Calculate your one-day Carbon Belch !
Posted on 06/05/2008 6:31:21 AM PDT by Issaquahking
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said global warming was becoming the era's defining issue and would hurt rich and poor.
"Our world is in the grip of a dangerous carbon habit," Ban said in a statement on World Environment Day, which is being marked by events around the globe and hosted by the New Zealand city of Wellington.
"Addiction is a terrible thing. It consumes and controls us, makes us deny important truths and blinds us to the consequences of our actions," he said in the speech to reinforce this year's World Environment Day theme of "CO2 Kick the Habit."
World Environment Day, conceived in 1972, is the United Nations' principal day to mark global green issues and aims to give a human face to environmental problems and solutions.
New Zealand, which boasts snow-capped mountains, pristine fjords and isolated beaches used as the backdrop for the "Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, has pledged to become carbon-neutral.
"We take pride in our clean, green identity as a nation and we are determined to take action to protect it. We appreciate that protecting the climate means behavior change by each and every one of us," said New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.
New Zealand staged art and street festivals to spread the message on how people can reduce carbon usage. In Australia, Adelaide Zoo staged a wild breakfast for corporate leaders to focus on how carbon emissions threaten animal habitats.
GLOBAL EVENTS
In Bangladesh's capital Dhaka, people plan to clean up Gulshan Baridhara Lake that has become badly polluted, and in Kathmandu the Bagmati River Festival will focus on cleaning up the river there.
Many Asian cities, such as Bangalore and Mumbai, plan tree-planting campaigns, while the Indian town of Pune will open a "Temple of Environment" to help spread green awareness.
But in Europe, which claims to be a leader in the climate change battle, Environment Day passed with barely a blip.
Britain urged individuals to take action and the Environment Agency called on people to be prepared for more flooding, to use less water and protect wildlife.
Global carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels are rising quickly and scientists predict rising seas, melting glaciers and more intense storms, droughts and floods as the planet warms.
A summit of G8 nations in Japan next month is due to formalize a goal agreed a year ago that global carbon emissions should be reduced by 50 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.
But some nations want a reduction of 80 percent of carbon emissions by 2050 to try to stabilize CO2 concentrations in the air to limit global warming.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said climate change was already a reality: "We have been experiencing the worst drought in living memory and our inland rivers are running dry.
"We are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 per cent on 2000 levels by 2050. We will implement emissions trading as the primary mechanism for achieving this target," he said in a statement.
The U.N. Environment Program said greening the world's economy would cost as little as a few tenths of global GDP annually over 30 years and would be a driving force for innovation, new businesses and employment.
“The U.N. Environment Program said greening the world’s economy would cost as little as a few tenths of global GDP annually over 30 years and would be a driving force for innovation, new businesses and employment.”
You better be right...’cause we’ll be calling you on that promise and heaven help you if you’re wrong.
Are we not carbon-based life forms? However, if General Ban wants to lead out by completely eliminating his CO2 emissions, I will be glad to see how it works and possibly follow his example if it doesn’t hurt his health.
“Our world is in the grip of a dangerous carbon habit,”
Deja vu all over again.
This is a replay of the criminalization of the tobacco industry. Carbon is still legal but lets increasingly tax its use until it’s unaffordable.
WTF is a CO2 “addiction?”
We should pump all our CO2 into the U.N. building!
...all plant life on Earth most affected. (Every hear of photosynthesis? ...as if every CO2 effort mankind could possibly do might modify things in a way that plants world-wide won’t compensate for in just a few years or less)
im holding my breath....i assume you are too...
i also promise to eat more cows to stop those methane effects..
i now know why 1000 yrs ago people were burned at the stake...its the same wild eyed manic fever gripping people on this..its only a matter of time now before some serial killer uses it as an excuse...
Says UN bigshot Ban Kaboom “let prohibit all industry and production and implement an unproven theory. By doing this we will not have unequal wealth between rich and poor. In our progessive future, everyone will be poor insuring equality. Uh, er that is except for the few fortunates, like me, who need to maintain a very high standard of living to show the poor how awful things would be with too many rich people.”
Breathing?
Why, oh why didn’t I take the blue pill...
This world is just getting too wierd to be believed.
Completely absurd.
“CO2 Kick the Habit.”
M’kay. And what will all the trees and vegetation live on? Does anyone ever ask that question?
Plants and trees will be deeply saddened.
What’s the old quip crap like this makes me think about: “Instead of a Fountain of Youth, could we focus on trying to find the Fountain of Smart?”
“CO2 Addiction” means you can have as many kids as you want, you are free to travel when and where you want, you can purchase nutritious food sufficient to feed you and your family to be healthy and grow, you are free to set comfortable temperatures in your home, you can enjoy leisure activities like sports and skiing, you can have a well-lit home at night with plenty of hot water for bathing and cleaning and you enjoy having products delivered to your door from all over the world.
All of this will come to an abrupt end if these radical kooks around the globe succeed in jamming their agenda down our throats.
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