Poorest children hit by climate change

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The world's poorest and most vulnerable children are, according to a new report from UNICEF UK, being hit hardest by the impact of climate change.

Published exactly 10 years after the UK signed the Kyoto Protocol, “Our Climate, Our Children, Our Responsibility” calles for immediate action from Government to make children a priority in the climate change agenda.

It describes how children, especially in Africa and Asia, face increased violence and disease, and scarcer food and clean water, causing up to an extra 160,000 deaths a year.

The report says that climate change is threatening achievement of the UN's Millennium Development Goals relating to children.

David Bull, UNICEF UK's executive director, said that those who have contributed least to climate change, that is to say the world's poorest children, are the ones that are suffering the most.

According to the report, climate change could cause an additional 40,000 to 160,000 child deaths per year in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa through increased poverty.

Temperature increases of two degrees Celsius could put an extra 30m-200m people at risk of hunger, and childhood diseases such as malaria will spread to new areas.

UNICEF called on Government to ensure CO2 emissions are slashed by at least 80% by 2050 and urged the Department for International Development to make the effect of climate change on children a mainstream issue.

The organisation also urged businesses in the UK to substantially reduce emissions and contribute to the costs of mitigating and adapting to climate change.

"Many more children could die," David Bull, UNICEF UK's executive director, said, “and it is clear that a failure to address climate change is a failure to protect children."

The talk about temperature rising is here again and no one even, so it seems, wants to acknowledge, though the chairman of the IPCC did so publicly, the findings from a major study in Australia that states that the temperatures have not been rising, not even by a fraction, ever since 2002 and have, in fact, plateaued out.

Why we are still being painted the “if temperatures rise by x degrees Celsius” and such does beat me.

Regardless of whether the temperatures are going to be rising, which they are not, so it would appear, the impact will be there. The ice will continue to melt because it is warmer than it was decades ago and that also will change the climate elsewhere.

The UK public is being urged to join UNICEF's campaign to increase the 2050 emissions reduction target and include aviation and shipping in the Climate Change Bill.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has also warned that up to a billion people could lose their homes as a result of climate change within the next 50 years when he said that rising sea levels or food and water shortages could force millions from the their homes.

Those rising sea leaves and food shortages will come about even if the temperatures are not rising any further and, if they indeed have plateaued out as the Australian study suggests and the head of the IPCC has admitted also, as the climate is warmer than it was decades ago and therefore the melt will continue and what else such melt and this cycling climate change of the Earth will bring with it further the Gods only know.

Personally, like many experts as well, I have my doubts that we can alter the course of this by reducing CO2 output and all such, though I am sure it will not hurt to do so and to reduce our impact on the planet a little more. Ideally more than just a little. The problem is though that we must prepared to deal with the changes and growing foods for bio-fuel rather than to feed the hungry is rather vile in the extreme.

Maybe we need to get off our dependence on oil based fuels and find a better source, including the burning of waste wood, and wood generated from tree cutting operations by councils and such, which so often is left to go to waste, as well as by a program, that could be envisaged for the UK, of the total eradication of the Dutch Elm Disease problem. It can be done with will and foresight. The wood generated in such a way, which needs to be disposed off in a sanitary way by burning, could fire micro generating power stations for many decades to come. In the end there would be no more Dutch Elm Disease and by that time we may have found another source with which to fire the generators.

Reduction of our oil use is another important must. And how do we do that?

The answer to that, I believe, may be the subject of another article.

© M Smith (Veshengro), June 2008

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Climate change an opportunity for innovation and growth

Penny Wong
February 8, 2008

OVER many years, scientists have gathered evidence that makes the case that climate change is real and that people are causing it.

For some time, this evidence has been irrefutable. People in Australia and around the world have been calling for action — and in their everyday lives, taking action themselves. Businesses have been looking at the looming threat of climate change — and at the opportunities it presents — and also taking action for themselves.

Most of the talk about the economic impact of climate change has been of the potential threat. Yet we should also look to the opportunity for growth — for innovation, for a modern economy. Australia is blessed with resources to exploit developments in clean energy, and we have the scientists, engineers and capacity to deliver.

Our climate change policy is built on three pillars: reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions; adapting to climate change that we cannot avoid; and helping to shape a global solution.

The first pillar — reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions — is marked by our existing commitment to a target of reducing emissions by 60% of 2000 levels by 2050. The Government is also committed to setting a medium-term target.

In developing its strategy to achieve deep reductions in emissions, the Government will be ever mindful of the economic challenges. While the fundamentals of Australia's economy remain strong, we face inflation at higher rates than we would like and an uncertain global economic outlook.

