20 years left to achieve climate stability - scientist
A leading Australian scientist believes that the world has just 20 years to turn the tide on global warming and that leaders at a summit in Sydney next week must take concrete steps to tackle the problem.
Tim Flannery, a respected Australian scientist and author, says the world’s economic powerhouses must take drastic measures over the next two decades before the Earth’s climate is irreversibly altered.
“We have to make deep, deep reductions in emissions within the next 20 years,” he said. “We will have won or lost the battle for climate stability in that time.”
Flannery’s projection is based on the period he says it will take – at current emissions levels – to pump out enough carbon dioxide to warm the globe by around two degrees, producing “catastrophic” climate change.
Prof. Will Steffen, the director of environmental studies at Canberra’s respected Australian National University, said Flannery’s prediction is a “worst case” scenario, but is “not impossible”.
“Certainly we’re seeing evidence of global warming. The evidence is quite clear now that the planet is warming compared to the baseline temperature change over the last few thousand years,” Steffen said. “It’s been warming quite rapidly over the last century and particularly over the last couple of decades, those observations are quite clear.”
Next week, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to meet top-level officials from Australia, China, India, South Korea and Japan to discuss ways of tackling the issue.
Along with the US these countries account for nearly half the world’s population, energy and economic output.
The White House says the talks will enhance rather than replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming that both the US and Australia rejected because of its mandatory cuts in carbon dioxide, methane and other gases.
The Kyoto treaty calls for 35 industrialised countries to cut their 1990 emissions levels by at least 5% by 2012.
China and India signed the treaty as developing nations, exempting them from the first round of emissions cuts. Japan must cut emissions by 6% below 1990 levels, and South Korea by 5%.
So far, little is known about the goals of the ”Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.”
In July, the group issued a vision statement that talks of developing, deploying and transferring technologies such as nuclear power and clean coal technology in which greenhouse gases are extracted and eliminated while burning coal.
Environmental group Greenpeace slammed next week’s meeting as meaningless.
“As might be expected from a pact between six of the world’s biggest coal exporters and users, this appears to be a deal to do nothing,” the group said in a briefing statement. “At this stage, it contains no provisions to reduce greenhouse pollution. With no targets, timetables or even financial mechanisms, it can have no hope of meeting its stated objective – assisting the development and transfer of climate-friendly technology.”
Earlier this week, James Connaughton, Chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the partnership would drum up more private investment for goals including US and Chinese plans to improve energy efficiency in coal-burning power plants and cut acid rain-causing sulphur dioxide emissions.
“I’d say that’s wonderful news – and how will it be done?” said Flannery, responding to Connaughton’s remarks.
Flannery said there is “no evidence in the world today” that a voluntary program to reduce greenhouse emissions could work. Only government regulation or “market-based instruments” – such as carbon taxes, incentives and government subsidies on green energy – would have the necessary impact, he said.
Frank Muller, a former adviser to US President Bill Clinton and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, agrees.
“We need a price on carbon if its really going to drive investment, whether that’s a carbon tax or emissions trading,” he said. “You (also) need to address specific barriers to the adoption of existing (energy efficient) technologies.”
