Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 04/22/2009 5:52:14 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
The United States and other rich nations must do more to help clinch a landmark deal on climate change this year, a top U.N. official said at a meeting of global environment ministers.
The three-day meeting of the Group of Eight industrial countries and major developing economies, which opened in Sicily on Wednesday, has been hailed as a stepping stone to a U.N. deal on climate change, due to be signed in December in Copenhagen.
All eyes were on the U.S. delegation since President Barack Obama's pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 injected momentum into the Copenhagen talks. His predecessor, George W. Bush, rejected the previous Kyoto deal.
"It's not enough and the United States needs to do more," Yvo de Boer, the United Nations' top climate change official, told Reuters. "Without leadership from the G8 countries an international response to climate change will not happen. This meeting needs to point the way."
Scientists have said industrialized countries as a whole needed to reduce carbon emissions by between 24 and 40 percent from 1990 levels to avoid severe impact....
De Boer said the political will existed to seal a deal in Copenhagen and the economic crisis provided a chance to promote green technology as part of stimulus packages -- something, he said, developing nations like China and Korea had done.
The G8 meeting, which opened on Earth Day, grouped for the first time nine developing economies, including Brazil, India and China -- by some calculations the world's largest carbon producer -- in an effort to forge a worldwide consensus.
"The global economic slowdown must be viewed as an opportunity to mitigate climate change," Nobuo Tanaka, executive director of the International Energy Agency, told the meeting. He called for an "Energy New Deal."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
When I first read this headline, I misread it is “...GS do more....”
Why can’t Goldman Sachs fix our climatic troubles? The US Gov’t is already a captive of Goldman. Asking the government to do anything is dependent upon Goldman’s OK.
The polls are running against this idiocy. We still may escape crap and trade. I’m hoping
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