Yes, it's bad. But there's a whole lot us Habbos can do about it!
According to conventional wisdom (oh all right the tabloid press to be more precise) all teenagers ever think about are themselves. So it may come as a surprise that a global survey of almost 50,000 teens released today reveals that they have many other concerns - and that they worry more about dangerous greenhouse gases than drugs, violence or war.
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If a week is a long time in politics, then is two weeks long enough for world leaders to finally get to grips with the single biggest challenge we all face - limiting the effects of global climate change?
The answer has to be yes, if only because the consequences of any other outcome would be unthinkable. The start of the 2007 UN Climate Change Conference (otherwise known as COP 13) in Bali today coincides with alarming reports that the tropical belt that girdles the Earth's equator is expanding - pushing its boundaries out towards the poles at a rate not predicted by current computer models, which anticipated such developments only towards the end of this century.
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Publication date: 24/11/2005
Summary
Frequently asked questions about the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP 11). The Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meet every year at a COP. This year, Montreal hosts COP 11 but alongside this meeting will be the historic Meeting of the Parties of the Kyoto Protocol (MOP), which will be the very first meeting of those who have ratified the Kyoto Protocol since it became legally binding this year.
Publication date: 24/11/2005
Summary
A quick guide to the 2005 climate change negotiations in Montreal, where the 11th Conference of the Parties (COP 11) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) begins on 28 November.
international climate talks 2001
The latest round of international discussions about global warming concluded in Milan, Italy on 12th December. Sadly, the UN Convention on Climate Change (COP9) again failed to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, prompting critics to write it off for the umpteenth time.
In the past ten years, it has been almost impossible to count the number of times that the Kyoto Protocol has been declared 'dead'.
Earth from space
Saturday 10th November, Marrakech: At the close of COP7, the latest negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement aimed at preventing dangerous climate change, Greenpeace today described the outcome as a hard won battle for a token outcome.
"Governments may be congratulating themselves now, but what have they really achieved? As climate change bites harder, leaders of the future will look back on the Marrakech meeting as a lost opportunity and realise that the participants of COP7 should have done more to tackle climate change," said Bill Hare, Greenpeace climate policy director.
"But the Kyoto Protocol is just a small start in what must be an ongoing and ever increasing commitment to reduce greenhouse gases globally. Now that the architecture of the Protocol is in place, parties have no excuse to delay ratifying and implementing it.
"The Kyoto Protocol is the key to preventing dangerous climate change. The door has only just been unlocked. Now we have to fling it wide open."
The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was initially designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industrialised countries by 5%. By the end of the Bonn negotiations last July, the effectiveness of the Protocol had already been substantially weakened. Emission reductions in the order of 80% are needed if dangerous climate change is to be prevented.
"We still have a long, long way to go. This is just the beginning," said Hare.
After two weeks of negotiations, the fine details of the implementation of the Protocol have been ironed out - but there are still many problems. These include:
However there have been some minor environmental victories during the past two weeks of negotiations. These include:
Climate negotiations in Marrakech
Publication date: November 2001
Summary
The 7 th Conference of the Parties (COP7) of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) begins on 29 October in Marrakech, Morocco. The Framework Convention was agreed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992, and has been ratified by 186 countries.
climate change desert
Governments at international climate negotiations underway in Morocco are being asked today to support an ambitious project to help tackle poverty and fight climate change, by providing renewable energy to more than two billion people globally.
The United Nations General Assembly has invited participants in the latest round of the Kyoto Protocol negotiations to make recommendations to the World Sustainable Summit on Development (WSSD) - the 10th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit. It was at the Rio summit where the Climate Convention, which gave rise to the Kyoto Protocol, was adopted. The Convention's objective is to prevent dangerous climate change, which requires over 80% reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions.
Today delegates will begin the process of deciding what climate protection measures to recommend to the WSSD.
Climate Action Network, a global coalition of more than 200 environmental non-government organistions including Greenpeace, is urging countries to use the opportunity the UN has provided them to support the massive expansion of renewable energy globally.
"Two billion people around the world - one in three of us - have no access to reliable sources of energy to meet the basic needs of life such as cooking, clean water, lighting, or power for health centres and schools," said Greenpeace campaigner Paul Horsman.
"This is as unacceptable as it is intolerable - we can and must provide sustainable energy sources to provide for these basic needs."
