Blog Archive
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2009
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September
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- Sixty gun salutes fired marking China’s 60th anniv...
- China kicks off National Day extravaganza
- The60th anniversary of the founding of the People'...
- 60th anniversary of China's National Day
- News Today
- Rome: 10 Things to Do in 24 Hours
- Do-It-Yourself Translations Through Facebook Connect
- 1-800-Flowers Gets Analytics Tool for Measuring Fa...
- Mad Men Keeps Viewers Involved Through Interactive...
- YouTube Falls Short In Facebook Popularity Contest...
- Love, pleasure, duty: Why women have sex
- Plan your ideal walking workout
- Parents clueless when it comes to kids' growth charts
- 'Sorry I Haven't Written': A Scientific Explanation
- What You Need To Know About The H1N1 Vaccine
- News Today
- T-ara Celebrates Chuseok
- Rain’s Shanghai Concert Is A Scam
- Wonder Girls’ Diary in America Part 1
- Kris Allen Working With Adele and Duffy's Collabor...
- Rob Thomas' 'Someday' Music Video Debuted
- Radiohead's Thom Yorke Forms New Band With RHCP's ...
- Mitchel Musso's 'Shout It' Music Video Comes Out
- Lady GaGa Reveals Storyline of Her Joint Tour With...
- Mayday Parade Premiere 'The Silence' Music Video
- '90210' 2.05 Preview: Naomi Goes Green
- Preview of 'Melrose Place' 1.05: Canon
- 'Grey's Anatomy' Welcomes Sarah Drew as New Doctor
- A New Trailer of Epic Miniseries 'The Pacific'
- The Sue Storm of 'Fantastic Four' is in talks to j...
- Jessica Alba to Stir Things Up in 'Little Fockers'
- 'Whip It!': On the Set With Jimmy Fallon, Ellen Pa...
- Sylvester Stallone in New 'The Expendables' Photo
- 'Avatar' Sequel Could Explore Pandora Deeper
- Mandy Moore Talks Disney's 'Rapunzel'
- Emmy Rossum Reportedly Dating Counting Crows' Adam...
- Jon Cryer and Wife Lisa Joyner Adopt a Baby Girl
- Christina Milian and The-Dream Planning Another We...
- Private Memorial Service for Patrick Swayze Set fo...
- Scarlett Johansson: 'I Have Terrible Stage Fright'
- Karina Smirnoff Has New Boyfriend
- News Today
- The Obama Assassination Poll — Another Story About...
- New England Patriots Use Facebook As Primary Onlin...
- Taylor Swift’s Facebook Page Still Growing Fast, W...
- Miami: 10 Things to Do in 24 Hours
- Want to Lose Weight? Avoid Skinny Overeaters
- Scientists Announce Trove of Fragile New Species i...
- Miss Switzerland 2009 Linda Faeh
- News Today
- Giant panda twin cub
- T-ara And Supernova To Unleash TTL Listen.2
- What’s long, black and fits nicely in SNSD’s hands?
- Opening Dance Stage at Girl Groups Chuseok Special
- Sugababes' Amelle Reportedly Receives Death Threat...
- Snippet of The Queen Project's Debut Single
- Weezer Will Duet With Lil Wayne on 'Can't Stop Par...
- Lady GaGa Named Billboard's Rising Star
- 50 Cent Rushed to Hospital After Listening to Fat ...
- 'Camp Rock 2' Invites Fans to Join the Filming
- 'One Tree Hill' 7.04 Preview: Believe Me, I'm Lying
- Preview of 'Gossip Girl' 3.04: The Stars Are Coming
- Recap: Jive, Tango and Quickstep on 'Dancing with ...
- 'Wizards of Waverly Place' Receives More Episodes
- 'Heroes' 4.04 Preview: Tracy Is Back
- Oren Peli's 'Paranormal Activity' Expands to 20 Mo...
- Salma Hayek Gets a Vision in New 'The Vampire's As...
- 'New Moon' Unleashes Three Fresh Character Posters
- No 'Valentine's Day' for Joe Jonas
- First Look at Amanda in 'Saw VI'
- Plot Details on Robert Rodriguez's 'Predators'
- 'The Princess and the Frog': Extended Clip and Fea...
- Kim Kardashian and Reggie Bush 'Totally Back Toget...
- Emmy Rossum's Husband Justin Siegel Files for Divorce
- Robert Pattinson Isn't an 'Attention-Seeker'
- Hayden Panettiere Denies Dating Kevin Connolly
- Fred Durst and Wife Divorcing
- Taylor Lautner Feels Uncomfortable With His Muscul...
