Climate Change Too Serious to Ignore, Talks Resume
OTTAWA, Ontario, Canada, December 5, 2000 (ENS) - Informal
consultations are scheduled to begin Wednesday in Ottawa in an
attempt to revive the stalled climate negotiations.
According to a report from Earth Negotiations Bulletin, senior
officials from key developed countries will resume discussions on
the so-called "crunch" issues, the outstanding areas that caused
the breakdown of talks at the 6th Conference of Parties to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-6),
held two weeks ago in The Hague.
The talks are aimed at limiting the emission of six greenhouse
gases, particularly carbon dioxide, linked to global warming.
They will focus on carbon "sinks," limits to emissions trading,
and the compliance regime.
The participating countries are: Australia, Belgium, Canada, the
European Commission, France, Germany, Iceland, Japan, Norway, the
Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, the U.K. and the United
States.
The purpose of the meeting is to explore areas of common ground
between the European Union and the rest of the OECD countries, in
preparation for a ministerial level meeting tentatively scheduled
for next week in Oslo.
The Clinton administration is reported to have requested the
government of Norway to host Ministerial Consultations in the
week before Christmas.
Any agreement resulting from the consultations in Ottawa and Oslo
would be conditional on approval from all countries at the formal
resumption of COP-6 in May 2001. A key challenge will be to sell
the deal to developing countries, which will not be represented
in Ottawa.
There is no doubt that the United States under President Bill
Clinton is willing to negotiate some fundamental limitation on
the emissions of its greenhouse gases.
Still, chief U.S. climate negotiator, under secretary for global
affairs Frank Loy, keeps in mind that the United States began the
process of climate talks in 1992 in the Republican administration
of President George Bush, the current presidential hopeful's
father.
In September, before the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations and the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Loy
said, "Eight years ago the United States, under the
administration of President George Bush, joined with more than
150 countries from around the world in forging an agreement to
begin to tackle a great challenge - the challenge of global
climate change. Five years later, in Kyoto, Japan, we took the
next step in addressing this challenge, by negotiating an
historic agreement to limit emissions of greenhouse gases."
Loy told the lawmakers, "There is indisputable evidence that the
Earth is warming."
"The American position was spurred by "the overwhelming weight of
scientific authority, which tells us that the build-up in
greenhouse gases in the atmosphere creates risks that are too
serious to ignore," said Loy.
"Since Kyoto, this scientific consensus has only gotten stronger
- both as to the evidence that human induced climate change is
occurring and as to the dangers it presents," he warned.
Studies show that the 20th century has been the warmest century
in the past 1,000 years and that the 1990s have been the warmest
decade in that period, while 1998 was the single warmest year on
record.
Temperature profiles in boreholes, for example, now provide
independent verification of surface warming of 1 degree C over
the last 500 years - with 50 percent of this warming occurring
since 1900.
New evidence shows that the top 300 meters of the ocean have also
warmed by about 1/3 of a degree C over the past 50 years.
New research reveals that arctic sea ice thickness has declined
by about 40 percent over the past 20 to 40 years.
"These and other studies make scientists more confident than ever
that natural processes cannot explain the dramatic warming we
have seen in the 20th century. Indeed, the data only makes sense
if one includes the effects of human induced warming," Loy said.
Environment News Service (ENS)
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