SwiftVets.com

[Jeremy Eaton]

http://www.atimes.com/global-econ/CF19Dj02.html
This says that the US is only responsible for 25% of the global total of greenhouse gases produced.

[Jeremy Eaton]

Just received this email. Food for thought.


Creating the Climate for Change

By Klaus Toepfer
United Nations Under-Secretary General
Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme

The world is currently focused on a rising price of oil amidst immediate
and critical security concerns, but there looms two deeper and more
insidious global threats with perhaps an even greater scope to disrupt
long-term national and international security. These threats -
environmental degradation and poverty - are a two-headed hydra threatening
the very fabric of our economic and democratic systems.

If this seems like just another 'the sky is falling' bit of scare
mongering, consider that one-third of the world's population ? nearly 2
billion men women and children ? live on less than US$2 per day. This
meagre income often does not provide enough to eat, let alone access to
electricity, clean water and education.

These people must rely on poor quality fuels such as wood, crop wastes and
dung burned in inefficient stoves to cook food and keep warm, creating
significant indoor pollution that leads to respiratory disease and other
health problems. Such fuels also contribute to the loss of local forests,
water pollution and smog.

The world's poorest households are also on the front lines of climate
change, which many scientists - and the insurance industry ? believe is
already advancing in the form of a greater frequency and magnitude of
catastrophic weather events.

Governments are slowly realising that national security and environmental
security are two sides of the same coin.

As Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State put it so succinctly in a recent
edition of UNEP's Our Planet magazine, "Sustainable development is a
security imperative. Poverty, environmental degradation and despair, are
destroyers or people, of societies, of nations. This unholy trinity can
destabilize countries, even entire regions".

Fortunately, there are solutions.

At the core of development is the need for energy. Clean, modern and
sustainable forms of energy to drive sustainable development and reduce
environmental impacts are available now and affordable, particularly if the
environmental and social costs of fossil fuels are included in their price.
Further, even small improvements to the type and quality of energy
available for rural communities in developing countries can produce
significant environmental, economic and social outcomes.

The experience of international development during the past decade has
shown that helping local communities to help themselves requires a firm and
long-term commitment of both time and money ? though often in vastly
different forms from past international aid programmes.

In an ideal world there would be no subsidies to mature technologies and
all environmental, security and other external social costs would be
included in the price of energy. In the real world, there remain huge
subsidies for conventional technologies, fewer subsidies for renewable
energy, and hardly any social or environmental costs included in our energy
prices.

This must change.

Instead of climate change, air pollution and energy poverty we need to
create the climate for change.

But change will only come from a strong and unwavering commitment. It is
time to get down to business. Sustainable energy is needed for sustainable
development, but investment is needed for sustainable energy. This
investment must be made not just in technology, but also in people and
skills that can use this technology for sustainable development.

Let's be very clear: the many different forms of renewable energy will not
enter the mainstream without substantially more support for research and
development, better incentives, and further developed markets where the
environmental and social costs are included in the price of energy. In our
energy policies, we need to understand that strength, clarity and stability
are the characteristics that attract capital from the private sector.

Many have criticised such policies and commitments as being too costly, or
too damaging to our economies. But this doesn't have to be so.

In Bonn this week, the world's governments are meeting to discuss the
potential of renewable energies. The United Nations believes this
conference is an important step in adding to the commitments voiced by
governments at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg
two years ago.

Bonn will also be a chance to learn about rapidly evolving technologies,
exchange ideas, discover new opportunities, and "invent" a new future.

As Thomas Edison once observed, "The best way to predict the future is to
invent it".

Perhaps the future is a hydrogen economy with fuel cells powered by
hydrogen split from water by the electricity of wind turbines or rooftop
solar cells, or even hydrogen generated by algae growing in ponds on our
increasing amount of salt-affected land. Or perhaps it is something still
gestating in the imagination.

In this spirit, let us diverge ? now ? from "business as usual" to create ?
at the same time - a clean and secure energy supply, a healthy environment
and a world free from poverty.

For interview requests with Klaus Toepfer in Bonn please contact Robert
Bisset, UNEP Spokesperson in Europe on Mobile:[/i]