- News Today
- Iran Says It Test-Fires Longest-Range Missiles
- Five insider strategies for avoiding a hotel billi...
- Chicago: 10 Things to Do in 24 Hours
- Cartoons of the Week, September 26, 2009 - October...
- How Can A Pregnant Woman Get Pregnant Again?
- Why Doctors Are Giving Heroin to Heroin Addicts
- News Today
- Follow Ivy Behind the Scenes
- Lee Hyori’s New Album is going to be off the hook!
- JQT Releases Teaser
- Brown Eyed Girls @ Circle Nightclub Teaser!
- Carrie Underwood's 'Cowboy Casanova' Music Video A...
- Artist of the Week: Mariah Carey
- Video: Jenny Slate Dropped the F-Word on 'Saturday...
- 'Amazing Race' Eliminates Two Pairs Early in Its S...
- Cloudy with a Chance' Sticks to Box Office's Top
- A 'Predators' Role for Danny Trejo
- Tickets for Michael Jackson's 'This Is It' On Sale
- Jaime Pressly Ties the Knot
- Khloe Kardashian and Lamar Odom's Wedding Is On, t...
- Justin Guarini Weds Fiancee Reina Capodici
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September
(587)
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
A Wind Shift in Global Warming Debate?
As leaders from around the world descended on New York City this week for the United Nation's annual General Assembly, traffic followed. Police closed off arteries throughout Manhattan's well-heeled east side for security reasons, leaving taxis, delivery trucks and confused tourists stranded along Park Avenue. It's just another September in New York. But the streets weren't the only place hit by gridlock. Negotiations over a new global climate change treaty to replace the expiring and flawed Kyoto Protocol — meant to culminate at the UN climate change summit in Copenhagen at the end of the year — have all but ground to a halt in recent months. Despite the election of U.S. President Barack Obama, who pledged to reverse eight years of climate inaction by former President George W. Bush's Administration, developed and developing nations remain gridlocked over who should be cutting carbon emissions — and who should be paying for it. Yvo de Boer, the head of the United Nations Framework Convention of Climate Change (UNFCCC), told reporters on Sept. 21 that the wording for a new agreement now being negotiated is "an absolute mess" so full of contradictions UN staff said it couldn't even be translated. "Climate change policy tends to be a roller-coaster ride, but it seems to be getting rougher and rougher," he said. For UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, who has made climate change one of his top priorities, it was time to raise the stakes. On Sept. 22, Moon held a high-level conference on climate change at UN headquarters that included Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao. With less than 70 days remaining before the Copenhagen summit begins, the message was unusually clear: there was no more time to waste. "The world's glaciers are now melting faster than human progress to protect them — and us," Ban told the assembled leaders. When the session ended several hours later, Ban struck a more optimistic note, telling delegates at the UN that "momentum had shifted for a global deal in Copenhagen." But the truth is that there remains a great deal of uncertainty that needs to be cleared up between now and December. No one expected a one-day meeting in the UN to solve global warming. But Ban's conference did provide some clues about where global climate change policy is heading and which countries will be taking the lead. Obama: Managing Expectations Obama was the first head of state to address the meeting, and even though he only spoke for a few minutes, his rhetoric was a dramatic departure from Bush's denial and dissembling. Obama stated clearly that climate change was real, and unless the world rose to action, it was potentially catastrophic. "The security and stability of each nation and all peoples — our prosperity, our health, our safety — are in jeopardy," he said. "And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out." Yet, even while Obama talked up the importance of the Copenhagen process and hyped his Administration's domestic initiatives on climate change, including new rules that would limit greenhouse-gas emissions from automobiles, many environmental groups came away from his speech underwhelmed. Obama made no mention of specific targets for U.S. emissions cuts at Copenhagen, nor did he agree to attend the summit himself — as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has done. He spent much of his speech focusing on the need for major developing nations like China to make their own moves on climate change, which sounded a little hypocritical after years of American foot-dragging. "It was great to have a visionary speech with the right word from Obama," says Steve Howard, the CEO of the Climate Group, an international non-profit group focused on global warming. "But with so little time left, we needed more substance." But the truth may be that Obama doesn't have much scope for substance, because he is to some extent a prisoner of Congress. The White House doesn't want to repeat the mistake made by former President Bill Clinton with the Kyoto Protocol by agreeing internationally to emissions cuts that have no support at home. That means Obama has to wait for Congress to act — and although the House passed a carbon cap in June, there's little chance of the Senate acting on the bill before the end of the year. That leaves Obama — and global climate negotiations — at the mercy of U.S. lawmakers. "We want a comprehensive package, and we're