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© Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
Climate Summit © Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The world climate summit opens in Copenhagen, Denmark Monday 7 December, with leaders from 192 nations attending. The goal: to find a global agreement on climate change, especially global warming.
Obama changes Copenhagen visit for greater impact
US President Barack Obama will visit the summit 18 December rather than 9 December as earlier planned, reflecting his desire to be there at what looks like a critical moment, the White House announced 5 December.
China will improve energy efficiency 40-45 percent by 2050, compared to 2005, Chinese officials announced 26 November, without offering any details. By improving energy efficiency, China also reduces CO2 emissions.Chinese leaders almost immediately cautioned that their energy goals were domestic, and asked the world to trust them. Xie Zhenhua, the Chinese climate policy expert who announced the goals said, “Although this is a domestic voluntary action, it is binding. As we’ve made this commitment, well, Chinese people stick to their word.”
US experts have welcomed the move, saying that China now joins other major economic powers in announcing plans for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions ahead of the Copenhagen conference on climate change that opens 7 December.
Some experts warn that the Chinese will not want to be held to account, and point out the difficulties in measuring, reporting and verifying progress on those commitments.
US President Barack Obama 25 November became the latest head of state to say he will be in Copenhagen for the climate conference, COP 15, in mid-December. Obama’s staff announced his travel plans as part of a statement that he is personally committed to cutting US emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels during the next 10 years, and by 83 percent by 2050. The US House of Representatives, the lower house of Congress, have passed a climate change bill, but the Senate, the upper house has not. A formal US commitment will require full congressional approval in the form of a jointly agreed bill.
China’s envoy to the conference, Yu Qingtai, announced Thursday 26 November that his country will go to COP 15 determined to have the same framework that was part of the Kyoto agreement, which the Copenhagen summit is designed to replace. Kyoto called for 37 wealthy countries to make commitments to cutting Co2 emissions, but not developing countries. The US was the only major country not to sign the Kyoto agreement.
Links to others sites: COP 15, CNN, Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, White House blog
US President Barack Obama has thrown his weight behind reforming the US healthcare system and commiting the country to passing significant climate change legislation before world leaders meet in Copenhagen in December to replace the Kyoto agreement on CO2 emission. It now appears that lawmakers may not have the time or energy to deal with climate change laws that will increase consumers’ energy costs, with the fight to reform health care becoming bogged down. Obama will address Congress Wednesday 9 September in what is increasingly being portrayed as a key speech to get the health debate back on the rails. NPR, Reuters
Gordon Shepherd, WWF international policy and Martin Sommerkorn, WWF Arctic research, at Geneva climate conference
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One-quarter of the world’s population is likely to be affected by rising ocean levels provoked by melting Arctic ice, a WWF study released 2 September shows. The Arctic is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the Earth, the new Arctic Climate Feedbacks report shows. As a result, the level of oceans can be expected to rise by one metre by the end of the 21st century, twice as fast as current predictions suggest.
The report pulls together the most recent data covering the Arctic and its impact. It includes the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica in global sea level projections, which were not included in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 2007 assessment of the Arctic, widely relied on. The addition of these areas appears likely to change temperature and precipitation patterns in Europe and North America, affecting agriculture, forestry and water supplies, the new data shows.
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
The Arctic holds twice as much carbon as the rest of the world and the study indicates that as warming speeds up, carbon released by warmer soils could reach significant levels. Read more…
Lake Geneva
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva is home this week to a key global conference on how the world can adapt to climate change – disasters such as floods and hurricanes, but also the more subtle changes that affect agriculture, tourism and daily life.
The conference agenda is wide-ranging and includes improvements to early warning systems for disasters and how to provide more precise and more localized weather forecasting, needed by developing countries as well as industries in the developed world.
The meeting is hosted by Switzerland and organized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and a group of partners.
Not just H2O in those clouds
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government is committed to cuts in greenhouse gas emissions of 20 percent compared to 1990, and a proposed new law sent to Parliament 28 August outlines how it wants to achieve that goal.
