The climate threat is perceived by the world’s environmental ministers as the world’s greatest environmental problem. The issue was raised in the 1980s by the so-called Brundlandt Commission, which presented its report in 1987, claiming that the rapidly increasing carbon dioxide emissions are causing it to get hotter in the world. In response to this, the United Nations Climate Convention was formed in 1992, which almost all countries in the world have agreed to.
Carbon dioxide emissions occur through the use of coal in large parts of the world as an energy source and through oil use in the transport sector in particular. A third source of emissions is deforestation. The forest binds carbon dioxide, and to the extent that rainforests have been cut down in recent decades, it has also contributed to increasing emissions.
Certainly, there are some who question climate research, especially in the United States. But it must be borne in mind that the IPCC organizing climate scientists is a very broad research association with about 3,000 researchers involved from all over the world. And you have to remember that all the leading science academies in the world are behind climate research, so there is no odd direction in science. After all, it was the Swedish researcher Arrhenius who pioneered more than 100 years ago in clarifying how it works with greenhouse gases and its composition in the atmosphere and how it affects the temperature.
However, it must be remembered that the IPCC texts have sometimes been interpreted. The IPCC expresses rather cautiously and moderately, pointing out the uncertainties in its findings. However, the texts have been used very politically and sometimes cited with a cross-security which is not found in the IPCC’s own texts of origin.
But no matter what you think of climate research, you still propose the right measures. Coal use is detrimental to the environment in many ways, if there should be no disagreement. And why in our generation should we plunder the planet on all oil and natural gas, finite resources. The use of oil also makes us dependent on a few individual dictatorships. Furthermore, deforestation is a tragedy for biodiversity, which we should cherish.
The climate issue is a unique environmental problem because it is not local but global, greenhouse gas emissions affect the atmosphere, and it does not matter where in the world the emissions are made. That is why the issue becomes so difficult politically. After all, the UN Climate Conferences and the Kyoto Protocol are about countries having to settle and take common ground when it comes to reducing emissions.
China has now stepped up and gone about the United States as the largest greenhouse gas emitter. The United States requires China to reduce its emissions in order to reduce its emissions. China claims that their per capita emissions are still lower than in the western world. The EU cannot agree to reduce its emissions too much unless the US and China are allowed to reduce emissions.
At the UN Climate Conference in Durban, at least, it has been agreed to start new global climate negotiations next year, with the ambition to have new global rules of play on this issue by 2015.
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