Nobel Prize Winner Al Gore Urges US And China to Do More About Global Warming
December 10, 2007
Global warming campaigner and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore says it is time for humanity to stop “waging war” on planet Earth. Gore spoke today in Oslo after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. He urged the two largest carbon-emitting countries - the United States and China - to make what he called the “boldest moves” to fight global warming.
The United States has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 international pact that requires reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. China was not required to reduce emissions under the deal. They also refused today to approve a new treaty designed to cut emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent by 2020.
Gore said he would go to the U.N. climate meeting in Bali later this week to urge world leaders to meet as often as every three months to enact a global cap on greenhouse gas emissions by 2010.
Gore shared the 2007 Nobel prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, represented at today’s ceremony by Rajendra Pachauri.
Pachauri stressed the link between the fight against climate change and peace. He warned that severe climate change will trigger what he called “dramatic population migration,” as well as war over water and other resources.
He also warned that up to 250 million people in Africa could face what he called “increased water stress because of climate change.
By Wiki News
Maybe we are going about this thing all wrong — trying to attack the many arms of the Climate Change problem instead of going for its eye.
On the face of it, Climate Change is a problem of excess CO2 emissions. But analyse deeper, and one finds that it’s a problem of overconsumption by all of us, individuals, corporates, government.
Analyse still deeper, and one finds that overconsumption is triggered by and funded by CREDIT. There is an overabundance of bank credit — far out of proportion to actual earnings and savings — that gives people the power to overspend and overconsume.
So this is where the cancerous tumour can be clearly isolated from human flesh. This is where we can start cutting away surgically, methodically, without hurting too many people.
CONSUMER CREDIT — loans extended by banks for purchase of new vehicles and consumer appliances — is a major artery feeding this tumour. Easy loans warp our purchasing decisions, making our desires seem like needs.
Two calls from an aggressive marketer of car loans is all I need to make me feel that I NEED to step up from my family car to an SUV.
CREDIT CARDS make one feel really wealthy, by enabling one to securely carry large amounts equivalent to many months’ earnings in ones wallet.
And when you do that, you are potentially able to do all those wonderful, beautiful, generous things that you see in TV commercials like buying your wife a diamond solitaire, booking the Presidential suite for your wedding anniversary or surprising her with a couple of air-tickets to Paris.
Consumer credit and credit-cards are the hot air causing the great big Economic Growth balloon to go up… and up… and up.
Driven by this excessive consumer demand, a number of industries flourish, new corporates are created, and new factories get built, diversified, expanded, acquired… We aren’t only borrowing economically, we are borrowing ecologically.
Suggested line of action: At an individual level, we should stop buying things with credit, and stop using our credit cards. It is worth cutting up our credit cards. Let us stop borrowing from the future.
And as a community of concerned citizens, let us lobby for a clampdown on consumer credit. Let us write to the government, to our Central Banks and to individual banks and bankers.
Let each person in the banking industry be targetted with this message: Cap and roll back. Let us ask for a freeze of consumer credit at current levels this year, and a 50% reduction in the amounts of credit given each year.
This would give the economy about three years to adjust to the changing scenario.
Three years is 36 months — far more time than the economy and its stakeholders get for adjustment when the stock-markets crash. So why delay, postpone and vacillate?
Warmly,
Krishnaraj Rao
http://friendlyghost.rediffiland.com
http://globalwarming.rediffiland.com