representatives from business and industry, environmental organizations and research institutions, are attending the two-week gathering.

Opening the meeting on Monday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk pointed to the urgent need for progress at Poznan. “Scientists share the view that warming in excess of two degrees Celsius will result in irreversible changes to nearly all ecosystems and the human communities,” he said.

“We shoulder the responsibility to prevent changes that could lastingly disturb the symbiosis between humankind and nature.”

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SACRAMENTO, California, December 4, 2008 (ENS) – California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. once again is urging the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to combat climate change.

With U.S. greenhouse gas emissions rising year after year, according to a report issued this week by the U.S. Energy Department, and with the UN’s annual climate conference now taking place in Poland, Brown and other attorneys general say this is the time for the EPA to protect the climate.

“After eight years of foot-dragging, it is time for the EPA to reverse its shameful inaction on global warming and use its authority under the Clean Air Act to combat dangerous climate change,” Brown said.

Brown joined with 13 other attorneys general; the California Air Resources Board and four other state environmental agencies; the cities of Minneapolis, Seattle and Salt Lake City; and the New York City Corporation Counsel in writing a letter to the federal agency that lays out key principles EPA should adhere to in regulating greenhouse gases.

Separately, Brown submitted a comment letter to EPA responding to the 500-page advance notice of rulemaking for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act issued by EPA over the summer.

Both letters called on EPA to make a determination as to whether greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare – as required by the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA.

Gridlock on a Los Angeles freeway (Photo
credit unknown)

The letters requested that the EPA reverse the denial of California’s preemption waiver for California’s landmark greenhouse gas automobile regulations, allowing California and the 13 other states that have adopted these standards to begin immediately enforcing the regulations.

The states of Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington joined California in writing to the federal agency.

They requested the EPA to adopt controls for large polluting sources such as coal-fired power plants, cement plants and refineries.

And they asked the EPA to adopt controls for cars, trucks, aircraft, ocean-going vessels, and non-road engines that are responsible for more than one-third of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

“Technology to reduce emissions from these sources is available and cost-effective,” Brown said.

In the joint letter to EPA, Brown and his co-authors wrote, “The Clean Air Act is one of our most successful regulatory programs. It has a proven track record of effectively dealing with complex air pollution problems that implicate a multitude of sources and a wide range of economic activities, and it has done so without harming the economy.”

The attorneys general said in their letter that they “strongly disagree” with claims by departing EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson that the Clean Air Act is ill-suited to the task of regulating greenhouse gases.

As the analysis by EPA’s professional staff in the advance notice of rulemaking points out, “the Clean Air Act provides EPA with flexibility to regulate through a variety of approaches, including performance standards, operational controls, market-based incentives and other measures, and also to tailor its traditional strategies to suit the particular challenges posed by GHG emissions,” the attorneys general wrote.

But while the state attorneys general are critical of the EPA’s approach to climate change, the agency said in a November 18 statement that it and the U.S. Energy Department “are helping states lead the way in an effort to promote low cost energy efficiency.”

The remark came as the EPA introduced an updated version of the “National Action Plan Vision for 2025: A Framework for Change,” produced by more than 60 energy, environmental and state policy leaders.

The updated action plan outlines strategies to help lower the growth in energy demand across the country by more than 50 percent, and shows ways to save more than $500 billion in net savings over the next 20 years.

“These actions may help to reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 90 million vehicles,” the agency said.

“The significant action taken by states, utilities and energy customers advances low cost energy solutions,” said Robert Meyers, principal deputy assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. “The plan is a big step toward a more energy-efficient future, helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while growing the American economy.”

The action plan contains data showing that states, utilities and other organizations are spending about $2 billion per year on energy efficiency programs. It shows that they have saved the energy equivalent of more than 30 power plants generating 500 megawatts of electricity and that they helped reduce annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those emitted by nine million vehicles.

Initiated in 2005, the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency is directed by a group of 30 electric and gas utilities, 20 state agencies and 12 other organizations. It is designed to help electric and natural gas ratepayers increase energy efficiency while saving money. Some of the same states are involved in this plan as signed the attorneys general’s letter – California, Connecticut, Massachusett, and New York.

More than 120 organizations have endorsed the original recommendations of the national action plan and have committed to making it a reality.

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POZNAN, Poland, December 1, 2008 (ENS) – The U.S. climate delegation’s “sidestepping and recalcitrance” in a news conference on the opening morning of the United Nations annual climate conference in Poznan was denounced by the international climate campaign 350.org and a group of young people from the United States who are attending the meetings.

Lead U.S. negotiator, Ambassador Harlan Watson, representing the outgoing administration of President George W. Bush, dodged reporters’ questions about whether or not the United States would commit to emissions targets or funding for developing countries to address global warming.

