Ironically, the international community is awake and motivated to come to grips with the Global Warming crisis, and the US political power establishment, the US media monopolies and the US electorate is still in denial -- AND YET, it is the US economy that has been hit hardest (already) by Global Warming...Who will show the political courage that Clinton-Gore demonstrated on this national security threat?
Agence France Press: The biggest single insured loss was in the US, where tornado damage in the Midwest cost insurers US$3 billion, according to the figures, released by the UN Environment Program. "Climate change is not a prognosis, it is a reality that is and will increasingly bring human suffering and economic hardship," said program chief Klaus Toepfer.
Save the Environment, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2003/12/12/2003079269
Global warming is here now, say delegates
FRAGILE PLANET: Both developed and developing countries were already suffering from the greenhouse effect, conference delegates said, pointing to financial losses
AFP , MILAN
Friday, Dec 12, 2003,Page 7
Leaders at a UN conference on climate change, backed
by fresh data from the insurance industry, said on
Wednesday that global warming was already kicking in,
years ahead of most scientific predictions.
But the vehicle designed to combat the threat, the
Kyoto Protocol, remained deep in the mire, awaiting a
clear sign from Russia that it would transform the
draft deal into an international treaty to cut
greenhouse-gas pollution.
The meeting of environment ministers, gathered under
the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC), heard many delegates say the flurry of
droughts, storms and floods of the past few years
pointed to a planetary weather system that was already
being disrupted.
"Climate change is already having an impact on
mankind, especially in developing countries," said
chief Chinese delegate Liu Jiang, whose country was
hit by catastrophic flooding this year.
"The effects of climate change are already evident,"
said Environment Minister Altero Matteoli of Italy,
current chairman of the EU, which in 2003 suffered its
hottest summer on record.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in an address read to
the meeting, also suggested the first impacts of
global warming could be felt today.
"The heightened frequency and intensity of extreme
weather events and associated natural disasters that
we have seen in recent years -- such as the serious
droughts this summer in India and Europe, and the
storms that devastated parts of North America -- is
consistent with this conclusion," Annan said.
"There is growing concern that this trend is likely to
continue," he said.
According to details from an annual estimate compiled
by re-insurance giant Munich Re, natural disasters,
most of them caused by extreme weather, cost the world
more than US$60 billion this year, up from $55 billion
last year.
Europe's heatwave was the biggest single item, at
US$10 billion in agricultural losses alone, while
flooding on China's Huai and Yangtze rivers cost US$8
billion.
The biggest single insured loss was in the US, where
tornado damage in the Midwest cost insurers US$3
billion, according to the figures, released by the UN
Environment Program.
"Climate change is not a prognosis, it is a reality
that is and will increasingly bring human suffering
and economic hardship," said program chief Klaus
Toepfer.
Evidence that the uncontrol-led burning of fossil
fuels is trapping solar heat, creating the
"greenhouse" effect, has progressively strengthened
over the past decade.
But when, where and how bad the impact would be on the
planet's fragile climate system were unknowns,
according to the usual scientific consensus.
Most projections suggested the first could be felt
perhaps a decade or more from now.
In the past few years, though, more and more
scientists have come to embrace the view that climate
change may have already started.
Others remain unconvinced, insisting that longer-term
data is needed and pointing out that ever-higher
losses can also derive from building more homes in
places exposed to natural disasters.
As for the Kyoto Protocol, Russia on Wednesday left
ministers wondering whether, as it has promised, it
will ratify the pact, therefore pushing it over a
threshold that will turn it into an international
treaty.
Russian delegation chief Aleksander Bedritsky called
for "coordinated efforts from all the international
community" to combat climate change, but made no
reference at all to ratification.
Green groups were outraged that Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi, busy with preparing an EU summit,
failed to show up to give the flagging protocol a
vital push.