Bill Clinton Highlights Global Warming, Terror Risks

By James Peng and Nipa Piboontanasawat | Bloomberg

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, whose wife Hillary was named as Barack Obama’s pick for secretary of state yesterday, urged corporations and charities to join governments to tackle problems of global warming, the financial crisis and terrorism.

“Our work is never more important because the government cannot solve all the problems alone,” Clinton said in opening remarks at his two-day Global Initiative summit in Hong Kong today. “We need partnership from the private sector and civil society.”

He pointed to challenges from global warming and disease, the scarcity of food, increasing scarcity of water, terrorism as seen in India last week and global trouble in financial markets.

Clinton agreed to disclose more than 200,000 contributors to his library and foundation and to separately incorporate his Clinton Global Initiative to reduce the risk of potential appearances of conflict of interest due to his wife’s new role, according to an aide to President-Elect Obama who declined to be identified.

Hillary, 61, said at a news conference yesterday that the U.S. cannot solve global threats without the world “and the world cannot solve them without America.”

The world needs to invest an extra $45 trillion by 2050 to develop clean technologies to halve the annual production of gases blamed for global warming, the International Energy Agency said in June. Richer nations want help in achieving such cuts.

‘All Pitch In’

“Each country should contribute” on climate change, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said at Clinton’s panel today. “It’s very important for all of us to pitch in.” He said China is growing more environmentally conscious.

The Clinton Global Initiative, formed in 2005, brings together political and business leaders to develop solutions and raise funds for poverty relief. In three years, the initiative’s members have made nearly 1,200 commitments valued at $46 billion that have improved 200 million lives over 150 countries, Clinton said.

“Developed countries should take the lead, but it’s a mistake to say poor countries aren’t worried about it,” Clinton said today. “A lot of these issues are not clear. Every country that takes this seriously still has to know how to do it.”

In September in the initiative’s annual summit in New York, Clinton praised microfinance investors for helping “real people” make a “real rate of return” in poor nations as he cautioned against allowing the U.S. financial crisis to undercut anti-poverty aid. The Hong Kong summit is the initiative’s first meeting outside the U.S., Clinton said.

Philippine President Gloria Arroyo and Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew are among the participants.

Climate change fallout may cost annual $50 billion

By GEIR MOULSON – AP

POZNAN, Poland — Developing countries will need at least $50 billion per year to deal with the consequences of climate change, money that could be raised by auctioning off some rights to emit greenhouse gases, an aid group said Tuesday.

Agreeing how to help poor nations adapt to conditions such as decreasing rainfall and harsher storms is a key challenge as negotiators from some 190 countries begin to thrash out details of a new climate change treaty to take effect in 2013.

“Vulnerable people around the world need help to build up their resilience, by upgrading flood early warning systems, planting mangrove shields along coasts to defuse storm waves and growing drought-tolerant crops,” said Heather Coleman, a climate change expert for Oxfam International.

That will require at least $50 billion annually, and more if countries fail to agree on measures to prevent average temperatures from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels, the group said.

It said the money could be raised by auctioning 7.5 percent of industrialized countries’ rights to emit polluting gases under a new climate treaty to governments or private companies, money that would go to a fund under U.N. auspices.

Coleman argued that auctioning emission allowances in the aviation and shipping industries could produce an additional $28 billion annually.

Norwegian Finance Ministry official Leif Ervik said his country has advocated auctioning “a few percent” of emissions rights, and said that “we have found a lot of support for this.”

Bangladeshi delegate Mohammas Reazuddin, whose densely populated country faces the threat of increasingly frequent flooding, voiced support for getting money from the proposals and underlined the urgency of the issue.

“We in Bangladesh and many other countries, every day, every hour, we are adapting to the situation,” he said. “We are spending … (but) we have not caused that problem.”

Activists blast US at climate change talks

By VANESSA GERA | AP

POZNAN, Poland — Environmentalists criticized the United States and other rich countries Tuesday for failing so far to make meaningful commitments at a U.N. conference on climate change.

Some 190 countries are meeting in Poznan, Poland, for talks that are part of the attempt to reach a new climate-change treaty in the Danish capital of Copenhagen next year.