U.S. Ambassador Harlan Watson
(Photo courtesy ENB)

“It’s an embarrassment,” said Jamie Henn, 350.org co-founder and a U.S. youth delegate. “With the election of Barack Obama we showed the world we were ready to commit to real action on climate change. All this lame-duck delegation is offering is more of the same.”

Henn asked delegates from other countries to ignore the current U.S. delegation and focus on the next administration’s commitments.

“Thanks in large part to the work of young people across the United States, President-elect Obama has committed the U.S. to 80 percent cuts in carbon by 2050,” Henn said. “That’s the type of serious action scientists are saying is necessary to stabilize atmospheric C02 at the safe upper limit of 350 parts per million.”

The figure 350 in the organization’s name is the safe upper limit of carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere in parts per million. Led by author Bill McKibben and a staff of young organizers from around the world, 350.org partners with more than 100 organizations to push for a strong international climate treaty that meets the 350 ppm target.

Twenty young people from the United States are attending the Poland climate meetings, representing every region of the country and youth organizations like the Energy Action Coalition and SustainUS.

“As youth representatives of the United States, we’re working with other young people from around the world here in Poland,” said Jeremy Osborn, a 24 year old from Connecticut. “It’s time for our government to do the same. If we can all get along and work together, so can they.”

U.S. youth pledged to keep up the pressure after the conference concludes on December 12. “In the next year we are planning everything from a 10,000 person youth climate conference in [Washington] DC this February to an international day of action next October,” Henn said. “This is just the beginning.”

The opening day of the UN’s annual climate
conference in Poland attracted close to
11,000 people. (Photo courtesy UNFCCC)

The two-week meeting, the 14th Conference of the 192 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, and the fourth meeting of the 183 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, is the half-way mark in the negotiations on an ambitious and effective international response to climate change. The deal is to be clinched in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 and will take effect in 2013, the year after the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Close to 11,000 participants, including government delegates from 186 Parties to the UNFCCC and representatives from business and industry, environmental organizations and research institutions, are attending the two-week gathering.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, opening the meeting, pointed to the urgent need for progress at Poznan. “Scientists share the view that warming in excess of two degrees Celsius will result in irreversible changes to nearly all ecosystems and the human communities. We shoulder the responsibility to prevent changes that could lastingly disturb the symbiosis between humankind and nature,” he said.

Professor Maciej Nowicki, Polish Minister of the Environment and President of the Conference, warned that the planet has reached the limits of its confined system and that a business as usual scenario is not an option.

“Huge droughts and floods, cyclones with increasingly more destructive power, tropical disease pandemics, a dramatic decline of biodiversity – all these can cause social or even armed conflicts and migration of populations at an unprecedented scale,” he warned.

In Poland, ministers and other delegates will discuss their vision for long-term cooperative action on climate change. In Poznan, ministers will have their first opportunity to discuss a “shared vision for long-term cooperative action.”

One of the key questions will be what kind of mechanisms need to be put in place to deliver on finance, technology and capacity building to help developing countries curb emissions, spur green growth and to cope with the inevitable impacts of climate change.

During 2008, Parties submitted proposals and ideas for stronger climate change action. The more than 700 pages of proposals have been distilled into a single document of 82 pages, which governments can now refine further in light of what they want to negotiate in 2009.

“The fact that there is a text on the table offers governments the first real opportunity of moving beyond the phase of exchanging ideas into one where they will be expressing their position on specific proposals,” said Luiz Figueiredo Machado, chair of the Ad hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action under the Convention. “I am looking forward to see how this text will be fine-tuned in the course of the meeting.

In 2007, Parties agreed to consider a greenhouse gas emission reduction range of minus 25 to minus 40 per cent over 1990 levels, a range which could be confirmed at Poznan.

Addressing the delegates in Poznan, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, pointed to the need to achieve progress on issues which are important in the short run – up to the end of 2012 – including adaptation, finance, technology and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

“The conference needs to deliver on on-going issues, especially issues that are important to developing countries,” he said. “And there is huge pressure on available time up to Copenhagen in 2009,” he said. “So next to on-going work, the conference also needs to lay a solid foundation for an ambitious climate change deal at Copenhagen.”

Alluding to the financial and economic crisis and the opportunities of green and sustainable economic growth, de Boer, who is the UN’s top climate change official, called on delegates to “increasingly focus on how the climate change regime could become self-financing and to link climate change policies to economic recovery.”

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UPPSALA, Sweden, November 30, 2008 (ENS) – Faith leaders concluded their two-day Interfaith Summit on Climate Change in Uppsala on Saturday by signing a manifesto demanding quick and extensive reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the wealthy parts of the world.

