Fwd: [CAN-talk] AFP: World's newspapers unite to urge climate changeaction (NWF)

[Kassie Rohrbach]

On Mon, Dec 7, 2009 at 8:36 AM, Kassie Rohrbach <Rohr...@nwf.org> wrote:Date: Mon, 07 Dec 2009

FYI!

>>> Fred Heutte <ph...@sunlightdata.com> 12/6/2009 7:27 PM >>>
World's newspapers unite to urge climate change action

(AFP) – 2 hours ago

LONDON — Newspapers in 45 countries will implore Monday world leaders to
take decisive action at the Copenhagen climate change talks, warning
failure will bring calamity, the London-based Guardian said.

Fifty six newspapers, including Le Monde in France, the Miami Herald in the
US and the Gulf Times in Qatar, will publish the same editorial warning
climate change will "ravage our planet" unless action is agreed, it said
Sunday.

"We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen
not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to
seize opportunity from the greatest failure of modern politics," it said.

Many of the newspapers will take the unusual step of publishing the
editorial on the front page of their Monday editions, the Guardian said,
featuring the piece on its website.

The editorial, to be published in 20 languages including Chinese, Russian
and Arabic, has been thrashed out by newspaper editors for more than a
month ahead of the UN crunch talks starting Monday, the paper said.

The facts behind climate change are clear, despite a recent row over leaked
emails from a key climate research unit in Britain, the editorial said.

The leaks sparked claims scientists were trying to suppress data which did
not support the view that temperatures are rising.

"In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to
blame, but how little time we have left to limit the damage."

"Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted."

Leaders must agree to take action to limit temperature rises to 2.0 degrees
Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), warning that commitments so far would see
temperatures hit an unacceptable level of 3.5 C (6.3 F), it said.

"Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage out
planet, and with it our prosperity and security."

The newspapers range from Italy's La Repubblica and Politiken in Denmark to
The Cambodia Daily, the Irish Times and the Toronto Star.

The crunch conference gathers 192 nations under the flag of the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The goal is to deliver an accord that will ratchet up efforts against
climate change, driven by uncontrolled emissions of heat-trapping carbon
gases from fossil fuels.

-------------------------

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/06/copenhagen-editorial

'Fourteen days to seal history's judgment on this generation'

Editorial

The Guardian, Monday 7 December 2009

Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking
with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces
a profound emergency.

Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our
planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been
becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11
of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is
melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of
future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether
humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the
damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted.

Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will
endure for all time and our prospects of taming it will be determined in
the next 14 days. We call on the representatives of the 192 countries
gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to
blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure
of politics. This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor
world, or between east and west. Climate change affects everyone, and must
be solved by everyone.

The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take
steps to limit temperature rises to 2C, an aim that will require global
emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger
rise of 3-4C — the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow
inaction — would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of
all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be
displaced, whole nations drowned by the sea. The controversy over emails by
British researchers that suggest they tried to suppress inconvenient data
has muddied the waters but failed to dent the mass of evidence on which
these predictions are based.

Few believe that Copenhagen can any longer produce a fully polished treaty;
real progress towards one could only begin with the arrival of President
Obama in the White House and the reversal of years of US obstructionism.
Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics,
for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US
Congress has done so.

But the politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements
of a fair and effective deal and, crucially, a firm timetable for turning
it into a treaty. Next June's UN climate meeting in Bonn should be their
deadline. As one negotiator put it: "We can go into extra time but we can't
afford a replay."

At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the
developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate change will be
divided — and how we will share a newly precious resource: the trillion or
so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous
levels.

Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no
solution until developing giants such as China take more radical steps than
they have so far. But the rich world is responsible for most of the
accumulated carbon in the atmosphere – three-quarters of all carbon dioxide
emitted since 1850. It must now take a lead, and every developed country
must commit to deep cuts which will reduce their emissions within a decade
to very substantially less than their 1990 level.

Developing countries can point out they did not cause the bulk of the
problem, and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest
hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge
meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Though both fell short of
what some had hoped for, the recent commitments to emissions targets by the
world's biggest polluters, the United States and China, were important
steps in the right direction.

