At Davos, execs urged to pay more to battle climate change
Source: Agencies |
January 30, 2010, Saturday
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THE success of talks this year to salvage a global climate accord hinge on money, Mexico's President Felipe Calderon said yesterday, urging executives at the World Economic Forum to pay more to fight climate change.
Despite recent scandals that have invigorated global warming skeptics, Calderon and the UN climate chief vigorously defended scientific work showing that sea levels are rising and glaciers melting, with consequences for millions of people and economies worldwide.
Calderon will host the UN climate summit in Cancun at the end of the year, which hopes to improve on the failure last month in Copenhagen to produce a binding accord limiting carbon emissions.
"The economic costs associated with trying to tackle climate change" are central to the challenges facing governments, he said.
"We need to try to learn from our mistakes in Copenhagen," Calderon said. "If we can find an economic mechanism, we will be on track."
Rich and developing countries clashed at Copenhagen over how much, and how, each should contribute to battling global warming. At the end, the key emerging economies of China, Brazil, South Africa and India brokered a political accord with US President Barack Obama and they will play a key role in shaping what the UN hopes will be a legally binding climate deal by the end of the year.
As countries shakily emerge from recession, a key part of the debate is ensuring that progress is environmentally effective but also won't break the bank.
"In the private sector, we need clear targets," said Renault-Nissan head Carlos Ghosn, who has championed electric cars. He encouraged cooperation among governments and the private sector for a climate accord, fixed emissions targets and prices for emitting carbon gases.
Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said recent scandals over climate data have not discredited the scientific evidence that global warming exists and must be countered.
"What's happened, it's unfortunate, it's bad, it's wrong, but I don't think it has damaged the basic science," he said.
Global warming skeptics have expressed anger after a UN report warning that Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035 turned out to be off by hundreds of years because of a typo -- the actual year was 2350 -- and over stolen e-mails from the University of East Anglia's climate science unit.
Despite recent scandals that have invigorated global warming skeptics, Calderon and the UN climate chief vigorously defended scientific work showing that sea levels are rising and glaciers melting, with consequences for millions of people and economies worldwide.
Calderon will host the UN climate summit in Cancun at the end of the year, which hopes to improve on the failure last month in Copenhagen to produce a binding accord limiting carbon emissions.
"The economic costs associated with trying to tackle climate change" are central to the challenges facing governments, he said.
"We need to try to learn from our mistakes in Copenhagen," Calderon said. "If we can find an economic mechanism, we will be on track."
Rich and developing countries clashed at Copenhagen over how much, and how, each should contribute to battling global warming. At the end, the key emerging economies of China, Brazil, South Africa and India brokered a political accord with US President Barack Obama and they will play a key role in shaping what the UN hopes will be a legally binding climate deal by the end of the year.
As countries shakily emerge from recession, a key part of the debate is ensuring that progress is environmentally effective but also won't break the bank.
"In the private sector, we need clear targets," said Renault-Nissan head Carlos Ghosn, who has championed electric cars. He encouraged cooperation among governments and the private sector for a climate accord, fixed emissions targets and prices for emitting carbon gases.
Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said recent scandals over climate data have not discredited the scientific evidence that global warming exists and must be countered.
"What's happened, it's unfortunate, it's bad, it's wrong, but I don't think it has damaged the basic science," he said.
Global warming skeptics have expressed anger after a UN report warning that Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2035 turned out to be off by hundreds of years because of a typo -- the actual year was 2350 -- and over stolen e-mails from the University of East Anglia's climate science unit.
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