'It's all about green energy'—The world has only six years left to limit greenhouse gas emissions…

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.guardianweekly.co.uk/?page=editorial&id=1007&catID=17

'It's all about green energy'

Monday March 30th 2009

Solutions to climate change can lead to a philosophical shift in the way we develop, explains Rajendra Pachauri, winner of the Nobel peace prize and chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Rajendra Pachauri has a particular mission to bring light out of darkness. The recipient of last year’s Nobel peace prize wants to put electric lighting into the world’s 1.6bn poorest homes, which lack power. So will this increase the world’s carbon footprint? Well, no. He has developed solar powered lamps to market worldwide, including to the 64m rural homes without electricity in India. The handheld lamps would replace kerosene and can be assembled by local entrepreneurs.

…

The world has only six years left to limit greenhouse gas emissions, Pachauri warns. "It’s essential that we take action by which we allow emissions to peak no later than 2015," he says, to limit the world’s temperature increase to 2C. Beyond that and we reach a tipping point when the world’s poorest communities will suffer the most. "They are the ones who are the most vulnerable" due to a much greater scarcity of water, a decline in agricultural lands, and the danger of sea level rises, as spelt out in the fourth assessment report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

That is why next December’s Copenhagen summit on climate change is so critical for the world’s future. "Copenhagen represents an opportunity which once lost is not going to come back." Pachauri wants both Copenhagen and this week’s G20 summit in London to "clearly declare that the Bali Road Map, which called for deep cuts in emissions by 2020, will actually be implemented." It worries him that an article by Barack Obama, circulated widely in the world’s media prior to the G20 summit, made no mention of climate change.

…

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Too little, too late.

If they REALLY think we have six years, they should have said two years, because it will only mean six more years of foot dragging, and THEN, once it is too late, passing the needed legislation.

We're fucked.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Following that line of reasoning…

Perhaps they think we have 12 years…

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Oh, I hope so. nt