Associated Press/IHT:U.S. environmental adviser says China emissions rise shows need for climate cooperation

Associated Press/IHT:U.S. environmental adviser says China emissions rise shows need for climate cooperation

The Associated Press

Published: August 14, 2007



BEIJING: China's rising greenhouse gas output illustrates the need for greater global cooperation against climate change, U.S. President George W. Bush's environmental adviser said Tuesday.

James Connaughton said China had responded positively to calls from the U.S. and others for a global agreement to limit greenhouse gases after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012.

China's participation is key because it is believed to have passed, or will soon pass, the United States as the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter.

"What that underscores is the importance of us all acting together," Connaughton told reporters following a series of meetings with Chinese economic, environmental and science and technology officials.

Connaughton said discussions focused on an agenda for upcoming climate change talks at the United Nations and the regional Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation forum's summit, as well as a Sept. 27-28 summit hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to discuss "life after" the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Clinching a post-Kyoto deal will likely take several years of intense and difficult negotiations, which are expected to start at a December meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali.

The United States is not a party to the Kyoto agreement and large developing countries such as China, India and Brazil are exempt from its obligations. They have argued that emissions reductions should not be allowed to hurt their economic growth and poverty-eradication efforts.

China overtook the United States as the leading carbon dioxide emitter in 2006, according to a report in June by the independent Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, which is paid by the Dutch government to advise it on environmental policy.

Connaughton said the data had not been internationally validated, but said such a conclusion shouldn't come as a surprise.

Over the weekend, Connaughton visited China's largest coal methane-fired power plant in the northern province of Shanxi, one of 15 such projects being codeveloped in China by the two nations' governments.

Officials at both the national and provincial levels are extremely enthusiastic about that technology, which captures methane, a volatile gas that is a contributor to global warning, and converts it into electricity.

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Published by the government of Zimbabwe

14 August 2007

Harare

Speaking at the opening of the STI-ACT 2007 workshop on climate change in Harare on Wednesday, Cde Nhema said global warming was "truly" a global problem affecting the human race and all natural systems.

"However, though the cause of global warming is the same, the impacts of climate change are differentiated according to adaptive capacity.

"Generally poor, less developed nations will be more negatively affected by climate change than developed nations.

"For example, a severe drought in sub-Saharan Africa has the potential of causing death to thousands, if not millions of people, calling for increased inflows of diversion of resources towards importation of food," he said.

He said a drought episode of the same magnitude in a developed country was readily cushioned by food imports from other parts of the globe.

The Minister said while there were high hopes of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to a level that will not threaten the earth's systems it should be everyone's concern to find a way of coping with the inevitable negative impacts of global warming.

"While the international community is hopeful that greenhouse gas emissions can ultimately be reduced to levels no longer dangerous to the earth's systems, the immediate concern of nations, communities and indeed households, was to figure out how to cope with some inevitable negative impacts of global warming," he said.

The workshop was organised by the Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Science and Technology Development.

Cde Nhema said the agenda of the workshop was to address critical issues that face the nation and pose challenges to the maintenance of people.

"It is upon us now. The agenda shows that you will be considering some more immediate issues such as how do we ensure food security, cope with new health threats, droughts, floods, biodiversity, equitable water supplies and sustainable development which are critical issues that pose challenges to the maintenance of human well being," he said.

Cde Nhema said as early as the 1980s, scientific research obtained evidence that indicated that the earth's climate was changing and that the earth was getting warmer at a rate that was several hundreds times faster that previously deduced from historical and geological records.

As the evidence mounted, it was clear that the international community had to take note of the phenomenon of global warming and project what the likely consequences would be to society and to natural systems.

Studies on the earth's history show that the earth's climate has varied over the millennia, Cde Nhema said.

"The earth has experienced warmer periods and colder ones than the present climate. It has been established through research that the earth's temperature is closely related to the concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," he said.

He said it became clearer that the earth's climate was regulated mainly by its atmospheric carbon dioxide content, as well as other atmospheric gases, now collectively known as greenhouse gases.

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Reuters: Tropical Storm Dean Could Become Atlantic Hurricane


MIAMI - Tropical Storm Dean formed in the Atlantic Ocean midway between Africa and the Caribbean on Tuesday and could become the first Atlantic hurricane of the 2007 season later in the week, US forecasters said.

