I have but few words to say to that: “God Help us All!”

For too long Howard has managed to stumble blindly along in Bush’s wake, acting almost as if he was Bush’s man in the Australian Government, and ignored the responsibilities that he was given, if not as leader of Australia, but as a sane (we assume) human being.

I’m allowed to be this callous too. You see, I’m an Australian, and I’ve had to suffer through the past decade or so with Howard at the helm, and watch as he decided it would be funny to steer us right at those rocks over there that say "Global Warming!" and other such issues.

Together with Bush, Howard decided to forego signing the Kyoto Accord, as it would apparently not sit well economically if countries like Australia, America, etc, were forced to meet carbon emission cuts and countries like China and India were not. What’s been weird is that, despite this apparent desire to see their respective countries continue to pollute the world to extinction, both leaders spearheaded local and international calls for global emissions cuts!

Pardon me if I’ve missed something, but wasn’t that was the Kyoto accord was all about? Granted, it left out some rather major polluters, but you have to start somewhere.

This rant comes in response to the fact that Howard is this year leading the APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum in Sydney, and has apparently put atop the agenda the desire for the 21 member-countries to formulate a plan to combat global warming.

It was only a month or so ago that Howard used a report delivered by "experts" to publically suggest that the warming we are experiencing is simply a natural occurrance, and that the "crisis" that is all but eating his breakfast is non-existent.

The facts are, though, that we are indeed in the grip of a natural global warming, but that due to the increase in carbon emissions – unheard of when my dad and the dinosaurs were around – the warming cycle has been escalated to a point where it is essentially on the verge of being out of our control.

It is this escalation that scientists, researchers, laymen and my cat see as a crisis, and that must receive direct attention immediately.

Thankfully, it seems, Howard, Bush, and other world leaders are beginning to realize that we weren’t all spouting rubbish to scare everybody in to not voting for them, and that there is actually a problem at hand.

This is exemplified by the agreement that has – according to inside sources from the APEC forum – been reached by the 21-member countries meeting in Sydney. Indonesia’s envoy – Salman Al-Faris, who was involved in formulating the agreement - has said that a major concession by the poorer countries involved has lead to setting an "energy intensity" reduction target.

The agreement was for all 21 APEC members to work towards a 25% cut in energy intensity by 2030, according to a Southeast Asian official who only commented on condition of anonymity. This agreed target comes despite the poorer countries saying they would not agree to a fixed target. The reduction forced developed nations to recognize - in compromise - that the U.N. believes poorer nations to have fewer responsibilities when it comes to cutting carbon emissions.

"Everybody cannot get everything, but everybody did not lose too much," Al-Farisi said of the compromise. "It is up to members’ discretion to follow, in accordance to their national programs," he added to the fact that any APEC agreement is non-binding.

This all came after George Bush had made his speech to business leaders, saying that "The United States is committed to seizing this opportunity and we need partners in this region to help lead the effort." He also pressed the member-nations of APEC to reach a conclusion on Global Warming, the topic that Howard has put at the top of the agenda.

Putting aside the fact that, if we were to look at the world’s leaders in the fight against global warming, the US would come somewhere in the last third, I think it is time to say that, we’re glad America has finally decided to come to the party, even if they’re the smug guy over in the corner acting as if he had planned the party.

On a lighter note, approximately 200 world religious leaders met Friday on a cruise ship amid icebergs near Illulisat on the west coast of Greenland. Their aim: to pray for … well, something!

Apparently, so as not to follow in the steps of the 11th-century English King Canute who prayed to stop the rising tide, the participants – a mixture of Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Christians – prayed to express a common concern about climate change and global warming, rather than ask a higher power to halt or reverse the current ice-thaw occurring at the north and south poles.

"In our small world we all need to struggle together," said Sofie Petersen, the bishop of Greenland.

Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual head of the world’s Orthodox Christians, lead the assembled in a two minute prayer, where those attending noted that the overwhelming sound was that of water lapping against the icebergs in the fjord; a fitting soundtrack to a needed step forward by a powerful group of humans.

In reality, I do not think I could have ended an article primarily focusing on the exploits of George W. Bush and John Howard better than by mentioning a prayer vigil. Maybe we should all begin praying for another miracle at the APEC forum.

APEC 2007

ENN

APEC draft climate statement seen a compromise

Bush presses Asia-Pacific on trade and climate

Religious Leaders Unite In Prayer On Climate Change

Image courtesy of APEC 2007 Taskforce

The Vienna Climate Change talks saw more than a thousand people from government, industry, and research gather in the Austrian capital to discuss ways to fight global warming. This United Nations-backed meeting is preparation for the more high-level talks in New York in September, and Bali in December. The first phase of the Kyoto Protocol will expire in 2012, and nations are scrambling to determine effective next steps that will address climate change mitigation, adaptation, and a global carbon market. Many hope for and expect more participation from nations glaringly absent from the first phase of implementation, like the United States and China.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said he expects the Vienna meetings to give a good indication as to whether governments are ready to take serious action on cutting emissions.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged governments to figure out the next phase of Kyoto three years before the first phase expires so there is time to ratify the law and be ready to go in 2012.

Austrian Environment Minister Josef Proell said in his opening remarks:

"Climate change is a huge challenge that can only be tackled at a global level and in an integrated manner… We do not have much time to create adequate framework conditions. Each year without mitigation measures is a year which drives the human and financial cost of adaptation steeply upwards."

On the other side of the world in Singapore, APEC has drafted a declaration agreeing to cut "energy intensity" by 25 percent by 2030 and plant nearly 50,000 million acres of trees. Energy intensity measures an economy’s energy efficiency – but clean energy supporters say this particular wording avoids any sort of serious commitment to cutting emissions. A spokeswoman for Greenpeace told Bloomberg news: "The APEC declaration is clearly ‘Made in the U.S.’ and covered with a thick coating of Australian coal dust."

Next month at a meeting in Sydney, Australia, APEC nations will agree to fund clean technologies and fight illegal logging. China has said it will support the Sydney declaration on climate change, and the U.S. is expected to attend the meetings.

Bloomberg
Independent Online

Market-based strategies, like a cap-and-trade policy used in Europe, were discussed. A cap-and-trade policy sets an overall limit on emissions, and then grants entities (factories, for example) permits that allow them to emit a particular amount of pollution. If they emit less than what is allowed, they can sell the surplus permits to a business that can not or will not meet their emissions requirements. This puts a price on emissions and creates an incentive to lower them. The value of global emissions-permit trading was over $30 billion in 2006, with 81 percent of that in the European Union.

APEC economies represent half of the world’s trade and include the world’s largest emitters, the U.S. and China. Neither country is bound by the Kyoto Protocol: China because it is a developing nation, and the U.S. because it didn’t ratify it. Another APEC member and large emitter, Australia, also didn’t ratify Kyoto but seems to making some progress with the announcement last week that it will start a national CO2 emissions trading system by 2012 and set a global warming emissions reduction target by next year.

China plans to cut energy consumption by 20 percent over the next five years. However, Finance Minister Jin Renqing told APEC members that developed countries have the responsibility to help developing ones with the technology to achieve this. China is the world’s largest user and producer of coal, and just passed the U.S. as the world’s largest emitter of CO2.

Australian Treasurer Peter Costello was encouraged by China’s talk of using market mechanisms to cut pollution. He foresees his country playing a larger role as energy demand increases in the region but traditional supplies dwindle or are unusable because of their global warming impact. He assured China that its development will not be interrupted by energy scarcity and that Australia has “a lot to offer” it in terms of energy security.

Bloomberg News