These are times that require careful and prudent economic management, which is front of mind in all the Government's decision-making.

We will deliver measures to reduce emissions at least cost, and with the greatest potential to drive new growth, create jobs and develop industries. That's why at the heart of our efforts to reduce emissions will be a system of emissions trading.

The best way to drive reductions is to use market-based mechanisms. It is not enough simply to set targets to reduce emissions, and hope for the best. Nor should we be just imposing action on those industries and companies that are carbon intensive.

In putting emissions trading at the heart of our efforts to reduce greenhouse, we will place a limit or a cap on the emissions we will allow to be produced. Permits would then be issued up to the level of the cap and each year firms would surrender to the Government a number of permits equal to their emissions.

This will produce a market for permits, which will be actively traded and will attract a price. It is this price, the cost of carbon, that will change the way that decisions are made throughout the economy. Companies that can easily reduce emissions will do so to avoid this cost, thereby freeing permits for those companies who have fewer opportunities to reduce emissions.

This approach forces us to account for our greenhouse emissions. It means we are responsible for what we put into the atmosphere. Obviously, this imposes a cost but it is a necessary one.

Australians recognise that tackling climate change will not be painless. But Australians also understand that doing nothing certainly will not save us any money: the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action.

A system to enable the trading of emissions will help promote private-sector innovation and it will help address the market failure that has contributed so profoundly to climate change.

The introduction of emissions trading will constitute the most significant economic and structural reform undertaken in Australia since the trade liberalisation of the 1980s.

It will create a major new financial market aimed at achieving an environmental obligation. It will spur progress in production techniques, capital investment, research and development. And it will result in challenges for some industries while creating significant opportunities for existing and new industries.

The European Union has already implemented the world's largest cap and trade scheme. Closer to home, New Zealand's cap and trade scheme will start this year. Several cap and trade proposals are being developed and debated in the US. The cap and trade model has widespread support in Australia. It will form the platform for other design considerations.

The scheme will have maximal coverage of greenhouse gases and sectors, to the extent that this is practical. The broader the scheme's coverage, the more cost-effectively it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and the more fairly it spreads the burden of such reductions across the community.

There is wide agreement that more than 70% of our national emissions can be practically covered by emissions trading and we will proceed towards scheme design on this basis. We will consult the agriculture and forestry sectors on the question of their inclusion in the system and the timing of this.

The system will be designed to enable international linkages, while ensuring it suits Australian economic conditions.

The ratification of the Kyoto Protocol opens the door to a range of carbon trading opportunities for Australian businesses, and links us to the multibillion-dollar trading market that already exists internationally.

Emissions trading gives us much greater capacity to add momentum to the global carbon market. The design parameters need to balance the desirability of international linking to form an emerging global market with the need to meet Australian objectives, particularly in the early stages of implementation.

The design will address the competitive challenges facing emission-intensive trade-exposed industries in Australia.

The introduction of a carbon price ahead of effective international action can lead to perverse incentives for such industries to relocate or source production offshore. There is no point in imposing a carbon price domestically that results in emissions and production transferring internationally for no environmental gain.

An important input to the Government's thinking on climate change policy issues will be the review being undertaken by Professor Ross Garnaut. He will recommend medium to long-term policies to improve the prospects for sustainable prosperity.

Senator Penny Wong is Minister for Climate Change and Water. This is an edited version of a speech she gave in Melbourne on Wednesday to the Australian Industry Group.

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World leaders urge action on climate change at Delhi summit

DPA

New Delhi - While slow-moving governments drag their feet, everyone - individuals, communities and businesses - should act now on climate change, according to the consensus at a summit on sustainable development that opened in the Indian capital Thursday. A gathering of leaders from India, the Scandinavian countries, the Maldives, international agencies and sector professionals are attending the three-day summit on climate change and sustainable development India's The Energy Resources Institute (TERI).

The wealthier nations that are responsible for most emissions should play a greater role, specially by transferring technology and financing mitigation in the developing world, participants said.

Several speakers stressed the importance of reaching an equitable post-Kyoto protocol at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change sponsored meeting at Copenhagen in 2009.

The Delhi Development Summit is an annual event organized by the Delhi-based energy research institute TERI, led by RK Pachauri, who is also chairman of the UNFCC which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for its role in making climate change a global issue.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India was committed to taking steps on climate change and would never let its emissions exceed that of developed countries. But he also said it was necessary to ensure an acceptable level of development for all Indians.

"The world has to address this (mitigation) in such a way that we do not have to choose between development and environment. We have to have both," Norway Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said.