Christian, Buddhist, Daoist, Sikh, Muslim, Jewish and Native American leaders signed the declaration that states, “We all share the responsibility of being conscious caretakers of our home, planet Earth. We have reflected on the concerns of scientists and political leaders regarding the alarming climate crisis. We share their concerns.”

“The situation is critical,” the manifesto states. “Glaciers and the permafrost are melting. Devastating drought and flooding strike people and ecosystems, especially in the South. Can planet Earth be healed? We are convinced that the answer is yes.”

Church of Sweden Archbishop Anders Wejryd
addresses the Interfaith Summit on Climate
Change. (Photo by Magnus Aronson
courtesy Interfaith Summit)

Hosted by the Church of Sweden, the interfaith leaders were welcomed with an opening address by Swedish Archbishop Anders Wejryd, who said, “We are not at this meeting to find special religious answers to the environmental crisis. We have to share the realities of technology, economy and politics with all people.

“We have gathered to deliberate on what we do with these facts as people of different religious traditions,” said the archbishop. “As people of faith we are carriers of hope – or at least we should be. It is obvious that the world needs change before it is too late and we have a role to play in enabling a changed world-view and changed perspectives for people of the world and for ourselves.”

The faith leaders held their summit and issued their manifesto on the eve of the United Nations’ annual climate conference, held this year in Poznan, Poland from December 1 through 12. The Poznan meeting, which is expected to draw around 8,000 participants, is focused on advancing international cooperation on a future climate change agreement to govern the emission of climate-warming greenhouse gases after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

The future agreement is set to be finalized at the 2009 UN climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark next December in time for countries to sign and ratify the document before 2012.

“As people from world religions, we urge governments and international organizations to prepare and agree upon a comprehensive climate strategy for the Copenhagen Agreement,” the Uppsala Manifesto states. “This strategy must be ambitious enough to keep climate change below 2° Celsius (about 3.5 degrees Fahrenheit), and to distribute the burden in an equitable way in accordance with the principles of common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities.”

Limiting warming to 2° Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures is essential to averting the worst effects of climate change, scientists say. Yet many environmentalists believe allowing the temperature to rise even that much would be disastrous. The global conservation organization WWF warns that a 2° Celsius temperature rise would bring droughts that will leave many people without safe, clean water, and destroy crops, causing widespread famine. Melting ice caps and glaciers would raise sea levels, leaving some Pacific island nations uninhabitable.

But the Uppsala Manifesto is entitled “Hope for the Future,” and European Vice President Margot Wallstrom also took a hopeful view of the situation in her address to the Interfaith Summit on Friday.

“Combating climate change certainly makes sense. It makes sense because it is not only a challenge, but an opportunity. An opportunity to change the world and steer it towards sustainable development and prosperity for all,” said Wallstrom.

By the year 2020, the European Union as a whole should cut its emissions by at least 20 percent compared to 1990 levels – and we will increase that figure to 30 percent if other developed countries make a similar commitment under a new international agreement, Wallstrom reminded the interfaith participants. The EU agreed to these targets in 2007 along with increased renewable energy sources and energy efficiency.

Interfaith leaders bless the Uppsala Manifesto
(Photo by Magnus Aronson courtesy
Church of Sweden)

“We are on track to get an agreement on the package in the coming weeks. If we can achieve this, we will be in a much stronger position to press for an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen next year,” Wallstrom said.

But back in 2007, “no one foresaw the economic crisis that was about to engulf the world,” the vice president said. “Faced with the present financial turmoil and economic recession, some EU governments – especially in Eastern Europe – have become unwilling to accept targets which they perceive as imposing further economic constraints on their industries. They question whether we can afford to take these drastic steps.”

“My answer – to quote Barack Obama – is ‘Yes we can!’ In fact, we can’t afford not to!” Wallstrom said.

She cited the 2006 report by UK economist Sir Nicholas Stern on the economics of climate change, which estimates that allowing climate change to continue unchecked would shrink the world’s economic output by at least five percent and possibly as much as 20 percent per year if the most dramatic predictions come to pass.

“This dreadful prospect is exactly what a struggling global economy does NOT need,” Wallstrom said. “By contrast, swift action to tackle climate change and to move to a low-carbon economy would cost only one percent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product.”

Hope for a climate agreement was strengthened when in Bali last December, the United States at last came on board. “This was a major breakthrough after years of resistance from the Bush administration,” Wallstrom said, adding that President-elect Barack Obama “clearly has ambitions to combat climate change.”

The Uppsala Manifesto calls for political leaders to reach an agreement during the preparations of the new global Climate Protocol 2009 on a strategy that is “sufficiently responsible and ambitious for the Earth to be saved for future generations.”

