Energy Bangla - Copenhagen Climate Change Summit 2009 : Part 1

Maldives will soon cease to exist if World Community does not take meaningful actions on Global warming triggered by Greenhouse Gas Emission. It will soon be swept out of the world map. . Desperate Maldives Government organized a cabinet meeting below water to attract world attention with Climate Change summit 2009 round the corner. It is a smart move to create world’s consciousness.

Bangladesh may loose 40 % of its land to Bay of Bengal by 2050 if Emissions are not drastically cut down soon by coordinated world actions. Sidr could have wiped out Bangladesh now only if great Mangrove forest Sundarban did not absorb most of the impacts. Bangladesh Government is trying to do whatever it can to attract world attention. Few weeks Back one of our friend New York Dr Sarawat Chowdhury informed us of a rally in Newyork organized by BEN to attract world attention on Bangladesh situation due to impacts of GHG emissions. Bangladesh Prime Minister with a large contingent is now in Sweden to attend a 5 day conference on climate change.

Many scientists predict that there will be no ice in summer in Arctic with the next few decades. Sea level will rise to sweep away civilization.

Maldives and Bangladesh are two countries which are most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Frequent Tsunami, Draught, flooding, bush fires have started ravaging many different countries of the world. Most of the countries are feeling the impacts. UNO is very much concerned. But major Industrial nations (Culprits of emissions) and leading developing nations like India, China, Brazil yet to have meeting of minds. USA the main offender is yet to behave responsibly to confront the challenge than terrorism which is threatening the very existence of this beautiful universe. Last year we in Melbourne witness massive Bushfire which caused significant loss of life and property. Only few days back Pacific islands were devastated by Tsunami. World community is looking forward to what happens in Copenhagen. It is a global issue and needs well coordinated Global action. Coal fired power generation, fossil fuel burning in Automobiles, indiscriminant felling of tress are major reasons for GHG emissions. Leading economic Giants are main culprits .Now India and China have joined them. Time has come to agree to agree and not agree to disc agree.

In 2012 the Kyoto Protocol to prevent climate changes and global warming runs out. To keep the process on the line there is an urgent need for a new climate protocol. At the conference in Copenhagen 2009 the parties of the UNFCCC meet for the last time on government level before the climate agreement need to be renewed. Some countries including major polluter USA is yet to endorse Kyoto. US President Barack Obama has just own Nobel Peace Price Prize. Will this Nobel Laureate justify his worth taking lead in Climate Change summit to bring world together in War on Climate Change (Forgetting War on Terror)?

From 7 December 2009 environment ministers and officials will meet in Copenhagen for the United Nations climate conference to thrash out a successor to the Kyoto protocol. The conference, held at the modern Bella Center, will run for two weeks. The talks are the latest in an annual series of UN meetings that trace their origins to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, which aimed at coordinating international action against climate change.

COP15 is the official name of the Copenhagen climate change summit — the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The COP is the highest body of the UNFCCC and consists of environment ministers who meet once a year to discuss developments in the convention.

One hundred and ninety-two countries have signed the climate change convention. More than 15,000 officials, advisers, diplomats, campaigners and journalists are expected to attend COP15, joined by heads of state and government.

Developing countries, including China and India, believe it is the responsibility of wealthy industrialized nations such as the UK and US to set a clear example on cutting carbon emissions. Significantly, the US rejected the 1997 Kyoto protocol, with George Bush arguing that the 5% reductions required by Kyoto would "wreck [the American] economy" while making no demands on emerging economies. COP15's chances of success have been improved by President Barack Obama's stated intention to achieve an 80% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

In April, the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, acknowledged the role the US had played in past climate emissions at a gathering of officials from the world's 17 largest economies. She said the US was "determined to make up for lost time both at home and abroad". "The US is no longer absent without leave," she said. However, Denmark's minister for climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard, has warned that American leadership on climate change will be undermined if the Obama administration does not pass laws swiftly to reduce carbon pollution.

