History Climate Change

Today, the world’s energy supply is largely based on fossil fuels and nuclear power. These sources of energy will not last forever and have proven to be contributors to our environmental problems. The environmental impacts of energy use are not new but they are increasingly well known; they range from deforestation to local and global pollution.

In less than three centuries since the industrial revolution, mankind has already burned roughly half of the fossil fuels that accumulated under the earth’s surface over hundreds of millions of years. Nuclear power is also based on a limited resource (uranium) and the use of nuclear power creates such incalculable risks that nuclear power plants cannot be insured.

Renewable energy sources can help improve the competitiveness of industries over the long run and have a positive impact on regional development and employment. Renewable energy technologies are suitable for off-grid services, serving those in remote areas of the world without requiring expensive and complicated grid infrastructure.

There is no real alternative. Mankind cannot indefinitely continue to base its life on the consumption of finite energy resources.

History Climate Change

The concept of Greenhouse Gases Emissions originated even before the well known 1996 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro which was unprecedented for a UN conference, in terms of both its size and the scope of its concerns. Twenty years after the first global environment conference (UN Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm (1972), the UN sought to help Government leaders rethink economic development and find ways to halt the destruction of irreplaceable natural resources and pollution of the planet.

History Climate Change

The Summit’s message — that nothing less than a transformation of our attitudes and world wide behaviour would bring about the necessary changes — Governments recognized the need to redirect international and national plans and policies to ensure that all economic decisions fully took into account any environmental impact. And the message has produced results, making eco-efficiency a guiding principle for business and governments alike. Patterns of
production — particularly the production of toxic components, such as lead in gasoline, or poisonous waste — have been scrutinized in a systematic manner by the UN and Governments alike; Alternative sources of energy started to be sought to replace the use of dirty fossil fuels which are linked to global climate change; New reliance on public transportation systems has been emphasized in order to reduce vehicle emissions, congestion in cities and the health
problems caused by polluted air and smog,

History Climate Change

Efforts to ensure its proper implementation continue, and the Kyoto Protocol followed in 1997 to actually commit governments to the programme. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels
over the five-year period 2008-2012.

History Climate Change

The major distinction between the Protocol and the Convention is that while the United Nations Framework Convention encouraged industrialized countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Kyoto Protocol commits them to do so. Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity, the Protocol places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.”

History Climate Change

2005

In January 2005 the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading System (EU ETS) commenced operation as the largest multi-country, multi-sector Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading System world-wide.

2009

The Australian Government failed in its attempt to establish a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme during 2009 as part of an effective framework for meeting the climate change challenge.

The American government is also establishing the American Clean Energy and Security Act. President Obama said that the Bill will make the United States a leader in clean energy technology and help create millions of jobs in solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen COP-15, 7-18 December 2009 failed to reach agreement on ground-breaking outcomes to supersede the Kyoto Protocol.  All countries would like to avoid the consequences of atmospheric warming, but they would also like someone else to pay the costs of addressing it.

2010

There is still no consensus on the best way to proceed: some states favor “cap and trade” systems while other prefer a straightforward “carbon tax.” Finally, the main polluters are in very different economic circumstances; the developed world created the problem but now wants to get rising powers like China and India to undertake potentially costly measures that could slow their own growth.