Responding to climate change at all levels: recent news
December 7th, 2007,So much is happening now on the issue of our response to global warming. Here’s a quick overview of a few major developments:
• The United Nations Climate Change Conference is occurring in Bali, Indonesia, December 3-14. The conference will look at changes to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, including the Kyoto Protocol. Here is a description of the goals of the conference, taken from its web site:
What is needed is a breakthrough in the form of a roadmap for a future international agreement on enhanced global action to fight climate change in the period after 2012, the year the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires. The main goal of the Bali Conference is threefold: to launch negotiations on a climate change deal for the post-2012 period, to set the agenda for these negotiations and to reach agreement on when these negotiations will have to be concluded.
A very important meeting indeed.
• The U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee approved a landmark bill that would call for a 70 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, partly through the use of a cap and trade system. (Environmentalists favor cuts of 80 to 90 percent.) The bill would need the support of ten or twelve Republicans in order to pass.
The legislation is sponsored by Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and John Warner of Virginia, the latter a Republican. Warner’s rationale for taking action, stated yesterday, is good: if we don’t take action on this, then China and India can hide behind us, saying that they don’t need to take action. See a New York Times article for more info.
Contact your senators, folks, and tell them to pass this bill. This is one of the most important issues of our times, and we can’t sit on our hands.
• Here in my state, the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group continues to meet and has approved its first recommendations for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, I didn’t see a comprehensive list of those recommendations in the media, but the group is not scheduled to conclude until early February. See the Transportation and Land Use Technical Work Group document for more info on that topic.