Climate change chaos must be averted before it's too late

• Source: Global Times
• [16:54 December 14 2009]
• Comments

By Wang Xiaojun

Two days ahead of the Copenhagen Climate meeting, US President Barack Obama announced that he will be coming to the Danish capital city on December 18, the last day of the meeting, instead of the originally-planned December 9. This change in Obama’s schedule is probably one of the most welcome changes seen at the international climate negotiations this year.
 
Our climate has been changing, thanks (but no thanks) to the huge amount of greenhouse gases we pump into our atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, like coal and oil, and by cutting down trees. For people in Beijing, a clear indication is that we have been rapidly losing the once steady climate.

 We used to have an even share of months for each season, with flowers in spring, sunshine in summer, colorful foliage in autumn, and snowmen in winter. What Beijing gets now is two weeks of spring and two weeks of autumn, the rest being dominated by long humid summers and long, dry, bitter winters.
 
Over the past century, the global mean temperature has risen by 0.8 degrees Celsius. This is no small change when it comes to the temperature that defines out habitats, our farms, our food, and our health.

Climate scientists have been waving warning flags for some time: if the temperature rise reaches two degrees, we are all doomed. Although world leaders, who have the power to guide their own countries’ economies down the path towards a clean, green future instead of a dark, dirty one, have spent years considering this, to many the answers seem obvious and the solutions, clear.
 
Leaders who have seen their people suffering from climate disasters such as harsher droughts and stronger typhoons have chosen to direct their countries towards a safer future, protecting trees and erecting windmills instead of smoke stacks.

This year’s climate negotiations have seen positive changes in climate policies from developing countries. Both China and India have announced timetables to reduce their carbon emissions from each yuan and each rupee of their economic growth. Indonesia and Brazil have pledged to cut their overall carbon emissions and to protect their trees.
 
These are important and inspiring efforts. Unfortunately, however, they, alone, are not able to solve the whole problem. With a little help, these countries can do much more to move away from carbon reliance and still develop their economies and improve their people’s lives.

 In contrast, leaders from industrialized countries, which have been emitting more polluting greenhouse gases for a far longer time have been reluctant, so far, to do their fair share of reducing carbon emissions and providing financial and technological support.
 
In the much bigger world outside the negotiation rooms, things are changing more rapidly. One of China’s major climate negotiators said, before leaving Beijing for Copenhagen, “Six years ago, we had to beg media to write about climate change and the Kyoto Protocol. Today, media are paying to fly their best journalists to Copenhagen.”

In fact, the UNFCCC had to close their doors to media when the press registration reached the maximum of 5,000. More are waiting outside the venue, with fingers crossed, for the magic to happen so that they can get a pass and ask delegates questions about “emission cut targets,” “financial support for adaptation and mitigation,” and about “reducing emission from deforestation.”
 
The momentum has never been this strong and the tides have never been this high. Insuring the healthy future of our one-and-only planet requires definitive changes. In the coming two weeks in Copenhagen, developed countries must transform their talk into action with stronger political will than that demonstrated by higher emission cut targets, More financial commitment would be another way to “put their money where their mouths are.”
 
The situation is still changing second by second. Ten hours before the Copenhagen Climate meeting was to start, officially, while this article was being written, South Africa, another developing country, announced that it would emit 34 percent less greenhouse gases, by 2020, than the figure projected at the current economic growth rate.

Greenpeace International Executive Director, Kumi Naidoo, said, on the eve of the Copenhagen Climate Meeting, “The key question now is whether world leaders turn the climate crisis into an opportunity for current and future generations.” For our own sake, and that of future generations, we need decisive change to stop the climate chaos.
 

The author is Chief Media Officer at Greenpeace China.