Rare’s Vice President of Asia Pacific, Nigel Sizer, is in attendance at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, which kicked off Monday, December 3rd.
Ten thousand delegates, 130 ministerial delegations, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Al Gore, 50 billion tons of Carbon Dioxide, and perhaps your and my grandchildren’s chances of survival are all in play! Welcome to the UN Climate Change Conference, here in my hometown, Bali, Indonesia. There can be no doubt that Al Gore has made 2007 the year that the world woke up and smelled the smokey scent of a warmer world drifting over the horizon – and started to get worried about it, seriously worried. So it felt strange today to have, in one room, albeit a very large conference hall, the people who will basically decide how we deal with this problem from about 200 countries.
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The Climate Plenary Hall
The location of the meeting is perfectly chosen, as a Balinese NGO leader pointed out, if the delegates don’t solve the climate change issue, this peninsular will be under water, as sea levels rise, by 2050. There is a very real sense here that dramatic changes are needed in the global energy, policy, development, technology, and intellectual property rights processes if we are to solve this problem.
At a MINIMUM emissions by 2050 have to half of what they are today, and maybe closer to 90 percent lower, if we are to avoid risk of catastrophic impacts of climate change. Think about just one possibility: the tundra melts and releases its methane and temperatures start to soar…
Meanwhile, the global emissions are rising fast, and developing countries are growing by leaps and bounds. Malaysia’s emissions are up by 220 percent since 1990!
But it is very clear that the rich and the North will have to lead the way. The right tone in that respect was set in the opening plenary session when Australia’s new government announces to sustained applause that they will ratify the Kyoto Protocol immediately. This leaves only the United States among developed countries outside the best game in town yet devised to address the problem.
Rare can help by rallying communities to conserve forests, plant trees, switch to renewable energy instead of fuelwood, and support locally the global push to save planet Earth. Our tools are an indispensable part of the puzzle to help address the challenge.
The next two weeks will be historic for sure…watch this blog for highlights from a Rare perspective!
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