The time bomb is ticking
While the rest of the developed world takes action to fight climate change, Australia and the US are being left out in the cold, writes Wendy Frew.Australia's federal Environment Minister, Ian Campbell, was holed up in snowy Montreal, where temperatures hovered around minus 10 degrees.
With freezing conditions outside, Campbell joined about 10,000 representatives from nearly 200 countries who had gathered in Montreal for the largest meeting on climate change since the United Nations Kyoto meeting eight years ago. The Montreal conference coincided with the release of a new report based on data from the United States Government and the World Meteorological Organisation, claiming 2005 would enter the history books as the hottest, stormiest and driest year on record, characterised by extreme weather, accelerated Arctic melting and the warmest Caribbean waters. The implications of this rapid change in global weather patterns were underlined by another report, from insurer Munich Re, that showed this year has recorded the largest financial losses ever as a result of weather-related natural disasters, more than $US200 billion ($267 billion) compared with the previous record of $US145 billion last year.
In the words of the British Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, so many people from so many countries persevered with long and hard-fought negotiations at the Montreal meeting "because the debate itself is changing on the costs and benefits of climate change. "There is growing recognition of the costs of not taking action, and of the opportunities that come with taking action itself," she told the conference.
No comments:
Post a Comment