"We have to create mechanisms for the rich world to transfer technology and financial resources to help mitigation in the developing world otherwise there will not be big enough advances," he said.

The leaders also said the role of business was important because the corporate sector realized there was money to be made by going green. Government policy could help this process.

Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen, his counterpart from Denmark Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the presidents of Iceland Olafur Ragnar Grimsson and Maldives Maumoon Abdul Gayoom took part in the panel discussion.

Gayoom was awarded TERI's Sustainable Development Leadership award for 2008 for his pioneering work on alerting the world to climate change. He dedicated the award to the people of Maldives, an island community which was among those most in danger from climate change impacts like rising sea levels, he said.

"The challenge is huge. We have less than two years to draft an agreement to measure up to what science is telling us," UNFCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer said in his keynote address. The summit ends on Saturday.

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Europeans voice biodiversity concerns

Europeans are becoming increasingly concerned over the loss of biodiversity, according to the results of a new study. The Eurobarometer survey looked at views on animal and plant extinctions and the decline of natural habitats and ecosystems. The issues of air pollution, water pollution and man-made disasters such as oil spills were rated as the most important by respondents (27%), followed by climate change (19%).

While just 20% of Europeans in the survey felt that their lives were currently affected by the loss of biodiversity, 70% believed that it would have personal impacts in the future.

“Biodiversity loss is irreversible. Since the 1970s, the European Union has been committed to protecting nature, and we are working hard to realise our target of halting biodiversity loss on our continent by 2010,” commented Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas. “Achieving this target requires everyone across the Union to work together to ensure that our ecosystems are sustainable and healthy. Complacency is not an option.”

And how right the man is. Biodiversity loss is indeed irreversible. However that does not mean that we should not go an try to arrest this loss. It must not be.

While it many be true that over the lifespan of our planed there has always been a loss of species here and there, often due to change in clima, natural change in climate, which, we must be prepared for, this current climate change could be too.

If the latter is the case we better learn to live with it and prepare to do so. This does not, however, means that we should sit back and take the attitude that it will not make a difference whether we recycle or whatever. I am not saying this.

As I have said in a previous article, we must do both. Prepare for the eventuality that Climate Change has nothing whatsoever to do with emissions from cars, industry and homes, but still continue to reduce, reuse and recycle, and to minimize our impact on the environment, to continue planting trees, and such. Hope for the best, that is to say work to, if possible arrest and reverse the climate change, and prepare for the worst, that is to say, pepare for the eventuality that Climate Change, a.k.a. Global Warming, is not a result of human activity but a natural phenomenon, one that, as the records seem to show, arrives around every thousand years or so in the cycle of our Blue Planet.

© Michael Smith (Veshengro), January 2008

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Scientists urge Government: tougher CO2 cuts

Monday 21 January 2008

WWF-UK has enlisted the support of Britain's leading environmental scientists to call on the Government to commit to tougher carbon emission cuts in the Climate Change Bill in an open letter to the Government in five major UK newspapers.
David Nussbaum, chief executive of WWF-UK, said: "The Government has a unique opportunity to set an example to the rest of the world by introducing groundbreaking legislation on climate change."

"Today some of Britain's most eminent climate and environmental scientists have added their voices to the growing calls for emission cuts based on the latest science - that means cuts of at least 80% by 2050," he said.

Open letter to Government: UK newspapers
The letter is written by the current Chair of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (RCEP), Sir John Lawton, and his predecessors, Sir Tom Blundell, Chair at the time of the 2000 report as well as Sir John Houghton and also the Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Sciences Professor Norman Myers. The scientists have signed the letter in their personal capacity.

The open letter to the leaders of the main political parties is published in today's The Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph and The Independent.

The letter explains the need to cut the UK's CO2 emissions by at least 80% by 2050, outlining how the Government's current target of a 60% reduction in the UK's CO2 emissions by 2050 is based on an out of date report by the (RCEP) published in 2000.

Call for 80% CO2 emissions cut

Sir John Houghton, the first Chair of Scientific Assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said: "The UK has always been proud of its leadership in the issue of climate change. To keep in the lead, the Government needs to keep in step with the science that is now strongly pointing towards cuts in emissions of at least 80% by 2050 if we are to mitigate against dangerous climate change. Furthermore there is convincing modelling to show that these cuts are achievable and affordable."

Scientific reports

The recent report, 80% Challenge: Delivering a low carbon Britain, published jointly by WWF-UK, Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), found that it is technically feasible and affordable for the UK to cut its CO2 emissions by at least 80% by 2050 - including our share of emissions from international aviation and without using new nuclear power.

Alternative solutions could lie in energy efficiency and a rapid roll out of renewable and decentralised energy, potentially combined with fossil fuel power stations equipped with working carbon capture and storage.

