Did the G-8 Meeting do enough?
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who shepherded the deal as the G-8 summit's host, said Thursday that the climate-change agreement represented "very great progress and an excellent result."
President Bush and other G-8 leaders said they are committed to "substantial" cuts by 2050 of greenhouse gas emissions, which are caused by the burning of fuels such as gasoline and coal. But critics note that the deal has no binding caps, only a pledge to "consider seriously" a 50% cut by mid-century.
Greenpeace USA was one of several groups to say the agreement "fails to provide clear targets for how we deal with the threat" of global warming.
Greenpeace and other groups blamed Bush, who has long favored voluntary reductions, for blocking the 50% cut sought by Merkel and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Merkel and Blair also suggested a target of keeping global temperature increases to less than 2 degrees Celsius by 2050, which is not part of the deal.
So, what do you think? Can we really wait another 43years to see if we can make a positive difference?
Creating a ‘Deflective Screen’ for the G-8 meeting later this month.
President Bush has spent the last six years ignoring the Kyoto Accord. In fact, as we have all seen, he keeps getting his 'Yes Men' to question the problems while he has worked to ignore Global Warming issues to this point.
And now, with the G-8 meeting around the corner…and the top issue to be discussed (Germany is pushing it) is the release of Greenhouse Gasses, the President has created a Deflective Screen by declaring that he will host a meeting later in the year to begin exporing the greenhouse gas questions. In fact he is hoping that this will allow him to refer to his plan during the G-8 meeting and then to say he is doing something about Climate Change. What have been his motives and agendas?
Agenda 1…support the petrochemical industry…
Agenda 2...delay action, short term personal (he and his friends) gain
Agenda 3…make it look like he is finally doing something of merit.
More positive steps are being lead by Germany who wants us to take action…they have the lead on a European Proposal that calls for all nations to reduce their Greenhouse gasses to 50% or less of the emissions released in 1990 by the year 2050. Now let’s consider this. The world is changing, and we will not get instant satisfaction on this…stop the gasses now and we still have decades of warming before we begin to see improvement. So as an instant gratification society...at least from Mr. Bush's point of view...shouldn’t we just continue to ignore it? After all, we can’t fix it immediately so we should just learn to live with it….right? Sure!
Or I guess we could take a more Global and Going Concern approach…reduce the gasses, back to manageable levels, and maybe in 75 to 150 years we will regain balance…so our children and their children and those to follow will have a habitable world that they can effectively manage.
George…it isn’t about us. Our parents and their parents…and yes indeed …US…that is us for you and me and US for the United States…yes indeed, we have helped to pollute our world to the point of warming and we are the cause of the change in global weather. Oh yeah, if we don’t get a handle on it we will find that we can’t feed our people and the rest of the world will be in the same situation.
Fix the world, do it now, pass it on!
