Yesterday Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, made a passionate and courageous speech at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. Chavez criticized President Obama’s “laughable” promise to help climate change and also said that capitalism will destroy our planet. Watch it:
Photo credit: adopt a negotiator
Here are some of the biggest and most interesting news today related to the ongoing COP15 climate conference in Copenhagen:
A draft text for a potential final agreement in Copenhagen was leaked today to the Guardian. The “Danish text” has made the developing countries “furious” as the draft agreement would give even more powers to the rich nations, weakening UN’s future role as well as abandon the Kyoto protocol. Some say this shows the true agenda in Copenhagen, others believe the draft is unofficial and may have changed a lot since its first creation.
The Environmental Protection Agency in the USA has declared that carbon dioxide is a public danger. This would make it possible for Barack Obama to impose his proposed emissions cuts without an agreement in the sceptic U.S. Senate. A report released today by the Center for Biological Diversity claims that Obama now has the clear legal authority to make a binding commitment for greenhouse gas reductions in Copenhagen without waiting for Congress.
When discussing climate change, the old saying needs to be amended to “What do you want first, the somewhat good news, or the astoundingly awful bad news?”
The bad news is piling up fast:
* The ice sheets in the Artic, Antarctic and Greenland are melting twice as fast as earlier projections from just a year or two ago, which will lead to the sea level rising about a foot every 20 or 25 years – meaning a 3-foot rise by the end of the century, enough to wipe out some island nations, flood much of Bangladesh and other low-lying coastal countries, threaten many coastal cities around the world, and increase erosion on coasts.
* Glaciers are melting faster as well – meaning that before the end of this century, glaciers in the Himalayas may disappear, and these glaciers provide water for over a billion people, an environmental, agricultural and human catastrophe. This extra melting will first cause more floods in India and China, and then cause extreme water stress for humans and for agriculture.
* Previous estimates of the massive amounts of carbon dioxide and methane locked up in the permafrost were too small, increasing the likelihood of an unstoppable tipping point if too much of the permafrost melts and releases these greenhouse gases, potentially overwhelming any human efforts to slow and control carbon emissions.
In December 2009 the governments of the world will discuss their responses to the climate emergency facing the planet. Civilized, educated , humanitarian people dread the outcome which is likely to be grossly deficient. However in March 2009 2,500 participants (mostly climate science researchers) gathered for the scientific Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (“Climate Change, Global risks, challenges & decisions”, Copenhagen 10-12 March, 2009, University of Copenhagen, Denmark).
The must-read Synthesis Report from the March 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference (“Climate Change, Global risks, challenges & decisions”, Copenhagen 10-12 March, 2009, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) has just been released.
This is a vital synthesis of current climate science from the March 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference that involved 2,500 professional participants, most of them climate science researchers. All were welcome and the program and abstracts of the papers presented are available here.
The key moral imperative of the Synthesis Report is “Inaction is inexcusable”.
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