UN takes on climate change

Some 6,000 participants, including high level national leaders, scientists, and environmentalists, are attending what is only the second meeting of signatories of the Kyoto Protocol since the climate change treaty came into effect. Greenpeace has official status at the conference and its delegates are arguing for urgent action and severe cuts in greenhouse gases.  

One of the most important issues to be discussed at the conference is new commitments to reducing greenhouse emissions from industrialized countries under Kyoto for the period after 2012. Up until then, the target is a five per cent (six per cent for Canada) decrease in 1990 levels for developed nations.

Greenpeace, however, is warning that emissions must be more drastically reduced if the rise in the average global temperature is to be kept under two degrees above pre-industrial levels, the limit set by the European Union, beyond which global warming would be out of control and irreversible.

Even below this level, more frequent droughts, ferocious hurricanes, heat waves and the deaths of coral reefs will almost certainly be dangerous or deadly for millions of people.  Concern is mounting among scientists that the EU limit may be too high.  A recent study focused on defining dangerous levels of climate change by NASA makes a very strong case that this warming should be limited to no more than 1.8º C above pre-industrial levels.

Even if present levels of greenhouse gas concentrations are maintained, the planet will continue to heat up  by .3  to .5º C above present temperatures bringing the total global average temperature of least 1.2-1.5º C above pre-industrial levels.   Over the next decades, even with stringent emission reductions, greenhouse gas concentrations are unlikely to drop below present levels, and they would almost certainly peak at significantly higher levels. Considering this almost inevitable warming, significant action is required to keep global mean warming below 2º C.
 
It is absolutely necessary that global emissions peak within a decade and then begin to decline thereafter by at least 50 per cent by mid-century. Achieving this will require industrialized countries to reduce emission by at least 75 per cent by mid-century, in line with the goals espoused by a number of European countries and recently adopted by the State of California as the objective of its climate policy.


Greenpeace is urging an 18 per cent reduction, at least, for the second commitment period from 2013 to 2017 and a 30 per cent reduction for the third commitment period from 2018 to 2022. In the long term, Greenpeace wants an 80 per cent reduction by 2050. Targets of at least this magnitude are a necessary to avoid dangerous changes to the climate system. Moreover, Greenpeace believes negotiations for the next period must be concluded no later than 2008,

These targets are a far cry, however, from what the Canadian government is proposing in its recently tabled Clean Air Act. It requires no reduction in greenhouse gas emissions before 2020, and only sets a distant and inadequate target of between 45 and 65 per cent reduction from 2003 levels by 2050. These targets don’t even meet Canada’s current commitments under Kyoto, which it hasn’t so far met and which it is arguing in Nairobi are unrealistic and unattainable.