From various articles
Thousands of people are expected to rally across the world to mark a global day of action on Climate Change. The protests are aimed to coincide with the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali where delegates are wrapping up their first week of discussions.
Agreement to launch talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol is among their goals. The UN's chief climate scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, believes the targets demanded of the US can be met. "Independent of what the US administration does, several other entities over there decide to take action on their own and the sum total of that would amount to a commitment," he said.
But the contribution of individual US cities and states is not enough for many demonstrators in Bali. They want delegates to put enough energy and commitment into the talks to burst the carbon emission problem.
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The 1997 Kyoto accord required 36 industrial nations to reduce emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States is the only industrial nation to reject Kyoto; President Bush says the required cuts would damage the U.S. economy.
The U.S. delegation in Bali has indicated no change in that position. However, "there's much that's happened in the U.S." at congressional, state and local levels, Pachauri said.
California last year adopted a sweeping law requiring reductions of about 25 percent in greenhouse gases by 2020. New York and nine other Northeastern states are putting caps on power-plant emissions and developing a system to trade emissions allowances. And just last month, five Midwestern states announced a joint program to reduce emissions. At the local level across the United States, city governments have introduced significant measures to rein in carbon emissions. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to reduce his city's emissions by 30 percent by 2030, by requiring taxis to switch to gas-saving hybrid vehicles, for example, and most controversially by proposing fees for vehicles to enter lower Manhattan. Seattle claims city operations have cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 60 percent through motor pools of hybrid cars, trucks using biodiesel fuel and other measures.
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Asked what might happen if world governments fail to act decisively on climate, Pachauri referred to the landmark findings of his panel's 2007 reports. The "inevitable consequences," he said, are "clearly not in the interest of the human species and other species that inhabit this planet," including mass extinctions of plants and animals and sharp rises in sea level because of warmer, expanding water and the runoff of melted land ice.
"And that's really an irreversible change," he said.
Agreement to launch talks on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol is among their goals. The UN's chief climate scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, believes the targets demanded of the US can be met. "Independent of what the US administration does, several other entities over there decide to take action on their own and the sum total of that would amount to a commitment," he said.
But the contribution of individual US cities and states is not enough for many demonstrators in Bali. They want delegates to put enough energy and commitment into the talks to burst the carbon emission problem.
-----------------------------------------------------
The 1997 Kyoto accord required 36 industrial nations to reduce emissions by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The United States is the only industrial nation to reject Kyoto; President Bush says the required cuts would damage the U.S. economy.
The U.S. delegation in Bali has indicated no change in that position. However, "there's much that's happened in the U.S." at congressional, state and local levels, Pachauri said.
California last year adopted a sweeping law requiring reductions of about 25 percent in greenhouse gases by 2020. New York and nine other Northeastern states are putting caps on power-plant emissions and developing a system to trade emissions allowances. And just last month, five Midwestern states announced a joint program to reduce emissions. At the local level across the United States, city governments have introduced significant measures to rein in carbon emissions. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to reduce his city's emissions by 30 percent by 2030, by requiring taxis to switch to gas-saving hybrid vehicles, for example, and most controversially by proposing fees for vehicles to enter lower Manhattan. Seattle claims city operations have cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 60 percent through motor pools of hybrid cars, trucks using biodiesel fuel and other measures.
....
Asked what might happen if world governments fail to act decisively on climate, Pachauri referred to the landmark findings of his panel's 2007 reports. The "inevitable consequences," he said, are "clearly not in the interest of the human species and other species that inhabit this planet," including mass extinctions of plants and animals and sharp rises in sea level because of warmer, expanding water and the runoff of melted land ice.
"And that's really an irreversible change," he said.