The Copenhagen climate talks will run from December 7 to
December 18.
Although the odds of signing a comprehensive climate treaty in Copenhagen next month seems vanishingly small, the White House announced today that President Obama will participate in the UN Climate Change Conference and put on the table a U.S. emissions reduction target in the range of 17percent by 2020.
"This is a tremendously important step that changes the dynamic internationally and domestically”, said Rep. Henry Waxman, one of the authors of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. “The President's leadership means there is now a path for reaching a successful agreement on core principles in Copenhagen. And a successful international meeting at Copenhagen will provide the momentum and direction needed for congressional action early next year”.
Maybe. The President is playing a high risk game in announcing targets ahead of any Senate vote on the climate change bill, and even though the hopes for a break through climate deal has been high since the Obama administration took steps to limit carbon dioxide at home with the House in June narrowly passing legislation to cut U.S. emissions 17 percent by 2020, the White House said today that an overall deal must include robust mitigation contributions from China and other emerging economies.
Still, the countries may not be interested in signing anything for at least another decade or so and especially not before developed countries cut their greenhouse gases with 40 percent by 2020. To complicate the matter further, China and other developing countries are also asking wealthy nations to commit more than $300 billion annually to help the rest of the world reducing its emissions.
| Texas gets electric car infrastructure, Reliant to build charging stations |
| You can also follow Caroline on Twitter. |
Comments
Why would anybody want to push emission reductions when the entire science of Global Warming has just be shown to be a complete fraud and a lie? Of course the main street media is trying to keep this quiet, but it's an exploding story.
Just google this opening paragraph to get the full story-
The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka CRU) and released 61 megabytes of confidential files onto the internet.
"Why would anybody want to push emission reductions when the entire science of Global Warming has just be shown to be a complete fraud and a lie?"
It's not the first time that scientists have been wrong on a significant scale, but that's no reason to distrust science in this area going forward. The world is flat, anyone?
Whether the earth is warming or cooling in natural or man-made cycles is entirely unimportant, as we will never prove or disprove our impact on the earth; what we now need to do is act responsibly and reduce our impact on the earth's natural resources and eco-system.
If the effort spent disproving global warming was turned to researching more efficient ways to glean and store clean energy, we'd be another step along the road.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!