{"id":898,"date":"2009-03-13T03:34:19","date_gmt":"2009-03-13T11:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=898"},"modified":"2009-03-13T03:34:19","modified_gmt":"2009-03-13T11:34:19","slug":"emergency-climate-change-summit-in-copenhagen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/emergency-climate-change-summit-in-copenhagen\/","title":{"rendered":"Emergency Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"box\">\n<div id=\"article-header\">\n<div id=\"main-article-info\">\n<p style=\"text-align: justify; \"><strong>Stern attacks politicians over climate &#8216;devastation&#8217;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>guardian.co.uk \u00a9 Guardian News and Media Limited 2009 (Friday 13 March 2009)<\/p>\n<p>Peter Cox, a climate expert at Exeter University, said: &#8220;People have been saying this individually for a long time. This is just a much louder and concerted shout from our community.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"content\">\n<ul class=\"article-attributes no-pic multi-pub\"><\/ul>\n<div id=\"article-wrapper\">\n<p>Politicians have failed to take on board the severe consequences of failing to cut world\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/environment\/carbon-emissions\">carbon emissions<\/a>, according to Nicholas Stern, the economist commissioned by<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/politics\/gordon-brown\">Gordon Brown<\/a> to analyse the impact of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/environment\/climate-change\">climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>His stark warning about the potentially &#8220;devastating&#8221; consequences of global warming came as scientists issued a desperate plea last night for world leaders to curb greenhouse gas emissions or face an ecological and social disaster.<\/p>\n<p>More than 2,500 climate experts from 80 countries at an emergency summit in Copenhagen said there is now &#8220;no excuse&#8221; for failing to act on global warming. A failure to agree strong carbon reduction targets at political negotiations this year could bring &#8220;abrupt or irreversible&#8221; shifts in climate that &#8220;will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>In a significant break from the scientific tradition not to comment directly on policy, the experts insisted politicians must stand up to &#8220;vested interests that increase emissions&#8221; and &#8220;build on a growing public desire for governments to act&#8221;. They called for a &#8220;shift from ineffective governance and weak institutions to innovative leadership in government, the private sector and civil society&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Katherine Richardson, a climate scientist at the University of Copenhagen, who organised the three-day summit, said: &#8220;We have to act and we have to act now. We need politicians to realise what a risk it is they are taking on behalf of their own constituents, the world&#8217;s societies and, even more importantly, future generations. All of the signals from the Earth system and the climate system show us we are on a path that will have enormous and unacceptable consequences.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Speaking after giving a keynote speech, Stern said he feared that politicians had not grasped the seriousness of the crisis. &#8220;Do the politicians understand just how difficult it could be? Just how devastating four, five, six degrees centigrade would be? I think not yet. Looking back, the Stern review underestimated the risks and underestimated the damage from inaction.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>This week&#8217;s conference was arranged to offer an update on scientific thinking on global warming, and underpin political attempts to agree a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol. Campaigners have called for such a deal to be signed at UN talks in December, also in Copenhagen, though officials have warned the discussions could drag on into next year.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists at the Copenhagen meeting will publish its full findings in June, but last night they issued their conclusions as a strongly worded statement&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The summary adds: &#8220;There is no excuse for inaction. We already have many tools and approaches &#8211; economic, technological, behavioural, management &#8211; to deal effectively with the climate change challenge. But they must be vigorously and widely implemented.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In the conference centre that will also host the December UN negotiations, experts at this week&#8217;s meeting presented a string of new studies that suggested global warming could strike harder and sooner than expected.<\/p>\n<p>They said carbon emissions have risen more in recent years than anyone thought possible, and the world&#8217;s natural carbon stores could be losing the ability to soak up human pollution.<\/p>\n<p>The conference also heard that:<\/p>\n<p>\u00b7 A 4C rise could turn swaths of southern Europe to desert.<\/p>\n<p>\u00b7 Sea levels will rise twice as fast as official estimates predict.<\/p>\n<p>\u00b7 Modest warming could unleash a carbon &#8220;time bomb&#8221; from Arctic soils.<\/p>\n<p>\u00b7 A failure to cut emissions could render half of the world uninhabitable.<\/p>\n<p>\u00b7 Rising temperatures could kill off 85% of the Amazon rainforest.<\/p>\n<p>Several experts at the conference warned that temperatures are likely to soar beyond the 2C target set by European politicians, though they are reluctant to say so publicly. &#8220;The 2C target is gone and 3C is difficult. I think we&#8217;re heading for 4C at least,&#8221; one said. Oxford University yesterday announced that it would hold a conference in September to discuss the implications of a rise of 4C or more.<\/p>\n<p>Kevin Anderson, research director at the UK Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said: &#8220;The scientists have lost patience with our carefully constructed messages being lost in the political noise. And we are now prepared to stand up and say enough is enough.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Rob Bailey, senior climate adviser for Oxfam said: &#8220;The verdict of the world&#8217;s top scientists is clear. The big question now is whether the worlds richest countries, who created the climate crisis, will act before it&#8217;s too late. Our climate is changing fast and if left unchecked its impacts, particularly on the world&#8217;s poorest people, will be devastating.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div id=\"article-header\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stern attacks politicians over climate &#8216;devastation&#8217; guardian.co.uk \u00a9 Guardian News and Media Limited 2009 (Friday 13 March 2009) Peter Cox, a climate expert at Exeter University, said: &#8220;People have been saying this individually for&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1712,257,560],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","tag-climate-change","tag-copenhagen","tag-nicholas-stern"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}