Floods, heat waves, droughts and melting icebergs. Global warming presents one of the gravest challenges to face mankind in modern times, and while there is ongoing scientific debate over its cause, one factremains irrefutable: all nations will be affected by changing weather patterns. Cilmate change has been linked in part to carbon emissions produced by humans.
Cilmate change has been linked in part to carbon emillions of tons of carbon are released into the atmosphere , causing temperatures to rise, which in turn causes weather patterns to change. The solution, as widely prescribed by the scientific community, is to curb carbon emissions.
But this is easier said than done. Countries that emit the most crbon are also the most developed and are thus reluctant to commit to set targets.
The United States, which emits the greatest amount of carbon, has never agreed to the targets set out in the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 . The protocol calls for devel-oped nations to reduce emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels, without the developed world signing on, developing countries such as china, india and indonesia see no reason to invest in costly technology that can reduce carbon emissions.
In pact, they argue that since dveloped nations have historically been the biggest culprits of carbon emissions, developing countries should not have to curb their economic growth for the sake of the world at large.
This is a vexing issue and one that offers no easy solution. If nothing is done to curb carbon emissions, the world is looking at mutually assured destruction.
It is against this backdrop that we applaud president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's statment late last week that his government would not adhere to"business as usual" by continuing to emit huge amounts of carbon through deforestation. ....
Speaking at the G-20 summit in pittsburgh, Yudhoyono boldly showed developed nations the way forward by pleding to reduce the includes land use , change and better management of its tropical forests. He added that with international support, his govern-ment was confident of eventually reducing emissions by 41 percent.
While still considered a developing nation, indonesia is one of the world's larges contribu-tors to global warming because of massive deforestation and annual forest firest. Yudhoyono further underlined his government's commitment to changing the status of the country's forests from that of a net emitter to a net sink sector by 2030. ...[..]ebok premium download