IN SUPPORT OF EU, IPCC TO DICTATE CLIMATE AND ECONOMIC POLICIES
Associated Press, 23 April 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070423/ap_on_sc/climate_report_6
By MICHAEL CASEY, AP Environmental Writer
BANGKOK, Thailand - After two reports predicting a warmer Earth where
life is fundamentally changed, a U.N.-sponsored scientific panel next
month will issue a third study describing how a united world can avert
the worst, by embracing technologies ranging from nuclear power to
manure controls.
Under a best-case scenario for heading off severe damage, the global
economy might lose as little as 3 percentage points of growth by 2030
in deploying technologies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, says the
panel's draft report, obtained by The Associated Press.
But it won't be easy.
"Governments, businesses and individuals all need to be pulling in the
same direction," said British researcher Rachel Warren, one of the
report's authors.
For one thing, the governments of such major emitters as the United
States, China and India will have to join the Kyoto Protocol countries
of Europe and Japan in imposing cutbacks in carbon dioxide and other
heat-trapping gases emitted by industry, power plants and other
sources.
The Bush administration rejected the protocol's mandatory cuts,
contending they would slow U.S. economic growth too much. China and
other poorer developing countries were exempted from the 1997 pact,
but most expected growth in greenhouse emissions will come from the
developing world.
The draft report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), whose final version is to be issued in Bangkok on May 4, says
emissions can be cut below current levels if the world shifts away
from carbon-heavy fuels like coal, embraces energy efficiency and
significantly reduces deforestation.
"The opportunities, the technology are there and now it's a case of
encouraging the increased use of these technologies," said
International Energy Agency analyst Ralph Sims, another of the 33
scientists who drafted the report.
Two previous IPCC reports this year painted a dire picture of a future
in which unabated greenhouse emissions could drive global temperatures
up as much as 6 degrees Celsius (11 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100. Even
a 2-degree-Celsius (3.6-degree-Fahrenheit) rise could subject up to 2
billion people to water shortages by 2050 and threaten extinction for
20 percent to 30 percent of the world's species, the IPCC said.
The third report makes clear the world must quickly embrace a basket
of technological options - both already available and developing -
just to keep the temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees
Fahrenheit).
The draft notes that significant cuts could come from making buildings
more energy-efficient, especially in the developing world, through
better insulation, lighting and other steps, and by converting from
coal to natural gas, nuclear power and renewable energy such as wind,
solar and biofuels.
Less significant but also important would be steps to make motor
vehicles more fuel-efficient, reduce deforestation, and plant more
trees as a carbon "sink," absorbing carbon dioxide. Even capturing
methane emitted by livestock and its manure would help, the report
says.
Over the next century, it says, such technology as hydrogen-powered
fuel cells, advanced hybrid and electric vehicles with better
batteries, and carbon sequestration - whereby carbon emissions are
stored underground - will become more commercially feasible.
It says taking "optimal" mitigation measures might by 2030 stabilize
greenhouse-gas concentrations in the atmosphere at 445 to 534 parts
per million, up from an estimated 430 ppm today.
It indicates that stabilizing concentrations relatively quickly at 450
ppm - an unlikely scenario - might keep the temperature rise to 2
degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over preindustrial
temperatures, a level scientists think might avert severe damage.
Achieving the 445-534 ppm range might cost under 3 percent of global
gross domestic product ( GDP) over two decades, the draft says.
That compares favorably to global economic growth that every year has
averaged almost 3 percent since 2000. The damage from unabated climate
change, meanwhile, might eventually cost the global economy between 5
and 20 percent of GDP every year, according to a British government
report last year.
The IPCC draft notes, however, that its cost estimate is based on a
"relatively small" number of studies and would require all nations to
join in those best-case mitigation efforts, and that "barriers to
implementation of mitigation options are manifold."
The report says governments could lower economic costs if low-carbon
technologies are promoted via carbon taxes or "cap-and-trade" systems
like Europe's, whereby industry is allocated emissions quotas, which
can then be traded among more efficient and less efficient companies.
Turning the report into reality, authors acknowledge, will require a
significant shift in political will among some large economies. The
last IPCC assessment, in 2001, also called for introduction of many of
the same technologies, but they so far haven't been widely embraced.
"I've been involved in this game for 35 years. We're not progressing
as quickly as we could or should," Sims said.
The draft notes, in fact, that current government funding for most
energy research programs is about half what it was in 1980.
--
There may come a time when the CO2 police will wander the earth telling
the poor and the dispossed how many dung chips they can put on their
cook fires. -- Captain Compassion.
Wherever I go it will be well with me, for it was well with me here, not
on account of the place, but of my judgments which I shall carry away
with me, for no one can deprive me of these; on the contrary, they alone
are my property, and cannot be taken away, and to possess them suffices
me wherever I am or whatever I do. -- EPICTETUS
"Civilization is the interval between Ice Ages." -- Will Durant.
"Progress is the increasing control of the environment by life.
--Will Durant
Joseph R. Darancette
daranc@NOSPAMcharter.net
.
|
