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  National Geographic News 4 May 07
Global Warming Can Be Stopped, World Climate Experts Say
John Roach

Yahoo News 4 May 07
Beating global warming needn't cost the earth: U.N.
By David Fogarty

Yahoo News 4 May 07
Experts say lifestyle changes key to fighting global warming

Individuals have an important role to play in tackling global warming, not just governments and industry, experts said here Friday as they called for people to change their lifestyles.

Taking the train to work instead of driving, turning the temperature up a degree or two on the office air conditioner and eating less meat are just some of the options to consider in the fight against global warming, they said.

Lifestyle change was one key issue highlighted in a landmark report released here on Friday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that looked at ways to save the world from the worst impacts of global warming.

"Changes in lifestyle and behaviour patterns can contribute to climate change mitigation across all sectors," said the final report, which was agreed on by delegates from 120 nations at the week-long IPCC meeting.

But the experts said lifestyle changes did not mean people in rich or poor nations had to suffer or go without.

"It's not a matter of sacrifice. It's a matter of change. We can do development in a much more sustainable way than we have done in the past," said Ogunlade Davidson, a co-chair of the IPCC working group.

"You can achieve a low greenhouse gas emission lifestyle and still get the same economic benefits."

IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri called on people to follow former US president Jimmy Carter's call in the 1970s for people use less heating at home during the winter, and instead wear a cardigan.

He also said former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi should be commended for encouraging people in Japan to discard their neck ties in the office during the summer so air conditioners did not have to be turned up so high.

One other option people should consider is to become a vegetarian, Pachauri said, although he emphasised this was his personal view and not an option put forward in the IPCC's report.

"If people were to eat less meat perhaps they would be healthier. At the same time you cut out a lot of the emissions associated with the beef cycle," he said. "Right from the moment you produce meat, then you transport it, refrigerate it and sell it to the retail store (greenhouse gas emissions are produced)."

Pachauri said these were examples of "lifestyle changes where you are not giving up anything." "In fact you might actually gain by taking some of these measures. We are asking society to reflect on this," he said.

National Geographic News 4 May 07
Global Warming Can Be Stopped, World Climate Experts Say
John Roach for National Geographic News

Humans have the means to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the catastrophic consequences of global warming, a major climate report released today concludes.

But in order to stabilize the climate, the transition from fossil fuels like coal and oil needs to occur within decades, according to the final report this year from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Delegates representing a network of 2,500 scientists, economists, and policymakers from more than 120 nations hammered out details of the report at a week-long, closed-door meeting in Bangkok, Thailand.

"What is an extremely powerful message in this report is the need for human society as a whole to start looking at changes in lifestyle and consumption patterns," Rajendra Pachauri, the panel's chair, said at a press conference today.

The report outlines options communities can take, from using more renewable energy sources like solar and wind to using efficient light bulbs and planting trees. Even controversial nuclear energy is considered a viable option.

In addition the report says countries must adopt policies that put a price on carbon emissions and provide incentives to spur the development of energy-efficient technologies.

Widespread embrace of these measures could stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases at 2000 levels, according to the report. Failure to adopt these measures, however, could send heat-trapping gases spiraling an additional 90 percent by 2030.

"If we continue to do what we are doing now, we are in deep trouble," Ogunlade Davidson, a co-chair of the working group that prepared the report, said at the briefing. Monumental Challenge This is the third IPCC report released this year.

The first concluded global warming is almost certainly human caused. The second warned of the consequences already occurring and yet to come such as massive human death and disease, droughts, floods, and storms.

Today's report outlines a series of options to prevent the worst from occurring. "We have a really monumental challenge on our hands," Vicki Arroyo of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Arlington, Virginia, said in a telephone interview.

Scientists and policymakers have argued over which options to emphasize in the fight against global warming. For example, many environmental groups are concerned about hazardous waste from nuclear energy if that option is widely promoted.

But given the immensity of the challenge, Arroyo said, the "luxury" to ignore any of the available options does not exist. "We really need to tackle this problem from every angle we can," she said.

Daniel Kammen directs the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. He said in a telephone interview that the market has yet to show which methods will prevail.

"The critical issue isn't to pick and choose too much but is to say, if the governments are going to listen to this report as they should, there is actually a large number of technologies that are available to explore and look at," he said.

Some of the technologies are ready to enter the marketplace now, he added, while others will require further research.

Kammen and Arroyo both said that the cost to the global economy of acting now to curb greenhouse gas emissions is far less than doing nothing.

(Get the facts about global warming)

Economics and Caps

The new report also assesses the likely economic effects of stabilizing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The lower the concentration of gases, the lower the impact of global warming but the greater the brunt to global economic activity, the scientists conclude.