But there are dissenting voices. Rajan Zed, a Hindu chaplain in northwestern Nevada and adjoining California, who delivered the historic first Hindu opening prayer in United States Senate in Washington, said today that the “grandiose” Interfaith Climate Manifesto signed at Uppsala lacks moral strength because of Hindus and other religions were not represented.

Other world religions, like Bahaism, Jainism, Shintoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, and the Greek Orthodox Church also were not represented.

Zed, who is president of Universal Society of Hinduism, said that it was commendable to see diverse religious leaders, religions and denominations coming together to bless environmental causes in Uppsala, but the organizers should have given adequate and fair representation to all major world religions.

Zed said he admires the Church of Sweden and Archbishop Wejryd for taking the leadership role in organizing this “much-needed” summit and thus “making religions climate friendly.”

The Uppsala Manifesto will create a new framework for discussion about climate change after the Kyoto agreement expires in 2012 said one of the signers, Professor Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, director of the Jewish Studies program at Arizona State University.

“Today it is widely acknowledged that world religions have an important role to play in revisioning a sustainable future, because religions are the repositories of values and norms that guide human actions toward the natural world,” said Tirosh-Samuelson. “Through cosmological narratives, symbols, rituals, ethical directives, and institutional structures, religions shape how we act toward the environment.”

“Hence,” she said, “all attempts to transform our environmental attitudes so as to generate a sustainable world must include understanding of world religions and cooperation with religious people.”

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BOGOR, Indonesia, November 28, 2008 (ENS) – Without immediate concerted action by governments, climate change could have a devastating effect on the world’s forests and the nearly one billion people who depend on them for their livelihoods, warned forest scientists in a report to be released next week at the UN climate conference in Poland.

Scientists from the Center for International Forestry Research, CIFOR, in Bogor say adaptation measures to reduce the vulnerability of forests and forest-dependent communities are urgently needed. Forests will experience an unprecedented combination of flooding, drought, wildfire, and other effects of a warming climate over at least the next 100 years.

“We have identified two broad categories of adaptation measures for forest ecosystems,” said Bruno Locatelli, a CIFOR scientist and lead author of the report.

“The first is to buffer ecosystems against climate-related disturbances like improving fire management to reduce the risk of uncontrolled wildfires or the control of invasive species,” Locatelli explained. “In plantations, we can select species that are better suited to coping with the predicted changes in climate.”

“The second would help forests to evolve towards new states better suited to the altered climate,” he said. “In this way we evolve with the changing climate rather than resist it.”

A second adaptive response is to help the people who are managing, living in or conserving forests to adapt to future changes.

Settlers clear the Amazon rainforest for agriculture.
(Photo courtesy U.S. Forest Service)

“The people living in forests are highly dependent on forest goods and services and are often very vulnerable socioeconomically,” said Locatelli. “They usually have a much more intimate understanding of their forests than anyone else, but the unprecedented rates of climate change will almost certainly jeopardize their ability to adapt to new conditions. They will need help.”

Negotiations in Poland under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change are set to craft an agreement on limiting climate-heating greenhouse gases that will replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Forest management will be on the agenda because forests absorb the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, removing it from the atmosphere.

CIFOR will introduce this new report on December 5 in Poznan, Poland, one day ahead of Forest Day, a parallel event co-hosted by CIFOR, the Government of Poland and the Polish State Forests NFH, the Collaborative Partnership on Forests, a wide range of UN agencies and the World Bank. Participants will present findings, engage in dialogue and develop climate change solutions.

Forests provide millions of people with income, food, medicines and building materials and deliver many vital ecosystem services like flood or drought regulation and water purification, the CIFOR report points out. They are critical to the ability of human societies to adapt to climate change.

“The imperative to assist forests and forest communities to adapt to climate change has been poorly addressed in national policies and international negotiations,” said Frances Seymour, director general of CIFOR.

“The adaptation challenge is being treated as secondary to mitigation, and yet the two are inextricably linked,” she said.
Forest cleared for palm oil plantations in Indonesia’s Papua province.

Greenpeace is urging a moratorium on all
forest conversion in Indonesia to curb
greenhouse gas emissions, safeguard
tropical biodiversity and protect the
livelihood of forest dependent
communities. (Photo courtesy
Greenpeace)

After reviewing the scientific literature on the effects of climate change on forests, the CIFOR scientists conclude that by the end of the 21st century, tropical regions in Africa, South Asia, and Central America are likely or very likely to be warming at a faster rate than the global annual mean warming.

The predict that rainfall in East Africa and during the summer monsoon of South and Southeast Asia is likely to increase.

Annual precipitation in most of Central America is likely to decrease; this region is the most prominent tropical hotspot of climate change.

Peak wind intensities of tropical cyclones are likely to increase in tropical Southeast Asia and South Asia, bringing extreme rainfall.