The fourth cyclone of the year was days away from any contact with land.

But the US National Hurricane Center's forecast track had it reaching the Lesser Antilles -- the islands of the eastern Caribbean -- late this week. The Lesser Antilles stretch from Trinidad in the south to the British and US Virgin Islands in the north.

At 5 p.m. EDT (2100 GMT), the center of Dean was located about 1,390 miles (2,237 km) east of the Lesser Antilles and was charging west at about 21 miles per hour (34 kph), the hurricane center said.

Dean's top sustained winds were about 40 mph (64 kph). It was expected to gradually strength and become a hurricane with winds of at least 74 mph (119 kph) by Friday.

The storm could be a Category 3 hurricane with winds of up to 127 mph (204 kph) in five days, forecasters said. The strongest and most dangerous hurricanes, known as major hurricanes, are Category 3 to Category 5 storms.

The latest long-range computer models had the storm near the Lesser Antilles just north of Barbados on Friday and then heading into the Caribbean Sea well south of Puerto Rico.

Some earlier models had taken Dean farther north, closer to the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, or even curving north into the open Atlantic. Long-range predictions are notoriously uncertain.

The Miami-based National Hurricane Center was also eyeing a weather system in the south-central Gulf of Mexico that could become a tropical depression, the forerunner of a tropical storm, in the near future.

Energy markets were keeping a close eye on the system, as roughly a third of US domestic oil and gas production comes from the Gulf of Mexico, while residents of southern Texas and northeastern Mexico were also told to be on alert.

Forecasters have been warning residents of the Caribbean and the US East and Gulf coasts that the peak of the hurricane season is coming. The period from Aug. 20 to mid-October is historically the busiest time for Atlantic hurricanes.

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James Connaughton, left, chairman of the Council of Environmental Quality, and Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of the council, present environmental issues on climate change at the U.S. Embassy Information Resource Center in Namyoungdong, Seoul, Thursday. / Courtesy of the U.S. Embassy

By Kim Se-jeong

Staff Reporter

The United States has invited South Korea to a meeting on climate change along with 12 other countries in September.

James Connaughton, chairman of the Council of Environmental Quality at the White House, and Undersecretary Paula Dobriansky told reporters the United States is hosting the Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change from Sept. 27-28 in Washington, D.C.

``At this meeting, we will seek agreement on the process by which the major economies would, by the end of 2008, agree upon a post-2012 framework that could include a long-term global goal, nationally defined mid-term goals and strategies, and sector-based approaches for improving energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emission,’’ according to an invitation letter signed by U.S. President George W. Bush. The press meeting was held at the U.S. Embassy Information Resource Center in Seoul.

Those invited are the European Union as a single entity, Japan, China, Canada, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Austria, Indonesia, South Africa and South Korea.

An official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Trade said Korea, as the 10th largest greenhouse gases emitter, will send a delegation in support of the international efforts for climate change. The delegates will explain Korea’s efforts to reduce levels of greenhouse gases, he said.

Composition of the delegation has yet to be fixed, the official said.

The two American officials, in particular, welcomed China and India which, Connaughton said, have shown positive responses to the invitation.

In recent years, China and India have generated a large amount of greenhouse gases exceeding those of other developed countries. Nevertheless, they still remain free from the Kyoto Protocol’s obligation that requires countries to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases by 5 percent below their 1990 levels.

The United States has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, claiming it is unfair for countries such as China and India to be exempted from it.

The Chinese Embassy in Seoul wasn’t available for comment.

During the 7th International Meeting on Climate Change and Sustainable Development on July 20th in Seoul, Tu Jing Chang, an official of the embassy, said greenhouse gas emissions in China are decreasing, and the Chinese government is also making necessary efforts to further reduce them.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement made under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNCCC). It covers nearly 170 countries, according to wikipedia.com. The current one expires in 2012, and a meeting began in May to create a new framework that would succeed the current one.

Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general of the United Nation, is hosting a one-day high-level summit on climate change on Sept. 24, and the UNCCC is scheduled to meet in Bali, Indonesia, late this year.

Not only the U.N.-led efforts, but other regional efforts have been made, including by the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate (APP). Launched in January 2006, the APP consists of six nations _ Australia, China, India, Japan, the United States and South Korea.

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