Millennial Challenge Series: Global Climate Change and the Delayed Response by G8

Dear Patriotic Citizens of the globe:

The Great European and Advanced Nations have atlast realized we cannot keep postponing our responsibility to the next generation who will not have the tools and time to deal with the current global climate change that has already adversely impacted tropical countries and continents such as Africa, Asia and Latin Ameria. Massive population migration is already impacting Europe and North America where over 12 million people, the original inhabitants of North America are declared illegal immigrants by their fellow new immigrants of the past 400 years.

The real problem is global and may be universal climate change that is likely to negatively impact life as we know it on earth and may be even in the outer space. All the same, this is a tiny step in the right directions as the biggest potential polluters like China and India are not part of this early game.

The secret is to alert every one from schools, temples, churches to parliamentary assemblies, where ever people are they are to be made aware of the impact their activities have on the global climate.

It seems at last Bush and Blair are getting it. Thank God for Angela- the only woman leader of G-8 is making a great break through. May be we should allow more female leaders to make it in this big circles. Try Hilary and may be Azeb Mesfin/ Medqsa and any female we can find in Ethiopia or Africa too.

We might see changes faster with female leadership than men.

Please read on:

Globalbelai@yahoo.com; www.globalbelai4u.blgospot.com, www.SolomonicCrown.org


Please read on

By CLAUDIA KEMMER, Associated Press Writer
25 minutes ago



HEILIGENDAMM, Germany - Group of Eight leaders including President Bush agreed Thursday to call for substantial global emissions reductions to fight global warming and cited a goal of a 50 percent cut by 2050.

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European leaders hailed the deal as progress in the wrangling between Europe and the United States over global warming, with the Europeans pushing mandatory cuts and the U.S. resisting.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who shepherded the deal as chair of the G-8 summit in this seaside resort in northern Germany, called it "very great progress and an excellent result." With Bush resisting concrete cuts, it had appeared Merkel's summit would fall short of her goal of a substantial deal on climate change.

"We agree that we need reduction goals — and obligatory reduction goals," she said.

But the language of the declaration appeared to be well short of a full commitment. It called for the countries to "seriously consider" following the European Union, Japan and Canada in seeking to halve emissions by 2050.

Merkel, who has made climate change the centerpiece of Germany's G-8 leadership, had lobbied fellow leaders on the issue for months. The G-8 is Germany, the United States, Russia, Britain, Italy, France, Canada and Japan.

"No one can escape this political declaration; it is an enormous step forward," she told reporters.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair was asked if there was "wiggle room." He said the final result would depend on upcoming U.N. climate change negotiations.

"However, there is now a process to lead to that agreement, and at its heart is a commitment to a substantial cut," he said. "What does substantial mean? That serious consideration is given to the halving of emissions by 2050."

Blair called the deal "a major, major step forward."

On the first full day of the summit, Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed their dispute over a U.S. proposal to put a missile defense system in eastern Europe. Bush also waxed nostalgic about this last summit with friend and Iraq war ally Blair, who leaves office June 27.

"I'm sad about that," Bush said.

The meeting also produced an unexpected proposal from Putin, who said he would drop his opposition to the U.S. missile defense system if it made use of a Russian-leased radar station in Azerbaijan. Currently the plan is to put 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic to guard against a potential future threat from Iran.

Bush did not mention Putin's proposal, saying only that Putin had made "some interesting suggestions." The two agreed to continue discussing the issue during talks next month at the Bush family vacation home in Maine.

On climate change, Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, said the ideas in the G-8 declaration were in the proposal the president issued last week. Bush called for having the top 15 polluters meet to set a long-term goal for reducing harmful emissions, and decide for themselves how much to do toward meeting it.

"The president made clear last week that he accepted the principle of a long-term goal," Hadley said during a telephone briefing with reporters. "I think it's very consistent with some ideas that the president had last week, but it was also consistent with ideas that have been advanced by others."

The document endorses the U.N. framework for climate change talks, a key demand from Merkel. But it did not commit to Merkel's target under which global temperatures would be allowed to increase by no more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) before being brought back down.

Experts say the 50 percent emissions reduction is needed to meet that goal.

Bush has opposed mandatory cuts and maintains that developing nations such as China, India and Brazil must be included. He also says economic growth cannot be sacrificed for progress on climate change, and stresses cleaner technology and biofuels as ways to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, which generate the greenhouse gases believed to cause global warming.

Climate talks will begin within the U.N. framework with a meeting of environment ministers at a U.N. climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, in December.

The conference will seek to come up with a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which commits industrial countries to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels. The U.S. signed the treaty but did not ratify it because it did not apply to developing countries such as China and India.

The top U.N. climate official said the agreement was "very important progress" because it committed the countries to come up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol by 2009.

"The important thing is to get the negotiations going, rather than to decide what the outcome is going to be," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

"I know Chancellor Merkel is declaring victory, but in fact President Bush has shut the door in the faces of the other seven leaders at the table," said Philip Clapp, president of the U.S.-based National Environmental Trust, pointing to the "seriously consider" phrase.

"That is a far cry from the United States having signed up to any such reductions," he said.

Clapp said the agreement showed progress among the other countries in reaching a consensus that could be taken up by the next U.S. president after Bush leaves office in January 2009.

Outside the summit site, protests continued.

Police used water cannons to turn back thousands of demonstrators who rushed the seven-mile fence surrounding the summit site, and police boats chased inflatable boats from the environmental group Greenpeace that entered the security zone on the Baltic Sea.

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Associated Press writer Jennifer Quinn contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

G8: http://www.g-8.de