Are the major powers serious about tacking Global Warming?

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   Tusitala Tomposted 12 years ago

   Are the major powers serious about tacking Global Warming?
   
   Yesterday, January 18th, was the hottest day ever recorded in Sydney since records began being kept.  It was 46 degress Celsius, that's about 114 Fahrenheigt.  A scorcher.   Less than a week earlier it had been almost as hot.   I'm wondering if any governments are really taking Global warming seriously apart of Australia?

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   dailytop10posted 12 years ago

   They are not. We are not. I think it's a movement that should be done globally. I've read alarming reports about the worsening temperature of our world and I simply can't imagine what will happen decades from now if we continue to neglect this problem. For those who are clueless about global warming and its causes here's a hub I created about it: http://dailytop10.hubpages.com/hub/Top- … al-Warming

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   CHRIS57posted 12 years ago

   Not much is done on a global scale. The Kyoto protocol didn´t specify any carbon reduction for developing economies. That was 16 years ago. Last conference in Durban was a waste of time. The US is simply negligent. BRIC economies have too much GDP per capita to catch up to western standards, so they don´t care or put priority elsewhere.
   However there is considerable effort in rich Northern Europe to reduce carbon footprint. But rich Northern Europe can afford it, which brings us to the conclusion that all is an economic matter not a matter of ecologic and environmental reasoning.
   But don´t worry, energy hungry BRIC economies will drive market price of fossile fuels up. That in turn makes renewable energy more feasible. At the end all is pure economics.

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      alloporusposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Tha last UNFCC conference of the parties was in Doha, and yes it achieved even less than Durban.

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      CHRIS57posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      You are absolutely right. Last conference was in Doha. Could have taken place on the moon, no impact on problems of today and tomorrow.

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   JimTxMillerposted 12 years ago

   No "major power" will become serious toward addressing this issue until their people demand it.

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   chef-de-jourposted 12 years ago

   Most major powers - the top 10 on the economic scale - are not truly serious about global warming. The USA has consistently failed to ratify the Kyoto agreement for example with regards to reducing greenhouse gases. This is a disastrous position to take as a leading member of the UN. The only other countries not to ratify? Afghanistan, South Sudan and Andorra!! Why don't the USA ratify and take the lead in reducing these gases?
   One guess. Corporate America won't allow it. They have too much to lose profit-wise and the politicians hands are tied. Shocking.
   
   Whilst many countries do recognise the effects of global warming and have put in place measures to counteract production of these gases emissions are still rising. The burning of wood, coal, oil and natural gas won't stop within a life span so expect the rise to continue.
   
   The only way things are going to change for the better is if:
   
   a) billions of dollars are spent developing carbon capture technologies and investing in sustainable energy projects over the next generation.
   
   b) Mother Nature decides enough is enough and goes to war with humankind.
   
   You can bet your last penny that if Nature started to seriously undermine the profits of big business, governments would be running around like mad people throwing money at a) and telling us all to change our lifestyles, from that of the sleepwalking consumer to that of the happy Zen poet, content with next to nothing.
   
   In the meantime Mother Nature gives not a fig. She'll react in her own spectacular way until something gets done and we find an alternative to fossil fuels.

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   alloporusposted 12 years ago

   Clearly not. The collective economic pain is still too far away for a decision brave enough to really tackle the problem. 
   
   Then there is the reality that we cannot fix climate change, only adapt to it. This is more troubling to governments than economic pain. If there is doubt that a policy will fix the problem then it will have trouble passing through any democratic process. 
   
   I suspect we are stuck. The chosen policy frame of emission reduction does not deliver the quick fix and so has stalled. Alternative policy options [around adaptation] is about accepting we have problems with climate we cannot fix but must accept as a challenge.

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   LandmarkWealthposted 12 years ago

   The issue is not serious because there is no agreed upon proof that humans have any significant impact on the change in the climate.  It was only about 35 years ago that the scientific concensus was that we were facing the coming ice age.  At the time climatologist wished to melt the polar ice caps on purpose to deal with this coming ice age.  See the Newsweek text here from the 1975 article.
   
   http://www.denisdutton.com/cooling_world.htm
   
   The reality is that there are still thousands of people in the scientific field who still don't think humans have any significant impact.  So if that is the case, than policy is irrelevant.  As for me, I am not a scientist.  However, scientist generally seem to agree that one of the warmest period in earths history with the highest CO2 levels and highest sea levels was the cretaceous period.  Yet this was long before mans time while dinosaurs walked the earth.  And the place where I live today, Long Island NY was once a sheet of ice long before the invention of fossil fuels as an energy source.  All this makes it difficult to be overly concerned with this issue, when the same experts where so far off just a few decades ago while they were spreading the panic about the coming Ice Age.  Too many people are too young to remember that first it was an Ice Age, then Global Warming.  Finally we settled on climate change.  As to suggest the climate hasn't been in a constant state of volatile change for billions of years.

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   greenchaposted 11 years ago

   NO-They generally only worried about their bank balances,

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