Social justice demands that the industrialised world digs deep into its
pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change,
and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing
their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must also be pinned
down – with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting
forests, and the credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the
burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce
polluting products and those who consume them. And fairness requires that
the burden placed on individual developed countries should take into
account their ability to bear it; for instance newer EU members, often much
poorer than "old Europe", must not suffer more than their richer partners.

The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for
bailing out global finance — and far less costly than the consequences of
doing nothing.

Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our
lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the
airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more
intelligently. We will have to pay more for our energy, and use less of it.

But the shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more
opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that
embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality
lives. The flow of capital tells its own story: last year for the first
time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing
electricity from fossil fuels.

Kicking our carbon habit within a few short decades will require a feat of
engineering and innovation to match anything in our history. But whereas
putting a man on the moon or splitting the atom were born of conflict and
competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative
effort to achieve collective salvation.

Overcoming climate change will take a triumph of optimism over pessimism,
of vision over short-sightedness, of what Abraham Lincoln called "the
better angels of our nature".

It is in that spirit that 56 newspapers from around the world have united
behind this editorial. If we, with such different national and political
perspectives, can agree on what must be done then surely our leaders can
too.

The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on
this generation: one that saw a challenge and rose to it, or one so stupid
that we saw calamity coming but did nothing to avert it. We implore them to
make the right choice.


This editorial will be published tomorrow by 56 newspapers around the world
in 20 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Russian. The text was drafted
by a Guardian team during more than a month of consultations with editors
from more than 20 of the papers involved. Like the Guardian most of the
newspapers have taken the unusual step of featuring the editorial on their
front page.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/06/papers-copenhagen-leader

Asia: 16 papers from 13 countries and regions

Economic Observer, China Chinese
Southern Metropolitan, China Chinese
CommonWealth Magazine, Taiwan English
Joongang Ilbo, South Korea Korean
Tuoitre, Vietnam Vietnamese
Brunei Times, Brunei English
Jakarta Globe, Indonesia English
Cambodia Daily, Cambodia English
The Hindu, India English
The Daily Star, Bangladesh English
The News, Pakistan English
Daily Times, Pakistan English
Gulf News, Dubai English
An Nahar, Lebanon Arabic
Gulf Times, Qatar English
Maariv, Israel Hebrew

Europe – 20 papers from 17 countries

Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany German
Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland Polish
Der Standard, Austria German
Delo, Slovenia Slovene
Vecer, Slovenia Slovene
Dagbladet Information, Denmark Danish
Politiken, Denmark Danish
Dagbladet, Norway Norwegian
The Guardian, UK English
Le Monde, France French
Libération, France French
La Reppublica, Italy Italian
El Pais, Spain Spanish
De Volkskrant, Netherlands Dutch
Kathimerini, Greece Greek
Publico, Portugal Portuguese
Hurriyet, Turkey Turkish
Novaya Gazeta, Russia Russian
Irish Times, Ireland English
Le Temps, Switzerland French

Africa - 11 papers from eight countries

The Star, Kenya English
Daily Monitor, Uganda English
The New Vision, Uganda English
Zimbabwe Independent, Zimbabwe English
The New Times, Rwanda English
The Citizen, Tanzania English
Al Shorouk, Egypt Arabic
Botswana Guardian, Botswana English
Mail & Guardian, South Africa English
Business Day, South Africa English
Cape Argus, South Africa English

North and Central America - six papers from five countries

Toronto Star, Canada English
Miami Herald, USA English
El Nuevo Herald, USA Spanish
Jamaica Observer, Jamaica English
La Brujula Semanal, Nicaragua Spanish
El Universal, Mexico Spanish

South America – three papers from two countries

Zero Hora, Brazil Portuguese
Diario Catarinense, Brazil Portuguese
Diaro Clarin, Argentina Spanish

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Kassie Rohrbach
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415-290-0129 (c) / 510-922-9656 (o)
http://fairclimateproject.org/
http://forestjustice.org/