26/10/2004

Russia Ratifies

In a massive blow to Esso and Bush who have both tried to undermine the treaty, the Russian parliament (the Duma) have now voted to ratify the Kyoto Protocol

Kyoto coming to force is a geopolitical ground shift. Russian ratification pushes this global climate protection agreement over the threshold required for it to become international law.

The Bush administration (and their largest single share of the globe's greenhouse gas emissions) are being left behind as the responsible governments of the world face up to climate change.

Dangerous climate change

But is Kyoto enough? The goal of the international climate regime, as set out in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate-Change, is to "avoid dangerous climate change." Unfortunately, "dangerous" is in the eye of the beholder, or the victim.

To Pacific islanders whose homes are vanishing beneath the waves, to Arctic indigenous people whose way of life is being erased due to climate change, we have already crossed that threshold. The same could be said for devastated homeowners in the Caribbean, Florida and the recent victims of typhoons in Japan. The tens of thousands of people who died in the summer heat waves in Europe two years ago also probably thought it was a bit "dangerous."

What's another two degrees?

Scientists have drawn a line in the sand: a point at which the impacts of climate change become not just bad, but calamitous and in some cases irreversible.

They benchmark it at "2°Celsius global average temperature increase above pre-industrial levels." If we turned off the smokestacks today the greenhouse gases already loaded into the atmosphere would take us to 1.3°Celsius.

If global temperatures hit that barrier, it's bad news for all of us. It raises the likelihood of the complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, and possible collapse of the Amazon rainforest ecosystem. Tens of millions of people could suddenly be hungry, hundreds of millions would find themselves threatened with malaria in places where malaria has never previously occurred, millions could have their homes flooded and billions could be without fresh water.

"Already we are witnessing increased storms at sea and floods in our cities," Chief UK Scientist David King said recently. "Global warming will increase the level and frequency at which we experience heightened weather patterns."

"Kyoto is not enough, Kyoto is a beginning and it's a good process," he told the third Greenpeace Business lecture in London last week. "And what will be needed is once we've got the process up and running, it will need to be ratcheted up so that we can really bring emissions under control."

We believe that the world needs to bring total emissions back to 1990 levels by about 2020, then reduce them by 50 percent by mid-century. But even that may be too conservative a strategy if the recent unexplained spikes in carbon dioxide emissions continue for the next few years on trend. Now that we have the Protocol in place, the only question that remains is whether politicians can act faster than climate can change.

Take action

Fortunately, some in the US are breaking ranks with the Bush Administration's opposition to the treaty and Esso's corporate strategy of active lobbying to undermine it. Join them by boycotting Esso.

Send a message to Esso

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