Carbon Sinks, Forests And Climate Change

For a number of years, there have been
concerns that climate change negotiations
will essentially ignore a key principle of
climate change negotiation frameworks: the
common but differentiated responsibilities.
This recognizes that historically:
Industrialized nations have emitted far
more greenhouse gas emissions (even if
some developing nations are only now
increasing theirs);
Rich countries therefore face the biggest
responsibility and burden for action to
address climate change; and
Rich countries therefore must support
developing nations adapt —through
financing and technology transfer, for
example.
This notion of "climate justice" is typically
ignored by many rich nations and their
mainstream media, making it easy to blame
China, India and other developing countries
for failures in climate change mitigation
negotiations.
Development expert, Martin Khor, calculated
that taking historical emissions into account,
the rich countries owe a "carbon debt"
because they have already used more than
their fair quota of emissions.
Yet, by 2050 when certain emission
reductions are needed by, their reduced
emissions will still add up to be go over
their fair share:
However, rather than continue down the
path of unequal development, industrialized
nations can help pay off their "carbon debt"
by truly helping emerging countries
develop along a cleaner path, such as
through the promised-but-barely-delivered
technology transfer, finance, and capacity
building.
So far however, rich nations have done
very little within the Kyoto protocol to
reduce emissions by any meaningful
amount, while they are all for negotiating a
follow on treaty that brings more pressure
to developing countries to agree to
emissions targets.
In effect, the more there will be delay the
more the poor nations will have to save the
Earth with their sacrifices (and if it works,
as history shows, the rich and powerful will
find a way to rewrite history to claim they
were the ones that saved the planet).
These issues are explored in more depth
here.

Climate Change and Global Warming

The climate is changing. The
earth is warming up, and there
is now overwhelming
scientific consensus that it is
happening, and human-
induced. With global warming on the
increase and species and their habitats on
the decrease, chances for ecosystems to
adapt naturally are diminishing.
Many are agreed that climate change may
be one of the greatest threats facing the
planet. Recent years show increasing
temperatures in various regions, and/or
increasing extremities in weather patterns.
This section looks at what causes climate
change, what the impacts are and where
scientific consensus currently is.
Research has shown that air pollutants from
fossil fuel use make clouds reflect more of
the sun ’s rays back into space. This leads to
an effect known as global dimming
whereby less heat and energy reaches the
earth. At first, it sounds like an ironic savior
to climate change problems. However, it is
believed that global dimming caused the
droughts in Ethiopia in the 1970s and 80s
where millions died, because the northern
hemisphere oceans were not warm enough
to allow rain formation. Global dimming is
also hiding the true power of global
warming. By cleaning up global dimming-
causing pollutants without tackling
greenhouse gas emissions, rapid warming
has been observed, and various human
health and ecological disasters have
resulted, as witnessed during the European
heat wave in 2003, which saw thousands
of people die.
UN Framework Convention On Climate
Change
Last updated Saturday, December 25, 2004.
The world mostly agrees that something
needs to be done about global warming and
climate change. The first stumbling block,
however, has been trying to get an
agreement on a framework. In 1988, the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) was created by the United Nations
Environment Programme (UNEP) and the
World Meterological Organization (WMO) to
assess the scientific knowledge on global
warming. The IPCC concluded in 1990 that
there was broad international consensus
that climate change was human-induced.
That report led way to an international
convention for climate change, the United
Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC), signed by over 150
countries at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
This section looks at this Convention and
some of the main principles in it.