[Attachment(s) from Ripan Biswas included below]
Dear Editor, Hope you are doing well and thanks for publishing my previous write ups. This is an article titled "Let put aside our differences at Copenhagen". I will be highly honoured if you publish this article. I apprecite your time to read this article. Thanks Have a nice time With Best Regards Ripan Kumar Biswas New York, U.S.A --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let put aside our differences at Copenhagen Ripan Kumar Biswas Ripan.Biswas@yahoo.com The other weekend I went to AMC theatre at times square, Manhattan, New York to watch director Roland Emmerich's sci-fi apocalypse movie "2012." The movie may end up being a cheesy or freaky movie or it makes a mockery of science as the world will not definitely end in 2012. But how far we are at the end of our beautiful planet as we are altering the environment far faster than the prediction of the consequences? Climate change is already affecting worldwide. People are living with the consequences of climate change- from the families of Bangladesh, who are forced to leave their flooded homes, to the women in parts of drought-hit Ethiopia, who are forced to walk miles after miles to collect water for their families. A one-meter sea level rise would submerge about one-third of Bangladesh's total area, uprooting 25-30 million people. By 2050, 70 million people of Bangladesh could be affected annually by floods and 8 million by drought, with increasingly intense cyclones hitting the coast. By 2020, some countries across Africa could see the yields from rain-fed agriculture fall by a half. As temperatures have increased by between 0.15 and 0.6 degrees Celsius each decade for the last 30 years, parts of the Himalayan glaciers, a 2,400-kilometre range that sweeps through Pakistan, India, China, Nepal and Bhutan, provide headwaters for Asia's nine largest rivers, lifelines for the 1.5 billion people who live downstream, could have disappeared by 2035. What makes the difference between the plot of 2012 movie and the real time facts and figures of damage from climate change as NASA predicts a sharp increase in the number of sunspots and sun flares in 2012, which is surely a cause for electrical failures and satellite disruptions? Around 15,000 delegates, environmentalists, business lobbyists, journalists and others are now in the huge convention center at Copenhagen, Denmark for the pivotal talks to discuss climate change and forge an action plan for the future, along with thousands more outside, arranging protests, street theater, and scholarly discussions. Millions both at Copenhagen and in the world are appealing to the world's leaders that the Earth's climate is the future of everyone and the future of everyone is now in their hand. "Dear leaders of the world, why waiting till tomorrow, if you can change the future today," Jan De Shutter from Belgium. "Dear leaders of the world, world is watching you and your decision impacts all," Prashant Yadav from India. "Dear leaders of the world, please remember that the Earth can live without us, but we can't live without the Earth," Kirsti Susanna Barrineau from the United States of America. And millions of people from Bangladesh and many small island states that could become submerged by rising sea level if world temperatures increase by another two degrees centigrade. "The world leaders are not just here to talk -- they are here to act," Lars Lokke Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark, said the audience during the opening ceremony of the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 on December 7, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. World leaders, Politicians and environmentalists including US and Chinese head of states meet for the conference that runs until December 18. Terming the conference an opportunity that the world shouldn't afford to miss, the conference president, Denmark's Connie Hedegaard, called it a last, but best chance. "If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then it's a failure that is not just about climate, it's the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of the century," she said. While thousands of proposals are struggling to narrow the score down to something playable, two important requirements must be fulfilled. Politicians, including heads of state, need to become more actively involved with specific declarations and plans about greenhouse-gas emissions. And developed countries need to come forward with specifics on finance. Primarily, whole world from Copenhagen conference is expecting individual countries' pledges of emission reductions, which should be incorporated in some final agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, whose modest emission cuts for 37 nations expire in 2012. 16 countries that together represent 85% of the global economy and 80% of global greenhouse-gas emissions are more or less responsible for rising temperature, according to the environment scientists. The European Union (EU) is expecting to slash ambitious 20 percent reduction in gases by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and 30 percent if other nations also aim high. Japan has offered a 25 percent cut against 1990, an almost 30 percent cut from 2005 levels, and Australia up to 25 percent. India offers a 20 percent to 25 percent slowdown in emissions growth. But according to the EU environment spokesman Andreas Carlgren and many others, the endgame in Copenhagen will mostly be on what will be delivered by the United States and China, the world's two biggest greenhouse-gas emitters. Before the conference, China said that it would reduce gases by 40 percent to 45 percent below "business as usual" — that is, judged against 2005 figures for energy used versus economic output by 2020 while White House officials promised to cut greenhouse gases to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 after eight years of inaction under the Bush administration. US's offer is provisional and a pending action in Congress and U.S. lawmakers will resist making cuts at home, fearing that new regulations will drive manufacturing jobs to cheaper markets such as China and India unless emerging countries including China and India agree to their own robust reductions and make movement toward a global agreement. On the other hand, without congressional action or at least the promise that a Senate bill will come soon, other countries will be unwilling to make their own reductions. China, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has long resisted adopting binding emissions limits. Similarly, in 1997, lawmakers in U.S voted to reject any international deal adapting any climate treaty that exempted developing nations. It was a vote that effectively killed U.S. participation in the Kyoto climate treaty. While China and the US is continuing their barbed exchange whether China is eligible or not for acquiring American public climate aid money as China is grouped together with the developing nations in the climate talks, the Copenhagen conference must have the sufficient amount in hand or have promise by the heads of developed states or respective authorities before they leave the podium as the lack of clarity on financing for tackling global warming in developing countries always holds back the process at climate negotiations. According to the United Nations, the private sector will need to provide more than 85 per cent of the roughly annual $200 billion investment required to help meet global carbon emission reduction needs in 2020. World Bank estimates developing countries need $75 billion to $100 billion per year over the next 40 years to adapt to climate change. On Thursday, December 3, 2009, EU declared to fund 7.2 billion euros (10.8 billion dollars) during the next three years that accounts for a third of the total 30 billion dollars that the UN estimates is needed for the current period. US President Barack Obama said last week that the US was ready to pay a fair share of that amount. Developed countries are expected to propose jump-start financing closer to $10 billion per year through 2012. More than 110 heads of state, including Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, US President Barack Obama, China's Premier Wen Jiabao, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the heads of the European Union, will attend the climax of the Copenhagen summit on December 18 with a common goal, a common interest--to save our beautiful planet. Let go off pride and status, let be humble enough to preserve Earth for our future generations. Let put aside our differences and join together for one of the greatest battles of our time. Saturday, December 11, 2009, New York Ripan Kumar Biswas is a freelance writer based in New York |
Attachment(s) from Ripan Biswas
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