Saving the world from paradise - December 03, 2007
NB – NATURE’S BALI SPECIAL WILL BE LIVE SOON
The world’s leading climate experts, and some very lucky journalists, are camped out in Bali this week attempting to thrash out a deal to save the planet from global warming. Olive Heffernan is there for Nature Reports Climate Change and has a round up of what is up.
It is also timely that a new review in Nature Geoscience shows the tropics expanded by 2.5 degrees latitude over the last 25 years; the same margin as models predicted for the whole of this century (study, example news coverage).
Unfortunately, as the Daily Telegraph reports, those in Bali can’t even agree on a way to offset the carbon they all emitted in getting there. The paper estimates that the summit will cause emissions of about 100,000 tonnes of CO2, “on a par with the annual emissions of the African state of Chad”.
Still, it’s a little early to be writing off the talks. Here’s a round up of some of the other news so far.
- Indonesia's Environment Minister Rachmat Witoelar, the meeting’s host, thinks business must be helped to invest in tackling climate change (Reuters).
- Spontaneous applause for Australia over their agreement to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, first announced last week (Sidney Morning Herald).
- Korea is not going to accept compulsory emission reduction (Korea Times).
- The Chinese delegation insisted that ‘principles of common but differentiated responsibilities’ must be acknowledged (Xinhua).
Image: Alamy
Comments
100,000 tonnes of CO2 emitted for a meeting whose participants will tell us we have a terrible problem (which we already know) but won't actually accomplish anything of substance. But don't worry, at the end of their tough and strenuous meetings in the hell hole we know as Bali (yes, that's a joke) they'll let us know they've come up with great ideas which will never actually get implemented. And we wonder why we have a problem that's getting worse.
Posted by: Matt Krueger | December 5, 2007 07:11 PM