Recent statements by Sir Nicholas Stern, the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and the UN Human Development Report 2007/2008 also make clear that developed countries must make emissions reductions of at least 80% by 2050.

WWF-UK is also calling on the UK Government to include emissions from international aviation and shipping in the Climate Change Bill.

Source...

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Eating meat has a greater impact on climate change

Says Compassion in World Farming… Well, now I have heard it all.

We always knew, at least those of us that are not blind to the things that are going on around then and to the signs, that there are moves afoot for a long time to force all people into becoming vegetarians. Why this is and what the hidden agenda behind this is is still something that is a little unclear but definitely, so it appears, the target is to “covert”, by hook or by crook or by force, everyone in the world, in time, and it would appear that they are in a rush, to being vegetarians.

If it is not health benefits that are being banded about to entice people into vegetarianism then it is poor animals that are being used, in as, is it not cruel to slaughter those animals for food. No, in fact it is not for that is the very reason that all those animals are alive for in the first place. They would not even exist would it not for the fact that people want to have them on their dinner plates. Wakey, wakey, all of you vegetarians and vegans out there. Now they jump on the “climate change” bandwagon. So, what, pray next. None of them has any integrity and honesty and they still keep their agenda hidden.

Wake up! If all the people in the world suddenly would become vegetarians what do you all think would happen to the chickens, cows, heifers, sheep, pigs and what-have-you that are being kept for no other reason that to go on people's plates? They would be killed and destroyed. No two ways about it.

Also, what are you going to do to keep the crops we then would have to grow safe from all the deer and all those that would be after our veggies? We would have to kill the deer and rabbits that are after our corn and cabbages, etc. So, would it not be better if we would then eat them too, so they would not get wasted.

It would seem, however, that reality is not something that those people deal in. They are in a world of cute furry critters without the faintest idea of how nature works. About time they woke up and smelled the flowers in the real world.

I agree that we all, probably, eat far too much meat than is good for us. The obesity of many of our fellow travelers on this planet, especially in countries like UK and the USA, proves the point and our parents and grandparents during World War II in Britain under rations ate healthier, much healthier, than we do now and they worked harder, much harder then, and still they did not keel over for lack of energy from food. They seemed to have gotten the right amount and right combination. Maybe we should dig up the old recipes from the British WWII home front once again and also, maybe, take some other lessons from the same book, such as in frugality and such. Our planet would benefit from it as would our wallets and our bodies, instead of blaming the eating of meat and the raising of for climate change.

© M V Smith, October 2007

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Climate Change - What if it is not man-made?

The whole world and everyone in it is by now, probably, aware of Climate Change, aka Global Warming, and seems to take it as read and as gospel truth that human activity is to blame.

But what if, and let us just consider this for a moment, it has nothing – or little – to do with cars, the use of fossil fuels, and such?
What is it is a natural cycle which the earth goes through every 1000 or so years? What then?
For it will then make no difference whether or not we cut any emissions, as we will then not be able to do anything about it.

When we look at the history of our planet we can, in fact, if we are not blinkered by whatever agendas, see that there have always been periods of warm and periods of cold and they seem to appear in a more or less 1000 year cycle; the high points that is. We are, in all appearance, heading for such a point again in our planet's history.
If this is the case than there is very little, I am afraid, that we can do against it and we must rather prepare for this change. We can hardly turn off a natural cycle, should it be one.
That does not mean that we should not do everything in our power, each one of us, to lessen our impact whether in carbon emissions or in waste generation, just in case that this change in global climate and the weird and extreme weather that we are experiencing around the globe is, even partially, due to human activity. We must indeed do both, and that NOW and not next week, next month or next year, God forbid.
We all know what we should do and must do to lessen our impact on the environment; so let's go and do it NOW.

However, we must also remain serious: I saw a graph recently where someone tried to claim that one PC was using 1500 KW per hour. That is totally wrong. Even an electric fire does often not use more than 1500 watts but 1500 kilowatts; no way.
Some groups, we know, try to scare people into action, but to use untruths to do that is counterproductive. If, however, we, who care about and for the planet, remain in the realm of truth and reality we can, maybe, get the people to follow.

Even if, as I said, Global Warming/Climate Change is not due to human activity and the use of fossil fuels and such reducing our (carbon) footprint on the environment and Mother Earth will certainly be no bad thing.

We must, however, at the same time prepare for the worst case scenario, which is to say that it be the described natural cycle of our planet and we can do little or nothing to bring about a change.


- Be prepared for the worst and hope for the best! -


© M V Smith, May 2007

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