"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said that developing countries are most threatened by climate change - water supplies, agriculture and health are all threatened. Much of this threat can be avoided with a massive and committed global expansion of renewable energy supplies, which at the same time will help prevent dangerous climate change."
Greenpeace and international retail chain The Body Shop launched the Choose Positive Energy campaign in June this year aimed at providing renewable energy to two billion people by 2012.
"It's not just environment groups that want to see this," said Horsman. "The G8 Task Force has called for an expansion of renewable energy to assist in mitigating climate change and air pollution, alleviating poverty and increasing quality of life, especially in developing countries."
"The only barriers to massive uptake and expansion of renewable energy are financial and political - not technological. In many cases the life-cycle costs of renewable energy technologies are already competitive with conventional energy technologies.
Renewable energy is able to supply developing countries with energy security, andallow for public participation from local communities including indigenous peoples, freeing them from dependence on imported polluting fossil fuels.
The Arctic - threatened by oil exploration and development
Australia, Canada, Russia and Japan are attempting to undermine the landmark Kyoto Protocol, by watering down its language and exploiting loopholes, Greenpeace warned as climate negotiations resumed today in Morocco. Greenpeace are concerned that these countries must not be allowed to weaken the Protocol further after the US walked away from the vital agreement reached in Bonn in July.
The 7th Conference of the Parties (COP7) of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) begins today in Morocco, to finalise the details of the Bonn Agreement. The Protocol is initially designed to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 5% by a first commitment period, by 2010. However the current loopholes in the treaty mean that this is unlikely to be met. Greenpeace is calling for a minimal use of loopholes and for the conference to set all industrialised countries on a path to agree a goal of at least 80% emissions cuts by 2050.
Bill Hare, Greenpeace International climate policy director who is at the talks said, "Throughout the next two weeks of talks, Greenpeace will be aiming to ensure that the Protocol is as effective as possible. It's vital that Australia, Canada, Russia, and Japan must not be allowed to further weaken the Kyoto Protocol. Delegates must finish the job." "Kyoto remains the only international legal instrument designed to start the world on the road towards the massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are needed this century to avoid disastrous climate change. We cannot afford to let it be sacrificed to greed and short-sightedness." Most countries have set a target of 2002 for ratification and implementation of the Protocol, and are moving towards that date; but a few, including Australia, Canada and Japan are still holding out on the final details before ratifying. The United States, which signed and ratified the UNFCCC in 1992, and signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, continues to state that it no longer intends to ratify or implement the Protocol.
Japan is extremely nervous about legally binding penalties for failing to meet its emission obligations. Canada also wants to weaken the requirement to report its 'sinks' (tree planting schemes to store carbon dioxide). Russia is demanding an even bigger sink allowance than it got in Bonn. In its ongoing attempt to avoid an agreement that has any legal consequences, Australia has tried to weaken the whole Protocol by substituting the word "should" for the word "shall" throughout the compliance agreement, weakening its legal power. Australia also wants to be able play with its figures on forestry and land use, and is trying to get the rules written so it doesn't even have to say exactly where the forests are. The USA is refusing to ratify the Protocol at all, but is still participating in negotiations. While the US has indicated it would come up with an alternative policy to address climate change, it has not done so. Greenpeace will be watching the US closely to see whether it attempts to block the Protocol or interfere with progress made by other participants. Greenpeace believes that the world cannot afford to wait for the US and must not be tempted to water down the treaty still further to get them on board. The urgent first step is the ratification and entry into force of Kyoto. Next the protocol must be implemented fully and the next steps developed within the convention for further and deeper cuts in global warming gases. Laura Yates, Greenpeace climate campaigner in the UK said, "Here in the UK Tony Blair claims he is committed to Kyoto. He said in his recent party conference speech that Kyoto is right and the UK will implement it and call upon all other nations to do so. Let's now see him commit and give us a date for UK ratification."
Further information:
Contact:
Greenpeace UK Press Office on 020 7865 8255
Update: 23rd July
0600 hrs: As dawn broke over the conference center in
Bonn, our emotional roller coaster hit another trough, as
word came through that the rumors of a deal that we had
heard of a few hours earlier, had run onto the rocks again.
Most of us had been up all night, as well as most of the
night before, and the strain was just enormous.
As I left the
conference center to
run back to the office,
the banner the
students had hung in
the trees stood out
against the dawn, a
forlorn plea for sanity
and a stark reminder
of the simplicity of the
fundamental issue - to either move forward, or move
backward in our fight to protect the climate.