Urgency 
What have we done & can we do something now?
role of policy | role of religion | role of fuels | media | June, 2008 | urgency
Sarkozy Calls for Carbon Tax, &
Sanctions Against Kyoto Resisters
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called for a national "carbon tax" on global-warming pollutants and a European levy on imports from countries outside the Kyoto Protocol. Any such levy is bound to be targeted at imports from the United States and Australia, the only advanced economies that remain outside the UN's landmark pact on greenhouse-gas emissions.
Oil Peaked in 2006: Study.
World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown. A study by the German-based Energy Watch Group says that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected.
US Insurers Withdraw Extreme Weather Coverage from Northeastern States.
Public officials in Southern states from Florida to Texas have been fighting insurance carriers for years over rising rates and withdrawal of services, but officials in the Northeast have only recently joined the fray. Companies including Allstate, State Farm and Liberty Mutual have "nonrenewed" policies not only in hurricane-battered places like Florida and Louisiana, but in New York and other Northern states that have not seen hurricanes in years.
"Our way of dealing with energy issues probably will have to change fundamentally.
The International Energy Agency, anyway until recently, denies that such a fundamental change of our energy supply is likely to happen in the near or medium term future. The message by the IEA, namely that business as usual will also be possible in future, sends a false signal to politicians, industry and consumers – not to forget the media."
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY / KEY FINDINGS, CRUDE OIL – THE SUPPLY OUTLOOK.
Do it sooner than later is the message of the IPCC’s findings this December.
By
J. Siry, Ph.D., Rollins College *
Global climate chaos (global warming or climate change, or abrupt climate change) is a problem with several solutions of paramount importance in that it affects and is affected by all other ecological and social matters. This is due to the ever-present character of the air and the oceans as the heat engine of the planet. And it will require that we must adapt or take measures, as Miami-Dade County is doing, to mitigate because this is an accelerating rate problem that gets worse not better with time, like the unpaid balance of a credit card.
The problem is not a natural one and as such raises the stakes for those who ignore, inadvertently add to the carbon dioxide emissions or denude vast areas of the climate moderating influences of extensive vegetation.
For approximately half the world’s populations that live in the coast zone the adaptive and mitigating measures will include relocation of dense populations. In those areas in Asia amounting to three billion people watered by the glacial melt, or the high Andes and Alpine regions reduction in water for wildlife and agricultural conservation will require changes in water reuse.
Driven by land-use and energy-use policies the steady accumulation of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere will take a century or more for natural –intact—systems to dissipate the heat trapping gases that intensify climate chaos. The unpredictable characteristics of chemical and biological systems at high threshold levels of heat trapping gases not seen on the planet for the last 400,000 years raises the precautionary aspect of our actions to an essential level in our future estimates of timber, agricultural fishery and aquifer yields. In this situation of accumulating rates of heat trapping gas and energy consumption any delay in reducing our two percent annual increase in emissions is an irresponsible course of inaction.
298 words.
role of policy | role of religion | role of fuels | urgency
This page was created, by J. Siry.