Officials will try to agree a new climate treaty as a successor to the Kyoto protocol, the first phase of which expires in 2012. According to Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC, the four essentials needing an international agreement in Copenhagen are:

1 How much are industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases?

2 How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions?

3 How is the help needed by developing countries to engage in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change going to be financed?

4 How is that money going to be managed?

The main issue is that of "burden-sharing". Climate scientists say that the world must stop the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and start making them fall from around 2015 to 2020. By 2050 they estimate the world must cut its emissions by 80% compared with 1990 levels to limit global warming to a 2C average rise. Money is also a major issue. The developing countries know they must hand over hundreds of billions of pounds to poorer nations, to help them adapt to the likely consequences. Earlier this year, Gordon Brown said this climate funding needed to reach $100bn a year by 2020. If the recent recession has made rich countries less willing to part with their cash, this could raise tensions in Copenhagen

But which countries must make the cuts and by how large should they be? For example, the rapidly growing Chinese economy has recently overtaken America as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide. Yet America has historically emitted far more emissions than China, and on a per capita basis Chinese emissions are around a quarter of those of the US.

The Chinese government argues that it has a moral right to develop and grow its economy — carbon emissions will inevitably grow with it. There is also the issue of industrialised nations effectively outsourcing carbon emissions to developing nations such as China. This is a consequence of huge quantities of carbon-intensive manufacturing taking place in China on behalf of buyers in the west. It wants consumer countries to take responsibility for the carbon emissions generated in the manufacture of goods, not the producer countries that export them.

Problems such as these have cast doubts on whether COP15 can succeed. There are also concerns about whether any action we take now to prevent climate change may be too little too late. A Guardian poll revealed almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to an additional 2C — the level the EU defines as "dangerous" — will succeed.

World waits with great Enthusiasm to witness the positive outcome of UN climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Lord Michael Jay and Professor Sir Michael Marmot in The Lancet and the British Medical Journal have written,

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A successful outcome this December is vital for our future as a species, and for our civilization. Failure to agree radical reductions in emissions would spell a global health catastrophe.

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The scientific evidence that global temperatures are rising and that man is responsible has been widely accepted since the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. There is now equally wide consensus that the world must reduce CO2 emissions to at most 50% of 1990 levels by 2050, if it is to have even a 50% chance of preventing temperatures exceeding preindustrial levels by more than 2ºC, considered by many to be the tipping point for catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

The authors wrote: "These arguments need to be addressed head on. Climate change is global. Emissions know no frontiers. And the necessary measures should be seen not as a cost but as an opportunity. Coal-fired power stations pollute the atmosphere and worsen health. So does the internal combustion engine. Deforestation destroys biodiversity. Saving energy helps hard-pressed household budgets. Drought-resistant crops help poor farmers. So even without climate change, the case for clean power, electric cars, saving forests, energy efficiency, and new agricultural technology is strong.4 Climate change makes it unanswerable."

They add: "Crucially for winning hearts and minds in richer countries, what is good for the climate is good for health...a low-carbon diet (especially eating less meat) and more exercise will mean less cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Opportunity, surely, not cost."

They conclude: "A successful outcome at Copenhagen is vital for our future as a species and for our civilization. It will require recognition by the rich countries of their obligations to the poor; and recognition by the poor countries that climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution in which we all have to play a part. It will require a new mindset: that the measures needed to mitigate the risks of climate change and adapt to its already inevitable effects provide an opportunity to achieve goals that are desirable in their own right-the achievement of the MDGs in the poor countries and a healthier more equal society in the rich world and globally. Failure to agree radical reductions in emissions spells a global health catastrophe, which is why health professionals must put their case forcefully now and after Copenhagen."

In Correspondence which accompanies the Comment, doctors' leaders across the globe-represented by Professor Ian Gilmore, President of The Royal College of Physicians, London, UK-say: "There is a real danger that politicians will be indecisive, especially in such turbulent economic times as these. Should their response be weak, the results for international health could be catastrophic... As leaders of physicians across many countries, we call on doctors to demand that their politicians listen to the clear facts that have been identified in relation to climate change and act now to implement strategies that will benefit the health of communities worldwide."