Posted on 11/28/2004 3:37:59 PM PST by Libloather
Delegates Seek Ways to Confront Warming
By CHARLES J. HANLEY
AP Special Correspondent
November 28, 2004, 4:20 PM EST
The ice is melting and the heat is on for international delegates assembling in Buenos Aires next week to find new ways to confront global warming under the 194-nation treaty on climate change.
The treaty's Kyoto Protocol, requiring initial cuts in "greenhouse gas" emissions by 2012, finally comes into force in February, seven years after it was negotiated. Next, European governments want the annual treaty conference -- Dec. 6-17 in the Argentine capital -- to get down to talks on steps beyond 2012 to limit heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.
"We are, in fact, only at the beginning of what we need to do," Margot Wallstrom, the European Union's outgoing environment chief, recently told European Parliament members.
But the U.S. government, which rejects Kyoto and its mandatory controls, balks at that idea.
"We think it's premature to be discussing post-Kyoto 2012 arrangements," Paula J. Dobriansky, the undersecretary of state who will head the U.S. delegation, said in an interview.
Instead, she said, she will use the conference to spotlight Bush administration efforts to develop cleaner energy technologies and ways to capture and safely store carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas. Developing countries, facing possible emissions controls for the first time after 2012, also have resisted opening talks about the "post-Kyoto" future.
That debate will go on in the corridors at Buenos Aires, while the formal meeting agenda puts a "major, major emphasis" on adapting to climate change, said the Dutch head of the treaty secretariat, Joke Waller-Hunter.
Small islands and low-lying lands such as Bangladesh worry over rising seas. Poor nations face possible water shortages if warmth washes away glaciers.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
Can't they just move?
The sky is falling. Henny Penny is running to tell the king.
The problem is being addressed by politicians.
Take comfort in that fact.
Ugh!!
It's getting colder here; but then again it always does about this time of year.
Sun spots.
For the last couple of years during the campaigning, only once did Kerry or the other Dem's mention Kyoto to see if there was any political cachet with the voting public.
There was a distinct void of global warming attention except by poor Gore and a movie. Neither attained much traction.
Now, every damn day there's something or another about it........must be a slow news month.
Ummm.... take off your sweater?
It's been warming up pretty steadily since the last ice age and only a liberal politician would think that there's much of anything humans can do about it. Of course, if they can convince enough folks that it's possible and garner enough support to strike American capitalism an egregious blow, it won't matter much that climate change isn't affected -- they still win and that's all that really matters to the left.
If we rejected Kyoto, why are we even entertaining these fools?
Or the idiots could just do like Holland does and plan to build dikes, if they are really concerned about higher sea levels. That would certainly cost less than than the 5-10% of the world's economic output that Kyoto will cost, and you wouldn't have to build unless and until threatened.
Perhaps they don't want to find out whether they have been lied to by the environuts.
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