Droughts and floods are expected to increase globally, making water management more difficult.

“In many forests, relatively minor changes in climate can have devastating consequences, increasing their vulnerability to drought, insect attack and fire,” said CIFOR forest ecologist Markku Kanninen, a co-author of the report.

“Burning or dying forests emit large quantities of greenhouse gases, so there is a chance that an initially small change in climate could lead to much bigger changes,” he said.

Mountain forests might be the first to disappear, said Kanninen. “We know that cloud forests are extremely sensitive to climatic changes, as are other types of mountain forest, because when temperatures increase and rainfall decreases, they have nowhere to go.”

Mangrove forests in coastal parts of West Africa, which help mitigate storms and underpin many commercial fisheries, are highly vulnerable to rising sea levels, according to the report. Some mangroves are expected to dry out almost completely – droughts in Senegal and The Gambia have already had devastating effects on mangroves.

Cloud forest, Costa Rica
(Photo by Richard Adams)

Scientists have already found examples of biodiversity loss due to climate change. In the highland cloud forests of Costa Rica, the lifting of the cloud base associated with increased ocean temperatures has been linked to the disappearance of 20 species of frogs.

“That is just a foretaste of what could be huge losses of forest biodiversity worldwide due to climate change,” said Kanninen.

Several studies have predicted that decreased rainfall in the biodiversity-rich Amazon would cause massive dieback of the forest and its large-scale substitution by savannah.

“Tropical dry forests are also highly vulnerable,” said Kanninen. “Only slight decreases in rainfall, predicted in many regions, will make them more susceptible to fire and to long-term ecological shifts that potentially could cause the extinction of thousands of species.”

The report advises that adaptation policies must be multi-sectoral, because deforestation affects many economic sectors such as transportation, water management, and energy.

Haze from forest fires in Indonesia is often thick enough to close airports, while landslides often close roads. Drinking water or hydroenergy companies in South America are starting to consider upstream ecosystem management, including forests, in order to reduce their vulnerability and ensure the quality and quantity of their water supply.

“Adaptation strategies should build on existing local knowledge about forest management in the face of climatic variability, and empower community members to take action to suit their own local circumstances,” said Director-General Seymour. “For many forest communities, adapting to climate change is already a matter of survival. We need to act now to ensure a better future.”

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MADRID, Spain, October 9, 2008 – World health experts will document the human health effects of climate change under a new high priority research agenda agreed Wednesday at the end of a three-day meeting here convened by the World Health Organization and hosted by Spain’s Ministry of Health.

“This meeting has made clear that there is a need to enhance our evidence base on ways to protect health from climate change,” said Dr. Bernat Soria, Spain’s minister of health and consumption. “We welcome this plan which sets out a clear research agenda and addresses all countries’ needs for evidence-based policy making.”

The plan is intended to speed up, focus and intensify climate change and health research to strengthen the evidence base for discussion at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December 2009, where world leaders will forge a new global climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol.

The small Pacific island state of Tuvalu
will soon be covered by rising seas.
(Photo ©Juriaan Booij)

Developed by WHO with more than 80 researchers on climate change and health, representatives of donors and other UN agencies, the plan builds on a comprehensive review of what is already known about health risks from climate change.

“Many agencies, including WHO, have highlighted the health dangers of climate change,” said Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO’s director-general. “Our 193 member states asked WHO to help them strengthen the evidence base for policy action. This plan provides the framework for doing just that.”

“It sets out guidance to governments, research institutions and donors looking to fill crucial knowledge gaps,” she said.

In the last decade, even though climate change has been increasingly acknowledged as an important risk to human well-being, its effects on health have received little research attention.

Scientific papers describing the links between climate change and health are outnumbered by those on air pollution by almost eight times, and by those on smoking by almost 40 times.

The WHO research plan identifies five priority research areas starting with interactions between the planet’s rising temperature and other health determinants and trends.

Climate change does not act in a vacuum. Participants at the meeting said there is an urgent need for a better understanding of how climate change will interact with other important health determinants and trends, such as economic development, globalization, urbanization, and inequities in exposure to health risks and access to care.

The 2008 drought in southern Ethiopia
has left Tiya Okutu and her husband
struggling to provide for their children.
(Photo courtesy Trocaire)

The impacts of climate on human health will not be evenly distributed around the world. Developing country residents, particularly in small island states, arid and high mountain zones, and in densely populated coastal areas, are considered to be particularly vulnerable.

Much is known of short-term health impacts of climate change, but there is a need for better characterization of the effects of long-term changes.

These can be intensely stressful situations such as increasing drought, decline in freshwater resources, and population displacement. Health effects can range from mental and emotional disturbances to the physical risks of conflict, and they will be studied with a particular focus on children and other vulnerable groups.

