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 Editorials | Environmental | June 2005 
Climate: Doubt Is Lifted
 Louis-Gilles Francoeur - Le Devoir
| | Eleven academies of science demand action against global warming. |
The academies of science of all the G-8 countries, as well as those of the three largest oil consumers among developing countries - China, India, and Brazil, made an unprecedented political gesture yesterday when they signed a common declaration in London asserting that the doubt entertained by certain people with regard to climate change does not justify inaction, and that, on the contrary, a planetary action plan to conjure this global threat away must be embarked upon immediately.
The declaration by the best scientists of the most important countries of the planet, whose spokesperson did not hesitate to stigmatize the United States' inaction, was immediately followed by a declaration from the American president, George W. Bush, in Washington. The latter attempted to attenuate this new international pressure by declaring that "with regard to climate change, he had always said that it was a serious long term problem that must be addressed." The American president nevertheless did not specify what he meant by "long term."
He had just come out from a meeting with his ally Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Great Britain and President of the next G-8 conference, which will take place July 6 and 7 at Gleneagles in Scotland. Tony Blair had brought up climate change and aid to developing countries as priorities for the day.
The United States, which comprises 5% of the global population, emits a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gas emissions, and its total contribution since the dawn of the industrial age is a third of all gases of human origin.
The eleven academies of science assert that all the evidence points to having to attribute climactic warming to human activity and in particular to the use of fossil fuels for transport and energy: "The present understanding we have of climactic changes is now clearly sufficient to justify rapid action by nations" to counter the planetary mega-phenomenon.
Even if there are researchers who still dispute the reality of climate change, their weight remains marginal compared to that of the academies of science, which gather the cream of each country's scientists. The consensus expressed yesterday by these national institutions is all the more important in that the academies are not members of some common organization that could defend a political line, as the Intergovernmental Experts Group on Climate Change, affiliated with the UN, is sometimes accused of doing in order to discredit its conclusions.
For Lord May of Oxford, President of the English Royal Society, the G-8 summit in the coming weeks will constitute "an unprecedented moment in human history" because it will determine whether the planet reacts with realism, care, and solidarity in the face of the greatest threat of human origin that confronts it.
"Our leaders," he said, "are faced with an incontrovertible choice: they do something now or transfer the price of their inaction to future generations. Never in the past has our species faced such a total challenge. And if we don't move to action now, every delay will make more difficult the measures we do take to stop this infernal train that keeps on accelerating."
The scientists, who have nonetheless not presented a scenario of reductions, asked the G-8 member states "to determine the best measures by a cost-benefit logic that we could put into effect now to contribute to substantial and permanent reductions in greenhouse gases."
The Californian Action
At the same time, in California, hundreds of mayors from the globe's largest cities signed a protocol of agreement, principally centered on the local struggle against climate changes, that includes a 21-point plan based principally on a radical improvement in public transportation in the next 10 years and zero growth in landfill garbage, a non-negligible source of greenhouse gases. Their protocol also aims at a 10% reduction in the next seven years of electricity consumption in the world's largest cities, by changing lighting, the rules surrounding advertising, air conditioning, etc.
The day before, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger started the advance in that direction by signing a decree that makes this state's greenhouse gas reduction goals legally enforceable. California targets an 11% reduction in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2010, or a return by then to the year 2000's levels. In 2020, the same state must have brought its emissions back to their 1990 level, and, by 2050, it must reduce them by 80% from their present level. The New England states have given themselves similar schedules of reduction, thereby enlarging the number of territories in the United States that defy President Bush's laissez-faire policies even though they can't participate in the international greenhouse gas emissions market for the benefit of their companies.
For Steven Guilbeault of Greenpeace Québec, the next meeting of the Kyoto Protocol signatories, which will take place in Montréal in November, should open the door to agreements with governments other than those who belong to the United Nations, even with those of urban megapolises, rather than waiting for a green light from national governments: this would, notably, allow an enlargement of the international market in trading or purchasing emissions permits. The worries of developing countries like China and India in the face of global warming, believes Steven Guilbeault, who has followed all the negotiations concerning the Protocol, will not necessarily terminate in national reduction goals similar to those of Kyoto. However, he says that China, for example, could decide to reduce its emissions through wider recourse to emerging green energies and that Brazil could aim for a major reduction in Amazon woodcutting, which would be equivalent to an important reduction in its hydrocarbon consumption.
"All important possibilities for positive action on climate must be considered, even if that opens the door to different or eventually sector by sector agreements," he concludes. |
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