An Open Letter to the Climate Change Delegates Meeting in Bali  
Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

Guest Blog: Brad Arnold Be a guest blogger!  Submit your article today.

There are two aspects of a future international agreement on combating global warming that are dictated by fairness and necessity:

 

1.    One per capita carbon emission rate should be established for all nations.

 

On the one hand, every country should be held to the same standard.  On the other hand, past emissions should be forgiven.

 

2.    A country's carbon emission should be the combination of the amount of carbon emitted minus the amount of carbon removed from the air.

 

There are various natural and technological methods of removing carbon from the air that should be encouraged.  A carbon market could be set up to facilitate distribution of emission credits and debits.

Currently, the international community is considering prescribing only drastic emission cuts to combat global warming.  This approach is unfeasible for many reasons:

 

1.    Emissions of greenhouse gases will rise over 50% by 2030 compared to current levels, assuming 1.8% annual rise based upon projected energy use and current efforts to mitigate emissions, according to the International Energy Agency in its annual report on global energy needs.

 

It is very unlikely that a rapidly growing population and economy will cut their emissions so drastically that either abrupt climate change or runaway global warming will be avoided.  Many countries missed their emission cut commitments under Kyoto, and the next round of cuts will have to be much more severe.

 

2.    Climate change could end globalization by 2040 as nations look inward to conserve scarce resources and conflicts flare when refugees flee rising seas and drought, according to national security experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the report “the Age of Consequences.”

 

 Severe emissions cuts become much more unlikely if countries lack the resources to implement them.  It is prudent to have a clause in any future international agreement exempting drastic emission cuts in case of war or economic crisis, because no country will honor extremely onerous international commitments.

 

3.    With more than 60% of the world’s population living in Asia, wealthy countries must dramatically reduce their emissions, to free up environmental space for Asia to develop, according to a report from the alliance of 23 of Britain’s leading poverty and environmental campaigning groups.

 

Not only must developed nations cut their emissions drastically to prevent dangerous warming, they must also cut their emissions even more dramatically to compensate for developing countries future rapid emissions growth.

 

Worse, not only is an exclusive drastic emissions cut strategy unfeasible, but it will result in catastrophe, because those cuts will warm us up over the short run, and only cool us down over the long run.

 

Our emissions put into the air not only long lived greenhouse gases that warm us up, but short lived sun dimming pollution that cools us down.  We are warming at 0.2 C/decade, but if our warming speeds to 0.4 C/decade, then all ecosystems would be quickly destroyed, causing abrupt climate change.

 

To summarize, there are two fundamental pillars upon which an international agreement to combat global warming must be based:  the same per capita carbon emission rate should apply to all countries, and removing carbon from the air should count directly against carbon emissions.

 

Furthermore, the strategy of exclusively prescribing drastic emission cuts is unfeasible because: emission growth is projected to inevitably rise rapidly, scarce resources will sidetrack drastic emission cuts, and Asian carbon emissions must be compensated for by even more unrealistically severe emission cuts in developed nations.

 

Worse, drastic emission cuts will warm us up in the short run, destroying ecosystems.

 

Any feasible planetary rescue plan must include removing carbon from the air.  I suggest the low cost method of biosequestration, but there is a practical mechanical method for removing carbon from the hydrosphere too.

 

Guest Blog submitted by Brad Arnold, myspace.com/dobermanmacleod. It's your world and your news...submit an article today!  All of our articles are indexed in Google News and by all of the major search engines, and we can link your Author Name (or screenname) to a MySpace page or website of your choice, which will earn you traffic and viewers.   And if we feature your blogs regularly, you'll be added to our upcoming "Blogroll" which will give you a permanent link from our site.   Go to Submit Form

 

   

 

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