Different countries have taken a variety of approaches to deal with climate change-related health threats such as heatwaves and floods. The researchers will conduct comparative outcome assessments to help rank the effectiveness of these interventions.

Participants at the Madrid meeting agreed on the urgent need for rapid assessment of the health implications of specific climate change prevention and adaptation policies in sectors other than health.

These include the potentially negative effect of biofuels production on food security and malnutrition and the potentially positive health effects of sustainable energy and transport policies.

Finally, researchers will investigate ways of strengthening public health systems to address the health effects of climate change.

Most health system interventions to deal with climate change build on basic public health competencies, but WHO says more knowledge is needed to identify the best ways to implement integrated preventive public health strategies that reduce not just climate change related threats but all environmental health risks.

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NUSA DUA, Bali, Indonesia, December 11, 2007 (ENS) – The protection of Earth’s diverse forms of life is more important to climate decision makers than cost effectiveness, according to a unique new survey of 1,000 climate senior government officials and scientists, business and civil society leaders from 105 countries. The study’s findings were released Monday at the annual United Nations climate conference now underway in Bali.

Unlike public opinion polls, the survey focuses on the views of professionals in a position to make or influence large decisions in their organizations and society.

Conducted by GlobeScan, the World Conservation Union, IUCN and the World Bank in the two weeks leading up to the Bali climate conference, the survey found that while most decision makers rate climate change as a key factor influencing their professional activities, only 27 percent think a post-Kyoto agreement by 2009 is likely or very likely.
The ice that polar bears need to survive and thrive is melting away due to climate change. (Photo by Scott Schliebe courtesy USFWS)

Delegates from more than 180 nations gathered in Bali are attempting to find a way towards a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, that would govern the emission of climate warming greenhouse gases when the protocol expires at the end of 2012.

“This landmark survey brings good and bad news for climate negotiations,” said Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Director General of the World Conservation Union. “It is encouraging that sustainable development and biodiversity rate highest in importance for climate action, but this is not always reflected in the climate negotiations.”

Asked to rate various possible components of an adequate post-2012 global agreement, strong majorities give high ratings to inclusion of all major carbon-emitting countries. Ninety-two percent said an inclusive agreement is essential or important, and 77 percent said that legally binding targets for each signatory country are essential or important.

Eight-four percent of respondents said commitment by wealthy countries to provide aid and technology transfer to help developing countries meet emissions targets is essential or important.

Bio-fuels produced from food crops like corn have the least potential of 18 technologies for reducing carbon emissions over the next 25 years, the respondents said.

When rating the potential role of 18 specific technologies “in reducing atmospheric carbon over the next 25 years without unacceptable side effects,” majorities give high marks only to solar, wind and co-generation, the term for combined heat and electricity.

Capture and storage of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide emitted by the burning of coal, oil and gas is not seen as central to the control of global warming, the survey found. In fact, the decision makers expect half of their organizations’ reductions of carbon emissions over the next decade to come from energy demand management or efficiency improvements, not carbon capture.
The Compostilla II coal-burning power plant in Leon, Spain (Photo courtesy Endesa)

More than six in 10 respondents report that climate is one of the top three factors affecting their organizations today.

On average, two thirds of the resources their organizations currently allocate to climate is directed at reducing emissions and one third to adapting to the effects of climate change. In five years they expect adaptation to increase somewhat, changing this ratio to 60-40.

The respondents hold their national governments responsible for acting to limit global warming. Ninety-two percent look to their national governments for the public policies and leadership that their organizations need in order to implement climate solutions.

The decision makers look to more than one level of society for climate solutions. Seventy-six percent of respondents look to global institutions, while 71 percent look to local level governments for climate change policies.

This is the first of a continuing series of twice-yearly surveys of climate decision makers and influencers across the world.

The survey was conducted in the six official UN languages over the internet by GlobeScan Incorporated, supported by the IUCN, the World Bank and the International Development Research Centre .A wide range of other organizations also helped invite members of their constituencies to complete the survey.

This first survey will continue to be open after the Bali conference ends on Friday to increase the number of qualified respondents and enable analysis of more detailed findings.

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NUSA DUA, Bali, Indonesia, December 11, 2007 (ENS) – A new multi-million dollar fund to compensate developing countries for the value of their living forests was launched today by the World Bank at the United Nations climate conference in Bali.

The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility was developed because forests are more important left standing than cut down, said World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick, introducing the new facility. As a natural function, trees absorb carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.
World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick is a former U.S. Trade Representative (Photo courtesy World Bank)
“This initiative is a practical pilot to expand the tools for Climate Change negotiations,” said Zoellick. “The Forest Carbon Partnership Facility signals that the world cares about the global value of forests and is ready to pay for it. This can change the economic options for many people who depend on the forests for their livelihoods. There is now a value to conserving, not just harvesting the forest.”