doing everything we can to make that happen," said Obama's climate change czar Carol Browner. But right now the ball is in Congress's court. China and Japan: The New Green Team If the U.S. is half of the solution to Copenhagen, then China — now the world's top carbon emitter — is the other half. Massively polluting, building a couple of coal-fired power plants every week, China is a convenient scapegoat for American politicians who don't want to make the first move on climate change. But as Hu made clear in his Sept. 22 speech, China is serious about confronting climate change. The country spent an estimated $221 billion in economic stimulus on green initiatives, more than any other nation. At the UN, in addition to promising to raise its renewable energy share to 15% by 2020, Hu pledged that China would cut its carbon emissions by a "notable margin" by 2020. "Out of a sense of responsibility to its own people and people across the world, China has taken and will continue to take determined and practical steps to tackle this challenge," he said. Meanwhile, China's neighbor Japan came out with the most aggressive carbon emission cuts in the world. Japan's new Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, pledged to reduce Japan's carbon emissions 25% below 1990 levels by 2020. Although European nations have long promised to cut their own emissions by 20% and potentially more, Japan is the most energy-efficient large economy in the world, and is poised to become a living laboratory for fighting climate change. "I am resolved to exercise the political will to deliver on this promise," said Hatoyama, whose party in recent elections overthrew the Liberal Democratic Party that has run Japan for decades. Indeed, leadership on climate change may be shifting to the East. Hu emphasized that China's economic policies would continue to promote the country's rapid development, and it isn't clear just how ambitious China's emissions cuts will be. As Todd Stern, the U.S.'s top climate diplomat, told reporters on Tuesday: "It all depends on what the numbers will be." But from the outside, it looks like China is forging ahead while the U.S. remains mired in domestic politics. "The question is whether [China] will prompt Obama and the Senate into action before Copenhagen," says Annie Petsonk, international counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund. Business: Moving Ahead Big business is often characterized as the bad guy by many climate-change activists. But while politicians, especially those in the U.S., have been slow to grapple with global warming, many corporations have been moving ahead on their own. They're cutting carbon emissions at rates higher than any government and improving energy efficiency for the sake of their own profits. "Businesses need to deal with climate change, and they need regulatory certainty and simplicity from governments," says Charles Holliday, the chairman of DuPont. Holliday was one of a number of CEOs who came to the UN on Sept. 22 to mingle with world leaders and press them on climate change. Meanwhile the International Air Transport Association reiterated a pledge to cut its own carbon emissions in half by 2050 over 2005 levels. For airlines, like other businesses, the realities of climate change can't be ignored — a world where resources are scarcer and temperatures are rising will demand other ways of doing business, or companies will go out of business. "We all should realize that carbon has a cost," says Jeffrey Swartz, the CEO of the shoe company Timberland. Copenhagen: Still in Doubt Despite signs of progress at UN, the prospects for success at Copenhagen are still cloudy. How poor countries should be aided in adapting to climate change, how to prevent tropical deforestation and especially what level of emissions cuts developed nations will agree to are all issues that have yet to be resolved. "I'm getting mixed signals," says Kandeh Yumkella, the director-general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, who was backstage lobbying politicians at the summit. The one undoubted benefit of the UN meeting is that it put climate change back in the headlines, at least for a day. Between the recession, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the problems with Iran — even the fact that it hasn't been a dramatically warm year for much of the world — climate change had dropped somewhat on the international agenda. That will always be a risk for this most long-term of challenges, where the penalties and payoffs of policy changes will unfold over decades. "The true test of leadership is to take the long view," Ban said this morning. In fact, leaders have had no problem taking the long view on climate change; G-8 nations have agreed to reduce global emissions 50% by 2050. But as India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told reporters, "It's the height of dishonesty to have a target for 2050 because none of us will be around to be held accountable." What the world really needs is for its leaders to think short term, to make the hard pledges that are required to start bringing global carbon emissions down. They can start at Copenhagen. And they should remember the words of Mohamed Nasheed, the president of the Maldives, whose small island country literally risks being erased from the planet by rising sea levels. "We are talking about not living because of climate change," he said on Sept. 21. "We are going to die. Don't do this to us." Not as eloquent as Obama's words — but far more urgent. source: time.com