The measures proposed are to:
Geneva, a city that gives you more money after taxes, and lets you spend it quickly
Geneva and Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva and Zurich among the top five priciest cities in the world, along with Oslo, Copenhagen and Toky, according to a study by bank UBS comparing prices and earning in 73 cities around the world. Salaries are highest in Switzerland, Denmark and the US, with workers in Geneva and Zurich having the highest net incomes in the world. The average employee in Delhi, Manila, Jakarta and Mumbai earns less than one-fifteenth of Swiss hourly wages after taxes.
Prices for food in Switzerland are about 45 percent more for food on average than in the rest of Western Europe but to balance it out “no other city allows workers to take home more income at the end of the month than Zurich and Geneva.”
UBS notes that the comparisons are greatly affected by currency fluctuations. London fell 20 places in the cost categories thanks to the pound’s “precipitous devaluation” in the first half of 2009.
Coffee at Zurich train station: charming old with the new
London, England (GenevaLunch) – Zurich has another feather in its cap, after being selected as the world’s most livable city by the latest edition of Monocle magazine in London. Copenhagen is number two and Tokyo number three. Poor Geneva is relegated to slot number 24 out of 25, down one place from 2008, but cheered on for its easy access to lake and mountain as its main assets. What they say about Zurich: “And in this year’s winner is Zurich, where the city’s investment in tranpsort is remarkable” and the main station makeover is the key asset mentioned.
Monocle’s list dates back to 2007, making it a relative newcomer in the cities-we-love lists business. Mercer does it as a quality of life list for businesses and their employees and The Economist Intelligence Unit does it for its readers, ranking cities by quantifying “the challenges that might be presented to an individual’s lifestyle.” The EIU list, which came out 11 June 2009, ranks Geneva eighth and Zurich tenth. It gives six of the top 10 slots to North American cities, whereas Monocle sniffs at them and has only one in its top 25. It counts the number of cinemas and other comfort factors for its list.
Global Humanitarian Forum, Kofi Annan, 23 June 2009, Geneva
Update 2 13:01 Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “This conference must provide a powerful voice for the victims of climate change,” Kofi Annan said in opening remarks at the second annual Global Humanitarian Forum, Tuesday morning 23 June in Geneva. The forum is focusing on the impact on humans of climate change during the two day conference that brings together leaders from government, industry and academia.
”We have the knowledge, resources and the technology to reduce the pace of climate change,” said Annan. “What is needed is the vision, the courage” to act. He cited as an example of a good private and public partnership a weather information project recently launched in Africa by the Global Humanitarian Forum, Ericsson, World Meterological Organization and mobile phone operators. “Collecting accurate information about weather and climate across Africa will give farmers better guidance about when to plant and harvest crops as well as helping alert communities about severe storms.”
China is the world’s third largest economy and now the “world’s top greenhouse gas emitter,” notes Reuters, as Todd Stern, the US official with responsibility for climate change policy, visits Beijing, the latest in a series of meetings designed to move closer to agreement on gas emissions. China is grappling with balancing strong growth and reducing emissions. A Chinese official quoted by Reuters, Gao Guangsheng, says that “bridging disputes on basic principles will probably push talks to the wire” in December in Copenhagen meeting. Ministers from several countries will be meeting then to replace the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Xinhua
[with UN TV video] Geneva, Switzerland and Bonn, Germany (GenevaLunch) – Eighteen United Nations and non-UN aid agencies 8 June issued a joint statement arguing for “humanitarian impacts” to be included in the new climate change protocol. A December meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark of ministers from around the world will seek to replace the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997. A new agreement must “set out a workable approach to help the world counter the impacts of extreme weather events and environmental degradation on vulnerable communities,” the Inter-Agency Standing Committee argues.
Climate changes are moving “beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived,” possibly becoming irreversible, according to a group of 2,000 climate change scientists meeting in Copenhagen to prepare the way for a major political meeting on climate change that will take place in the city in December 2009. CNN