Deforestation and forest degradation together are the second leading cause of global warming, second only to the combustion of fossil fuels.

High on the agenda at the Bali talks is reducing the 1.6 billion tons of carbon emissions caused each year by deforestation, which amounts to about 20 percent of global carbon emissions and more than the combined total of the world’s energy-intensive transport sectors.

Deforestation and forest degradation are responsible for a high percentage of some countries’ national emissions – 70 percent of Brazil’s and 80 percent of Indonesia’s, for instance.

The new facility will build the capacity of developing countries in tropical and subtropical regions to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation and tap into a future system of positive incentives to reduce emissions.

The resources of the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility can be used in any new climate change regime negotiated after 2012, when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol ends.

The Kyoto Protocol currently does not give carbon finance incentives to developing countries for reducing deforestation and degradation, known by the acronym REDD.

This issue is under discussion at the climate change meetings in Bali, and it may become part of a post-2012 climate change agreement.

The facility is a new source of revenue for the more than 1.2 billion people who depend on forests for their livelihoods.

Nine developed countries and a nongovernmental organization have already made financial commitments totaling US$160 million to the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. The largest contributor to date is the government of Germany.

“We must not lose another day when it comes to climate and forest protection”, said German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul. “I am very pleased that in our capacity as G8 President, Germany was instrumental in helping to develop the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility.”

Germany will contribute US$59 million (40 million euros) to help developing countries conserve their forests and mitigate climate change. “Forest protection must be a central element in a future agreement on climate change,” said Wieczorek-Zeul.
Burning forest in the Amazon Basin (Photo courtesy NASA)

The other contributors include the United Kingdom (US$30 million), the Netherlands (US$22 million), Australia and Japan (US$10 million each), France and Switzerland (US$7 million each), Denmark and Finland (US$5 million each).

In addition, The Nature Conservancy, a nongovernmental organization based in the United States, has committed US$5 million.

The World Bank and the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility recognize the special role that indigenous peoples and other forest dwellers play in managing and protecting the forests in which they live and on which they depend. They will have observer status in the facility’s governance structure, at the same level as other constituent groups, such as international organizations, non-contributing private sector, and nongovernmental organizations.

The facility consists of two separate mechanisms, each with its own trust fund for which the World Bank will act as trustee.

The Readiness Mechanism – target size: US$100 million – will assist some 20 countries in preparing themselves to participate in a future, large-scale, system of positive incentives for reducing deforestation and degradation.

This will include some basic infrastructure capacity building for these countries such as preparing a national REDD strategy, establishing a baseline and putting in place a monitoring system. Indigenous groups and other forest dwellers will participate in the process so they can benefit from future carbon finance flows.
Young people the Bali climate conference demonstrate in favor of forest protection. (Photo courtesy (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

The Carbon Finance Mechanism – target size: US$200 million – will enable an initial group of these countries that will have successfully participated in the Readiness Mechanism to pilot incentive payments for REDD.

The Carbon Fund will remunerate the selected countries or actors within the selected countries, in accordance with negotiated contracts, for emissions reductions that are verified independently.

On Saturday, meetings on forest conservation took center stage at the first Forest Day ever held at a UN climate meeting. The parallel event was hosted by the Center for International Forestry Research, CIFOR.

The Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, Yvo de Boer, was presented with a set of key recommendations on the role of forests in combating climate change for consideration by the government ministers participating in the high-level segment of the conference which begins Wednesday.

De Boer welcomed the contribution that the many world-leading experts and forest organizations attending Forest Day could make in influencing forest and climate policy at the global level

“In the climate change process, there is growing political acknowledgement of the need to reduce emissions from deforestation,” he said, adding that “if we do not sustain trees, we will soon live in a world that will not sustain us.”

Forest Day recommendations from the Collaborative Partnership on Forests include the recognition that the success of REDD mechanisms “depends on the political will to address the drivers of deforestation, including drivers beyond forestry sector.”

“We cannot rely on markets alone. We need a combination of market mechanism and governance,” the partnership recommends.
Illegal logging in an Indonesian rainforest (Photo courtesy DFID)

Other recommendations stress functional simplicity and moderate transaction costs.

“To ensure equity in the distribution of REDD benefits, it’s essential to clarify land rights and legal rights to carbon,” the partnership recommends, adding, “We need adaptation now. Adaptation should be focused on the most vulnerable, including forest-dependent people.”

A new study by CIFOR presented on Forest Day in Bali warns that the new push to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation, is imperiled by “a routine failure to grasp the root causes of deforestation.”