But activists warned of failure at the Poznan talks, which last through Dec. 12, saying industrialized countries are resisting setting long-term targets for cutting the emission of greenhouse gases unless developing countries make a similar sacrifice.

“We were quite disappointed in the negotiations that went on” because negotiators were “splitting hairs” on whether to adopt long-term goals to reduce emissions, said Savio Carvalho of Oxfam International.

“We are discussing now if we should even reach these targets, and that’s alarming,” he said.

Carvalho said there was a general lack of trust between the developed and developing world at the talks. He called on the U.S., Japan, Australia and New Zealand to agree to policies that would lessen their dependence on fossil fuels and urged them to share technology with the developing world to help those nations do the same.

However, he praised Brazil, which he said has “been progressive and has been pushing the boundaries.”

Brazil announced plans Monday to significantly slow the destruction of the Amazon rain forest by 2017. Scientists say that would reduce global warming by slashing the amount of carbon dioxide emitted when trees are burned.

A goal of the Poznan talks is to produce a “shared vision” on 2050 targets on greenhouse gas emissions, to guide negotiations leading to the critical Copenhagen conference next December.

But Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists said he doesn’t believe a shared vision will emerge in Poznan because the Bush administration “refuses to put any target on the table for 2020.”

Meyer said wealthy industrial countries need to slash emissions, transfer green technology to developing countries and provide funding to help them adapt now to the climate changes already under way, such as rising sea levels and harsher weather patterns.

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UN: Global warming could harm Pacific food security

Space Wire

 

Global warming causes freak weather that may have a “devastating impact” on food security in the Pacific region, the UN food agency warned on Tuesday.

“Climate projections for the Pacific island countries are bleak and indicate reduced food security, especially for households,” Alexander Mueller, assistant director-general at the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), said in a statement.

The region is increasingly beset by tropical cyclones, flash floods and droughts, with devastating effects on agriculture, including water stress, more pests and weeds, erosion and loss of soil fertility, the statement said.

“It is critical to build resilience of food systems to avoid enormous future economic losses in agriculture, fisheries and forestry,” Mueller said, adding: “There is a need to act urgently.”

A new report published jointly by the FAO, the Pacific Regional Environment Programme and the University of the South Pacific calls for a more systematic approach to climate change and suggests that “diversified agricultural systems will fare better under climate change scenarios.”

Czech President: EU’s Outspoken Global Warming Doubter

by Deutsche Welle

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, one of the most prominent climate change doubters, is about to get a new platform: the EU presidency. Others in the bloc worry that he could stall important climate talks next year.

 

Klaus has called manmade global warming a myth and questioned sanity of Al Gore, the former US vice-president who received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for turning a spotlight on climate change.

 

Most recently, Klaus expressed hopes the EU would give up its ambitious plan to spearhead the global struggle against climate change in the face of the global financial crisis.

  

From his vantage point in Prague’s Hradcany castle, Klaus could be involved in negotiating a new set of EU climate laws while the Czech Republic chairs the EU in the first half of 2009.

  

That could happen if EU leaders fail to agree on a plan at their December summit, where a disputed proposal to cut EU greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 is on the table.

  

In any case, the Czechs will lead the EU in the run-up to a crucial global climate conference in Denmark late next year.

 

Climate on the backburner?

 

Having Klaus at the helm of the 27-member bloc “is clearly going to cause some anxiety,” said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the London-based Center for European Reform.

  

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Topolanek doesn’t agree with his president on climate change

While presidential office in the Czech Republic is largely ceremonial and the center-right government of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek does not share Klaus’ views, western Europe worries that “Czechs would not attach as much priority” to the climate efforts, Tilford said.

  

“It is unfair to say: If we don’t agree this year we won’t have it,” he said. “But there are some concerns because the Czech government is not as enthusiastic.”

  

The Czech government has tried to alleviate such fears.

 

James Hunt, the Czech environment minister’s climate envoy, recently said that if internal EU squabbling spills into next year, “the Czech presidency will make every effort to achieve adoption” of the climate package in early 2009.

 

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