DELEGATES ARRIVING for the second last day of UN climate change talks here yesterday were greeted by the deafening sound of a siren erected by Greenpeace as a “climate alarm” aimed at waking them up from “sleepwalking their way to catastrophe”.
Martin Kaiser of Greenpeace International identified the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand as “a group of countries which clearly have absolutely no intention of saving the planet from dangerous climate change” at the Copenhagen summit in December.
“As it stands, the combined average target for the developed world amounts to greenhouse gas emission cuts of around a mere 8-15 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020,” he said. According to the UN’s scientists, cuts of between 25 and 40 per cent are needed.
Mr Kaiser noted that Japan has offered to cut its emissions by only 8 per cent, New Zealand has yet to make any commitment, Canada’s emissions are likely to increase, Australia will only act if others do and “the US is dragging its feet, with a paltry 4 per cent cut”.
These countries were “gambling with gigantic consequences which, if triggered, cannot be reversed with all the money in the world”, he said.
“Yet we are seeing none of the same urgency or seriousness with which the world has treated the global economic crisis.”
Young Friends of the Earth Europe yesterday produced a “school report” for various states, failing Australia for being “lazy pupils”, Canada for “poor comprehension”, the US for “irresponsible behaviour” and Japan for being “very bad in mathematics”.
In a positive move this week, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told Reuters in an interview that Brazil was open to adopting targets to cut its greenhouse gas emissions if rich countries agreed to do more to curb climate change.
Mr Lula said he would veto clauses in an Amazon land reform Bill that would legalise the landholdings of millions of people who have settled – a move that could spur more deforestation. “We want to be an example to the world in taking care of our own things,” he said.
This followed an undercover investigation by Greenpeace into Brazil’s booming cattle industry, which found it had become the world’s largest cause of rainforest deforestation and that leading food, sports and fashion brands were complicit in this “environmental crime”. The Greenpeace report, Slaughtering the Amazon, traced beef, leather and other cattle products from ranches involved in illegal deforestation to supply chains of brands such as Adidas, Reebok, Nike, Carrefour, Eurostar, Gucci, Ikea, Kraft, Timberland and Tesco.
Tropical deforestation accounts for about 20 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – more than the world’s entire transport sector – and finding ways to halt it, with the injection of substantial aid, is likely to be one of the linchpins of any deal in Copenhagen.
To remind delegates that ice is melting at an alarming rate in the Arctic and Antarctic, Greenpeace has a bedraggled-looking homeless Polar bear dummy in the lobby of the Hotel Maritim conference centre. “No coins please – it’s change I need,” his sign says.