Based on more than a decade of in-depth research on the forces driving deforestation worldwide, the report shows that there is ample opportunity to reduce carbon emissions if financial incentives are sufficient enough to flip political and economic realities that cause deforestation.

“After being left out of the Kyoto agreement, it’s promising that deforestation is commanding center-stage at the Bali climate talks,” said CIFOR Director General Frances Seymour. “But the danger is that policy-makers will fail to appreciate that forest destruction is caused by an incredibly wide variety of political, economic, and other factors that originate outside the forestry sector, and require different solutions.”
Frances Seymour is CIFOR director-general. (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

Stopping deforestation in Indonesia caused by overcapacity in the wood processing industry is a completely different challenge from dealing with deforestation stemming from a road project in the Amazon or forest degradation caused by charcoal production in sub-Saharan Africa, Seymour said.

Complex, indirect forces are often more important than the logging and slash and burn activities usually understood as the main causes of deforestation.

Forces such as fluctuations in international commodity prices; agricultural and, more recently, biofuel subsidies; and roads and other infrastructure projects can encourage forest clearing, the CIFOR report shows.

“Deeply ingrained and routinely corrupt government practices often favor large corporate interests over community rights to forest resources,” CIFOR says.

The report sees promise in the idea that deforestation can be addressed with financial incentives that compensate landowners for “environmental services.”

Seymour said discussions in Bali to fight deforestation by compensating forest stewards for protecting the carbon-storage capacity of forests through what is now a multi-billion dollar global market for carbon credit are potentially powerful.

“Such payments to individual land-users have the potential to flip financial incentives from favoring forest destruction, as they now do, to favoring conservation,” Seymour said. “But the key question is whether or not REDD incentives will be sufficient to flip political and economic decisions at the national level that drive deforestation.”

“It’s critical to understand that, due to decades of inattention to the rights of forest dwellers, new payment streams tied to conservation could intensify the severe poverty that now afflicts the majority of rural forest communities in the developing world,” she said.

“Since forest property rights are often very unclear, payment for carbon services could end up providing incentives for corrupt officials or local elites to appropriate this new forest value from local communities,” Seymour said. “We’ve seen this happen before in similar situations, and there’s every reason to believe, given the kind of money now being paid for carbon credits, that it could happen again.”

“We need to temper the desire for maximum reduction in forest-based carbon emissions with regard for the legitimate rights of forest communities to realize the income potential of their forestlands,” Seymour said. “At times there will be trade-offs between reducing carbon emissions and reducing poverty.”

The CIFOR report is online here.

For more information on Carbon Finance at the World Bank, visit: www.carbonfinance.org

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Al Gore is going to address world leadership at the climate conference in Bali. After just winning the Nobel Peace Prize, Gore can advise this conference with an indisputably important message about climate change [www.sundancechannel.com]. He is going to bring a petition with him when he visits the conference. The aim of the petition is to convince the assembled world leaders to sign a climate treaty [www.sundancechannel.com] by the year 2010.

Why so soon? Our time is running out. The climate crisis is a grim reality. In this case we are dealing with a grim reality that can mostly be avoided if we act quickly. A healthier planet can only come to be if the citizens of this planet decide to get involved in shaping their own future.

Al Gore wants to make it easier for each world citizen to contribute towards a balanced climate, and signing a petition is all you need to do in order to help out. If we can create millions of signatures on this petition, it would go a long way to forcing all the world leaders to stop ignoring the climate problems.

Please consider taking a minute of your time and Stand With Al Gore At The Climate Conference [www.climateprotect.org].

Most of today’s leaders are meeting in Bali for an enormous climate conference. The main objective of the summit is to arrive at a first draft of a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol [www.sundancechannel.com]. The US was one of the few industrialized countries steadfast in its refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol [www.sundancechannel.com]. One can only hope that the new version of the climate treaty, tentatively scheduled to start in 2012, will include enticing provisions to convince George Bush or his successor to sign on behalf of the US.

It seems likely that the leaders of the Bali conference will lean towards developing a market regulated carbon credit system as the backbone of any successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol [www.sundancechannel.com]. Countries like the US and China have expressed support for carbon credit systems. Carbon credits would allow efficient companies to sell carbon credits to inefficient, polluting companies. To many people, this seems like a cop-out, as polluting companies can just throw money at the problem rather than taking steps to be a more sustainable operation. However, the hope is that these big companies might decide to stop throwing away money as these losses begin to add up every year. In any event, if natural resources [www.sundancechannel.com] and pollution are included in the free market system, it definitely heralds some improvement upon the do-nothing solution of the present.

What kind of treaty would be good for the world? If you were one of the world leaders present at the climate summit in Bali, what measures would you put forward to replace the Kyoto Protocol [www.sundancechannel.com]?