(Learn how global warming works)

According to the report, stabilization of greenhouse gases at the low end of the range— 445 parts per million—would limit global temperature rise to about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius).

Doing so, however, requires a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 85 percent by the middle of this century. Achieving this would shave about 0.12 percent off global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, panel co-chair Bert Metz explained at the briefing.

Stabilization at the high end of the range—710 parts per million—would see a temperature rise as high as 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) and allow greenhouse gas emissions to increase 10 to 60 percent by 2050. This scenario would blunt GDP by about 0.06 percent a year.

Officials in China, the U.S., and India fear that the most aggressive cuts would slow economic growth too much and had reportedly pressed for their nations to be excluded from the report.

The University of California's Kammen said such fears are "false."

Though the U.S. and China are the world's top two consumers of coal, a particularly dirty fossil fuel, the countries also happen to have ample biofuel and wind resources.

"So the switch-off job is not as hard as many people are portraying," he said.

In a statement released today, the environmental group WWF said the IPCC report shows it is clearly possible to stop global warming if action is taken now. "The IPCC has delivered a road map for keeping the planet safe. Now it's the turn of politicians to do more than just pay lip service," said Hans Verlome, director of the group's climate change program.

"We can stop climate change before it's too late."

Yahoo News 4 May 07
Beating global warming needn't cost the earth: U.N.
By David Fogarty

Humans must make sweeping cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the next 50 years to keep global warming in check, but it need cost only a tiny fraction of world economic output, a major U.N. report said on Friday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said keeping the temperature rise within 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 F) would cost only 0.12 percent of annual gross domestic product.

"It's a low premium to pay to reduce the risk of major climate damage," Bill Hare, a Greenpeace adviser who co-authored the report told Reuters after marathon talks that ran over their four-day schedule to finalize the document.

The report "shows that it's economically and technically feasible to make deep emission reductions sufficient to limit warming to 2 degrees," he said.

To keep within that limit, which scientists and the European Union say is needed to stave off disastrous climate changes, carbon dioxide emissions need to fall 50 to 85 percent by 2050, said the report, the third in a series.

However, technological advances, particularly in more efficient energy use and production, meant such targets were within reach, it said. It stressed the use of nuclear, solar and wind power, more energy-efficient buildings and lighting, as well as capturing and storing carbon dioxide spewed from coal-fired power stations and oil and gas rigs.

But A U.S. environmental official rejected some options detailed in the report for cutting emissions as too costly.

"There are measures that come currently at an extremely high cost because of the lack of available technology," said James Connaughton, head of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

These scenarios, he said, would bring cuts in world gross domestic product of up to 3 percent. "That would of course cause global recession, so that is something that we probably want to avoid," Connaughton said in a telephone briefing.

China, expected to soon overtake the United States as the world's biggest greenhouse gas producer, said rich countries must not keep clean energy technologies to themselves.

"It is something the developing countries have been asking for many years, but up till now it has not happened," said Zhou Dadi, director of China's Energy Research Institute and a co-author of the report.

The panel also said for the first time that lifestyle changes could help fight global warming. It gave no examples, but IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri said these could include turning down the thermostat and eating less red meat, which could cut animal methane emissions.

'NO EXCUSE'

The report, agreed by scientists and officials from more than 100 countries, reviews the latest science on the costs and ways to curb emissions growth.

It is meant as a blueprint for governments without telling them exactly what to do. Its clear message, however, was that the ball was now in government courts.

"There is no excuse for waiting," European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said a "comprehensive package on the way forward" needed to be launched at a December U.N. climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, so there was no gap when the Kyoto Protocol's first phase runs out in 2012.

In some cases, the IPCC said, technology could bring major benefits, such as cutting health costs by tackling pollution.

Even changing planting times for rice or managing livestock herds better could cut emissions of methane, said the report, which draws on the work of 2,500 scientists.

Two previous IPCC reports this year painted a grim future of human-induced global warming causing more hunger, droughts, heat waves and rising sea levels that would drown low- lying islands.

Asia's population is most at risk from rising seas and more powerful storms. One in 10 people, mainly in Asia, live in highly vulnerable coastal areas, an international study published last month found.

The steeper the emissions cuts, the greater the cost to the global economy, the report said.

The cost of limiting greenhouse gases in 2030 to stabilization levels of between 445 and 710 parts per million (ppm) CO2-equivalent ranges from a 3 percent decrease in global GDP to a small increase, it said.

However, regional costs might differ significantly from global averages, it added. Greenhouse gas concentrations are now at about 430 ppm CO2-equivalent.

(Additional reporting by Darren Schuettler in Bangkok, Deborah Zabarenko in Washington and Patrick Worsnip at the U.N.)
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