Wednesday, September 26, 2007

This is Precisely WHY VHEMT is TRUTH...

I LOVE how the Republican senator is quoted as saying Kyoto is a failure, when the US never signed it.  How could Kyoto be anything but a failure when the world's biggest CO2 contributor ignores it entirely! 
 
Ah, but that's not the half of it.  You see, there are poor people in the world, a lot of them, and, while the climate might get worse someday, right now those hungry poor people are commanding our political attention...they want electricity for example, and computers for their kids...etc.
 
The best part of course is competing committees of countries trying to agree to something and simply talking a lot.  None of them truly understand how our activities have ALREADY set off a chain of unstoppable events in the atmosphere, with unintended and  un-productive results.
 
The arctic pack ice was lowest ever recently, very very bad from a climate change perspective...open water is almost black, absorbing all of the sun's rays, whereas the sea ice was WHITE basically reflecting the solar radiation...big time difference...
 
 
 
Nations skeptical about US climate talks

By JOHN HEILPRIN, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 26, 4:36 PM ET

WASHINGTON - A day before President Bush's climate talks, China and other developing nations said Wednesday the need to provide food, shelter and clothes for their citizens must come ahead of global warming concerns.

"For a developing country, the main task is to reduce poverty," Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of China's national development and reform commission, told a forum sponsored by the Center for Clean Air Policy, a think tank.

Mexico's environment minister agreed. "We have always to bear in mind that half our population is at the poverty line," said Juan Rafael Elvira Quesada. "We are also extremely concerned about the consequences, the adverse affects of climate change."

They expressed a strong preference for the climate negotiations later this year sponsored by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, instead of Bush's meeting Thursday and Friday for 16 "major emitter" countries, including China and India.

"All these discussions should be taken within the framework of the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol," Xie said.

The 175-nation Kyoto pact rejected by Bush requires industrial nations to reduce carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases and set an average target of a 5 percent cut below 1990 emissions levels by 2012. A U.N. climate summit Monday in New York sought to inject momentum behind December's annual climate treaty conference in Bali, Indonesia, for discussing what will succeed the Kyoto climate pact that expires in 2012.

Sergio Serra, Brazil's first ambassador in charge of global warming issues, said the United States must realize that developing countries are trying to curb their emissions while also lifting the welfare of their citizens.

"It is a myth to think the developing countries are doing nothing to address climate change," he said.

As for the U.S.-sponsored talks later this week, he said, "We saw this as ... a very positive sign that this country is resuming the leadership that it always should have had."

Portuguese environment minister Humberto Rosa, whose country currently holds the European Union presidency, said it would be unfair to expect developing nations to adopt firm targets for cutting carbon emissions, the way the biggest industrialized polluters should.

"We want developing nations to do their share. This is not a moment in time for them to have such targets," he said. "We don't depart from the same situation; we do not have the same responsibilities."

On Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described the U.N. negotiating process as "the only forum" where the issues can be decided. Before 80 world leaders, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for "action, action, action."

At a House hearing Wednesday, three U.N. envoys on climate change and the German environment minister urged U.S. lawmakers to commit to binding caps on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Many of the visiting officials have sought to blunt an argument made by the White House and some congressional allies that mandatory caps would harm the U.S. economy. The visiting officials have been arguing that new markets in carbon trading and in technology to reduce emissions are economic opportunities. They say that improving energy efficiency will improve economic efficiency.

"The European Union is convinced that our climate protection efforts provide great opportunities and the transformation to a low carbon economy will enhance our competitiveness," Germany's environment minister, Signmar Gabriel told the panel.

But lingering opposition to mandatory caps was evident at the hearing.

"A decade after Kyoto, it is clear to me that the treaty produced far too few results. It is a failure," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told the officials.

The chairman of the panel, Democratic Rep. Edward Markey, said that the visitors have a difficult case to make in persuading the White House of the need for mandatory caps.

"The world has been asked to Washington to discuss this issue this week," said Markey, D-Mass. "But it is a little bit like being invited to a prayer breakfast with a group of fellow believers, but the meeting is hosted by an atheist."

___

Associated Press Writer Desmond Butler contributed to this report