Proposed emissions cuts aren't enough, U.N. says

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By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Promises by the U.S. and other industrialized countries to cut the emissions causing global warming are insufficient to avoid the worst effects of climate change, the United Nations climate chief said Wednesday.

The international climate talks, which begin Monday in Copenhagen, are a chance to "finally get climate change under control" and put all countries on a path of sustainable growth, said Yvo de Boer, the U.N. official overseeing the meeting.

However, De Boer said one of the main obstacles in the talks was that the emissions reductions offered by rich nations as a group "are not yet where science says they need to be if we're going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."

He urged the U.S. and other industrialized countries to consider increasing their emissions cuts, especially "if they're sure others are pulling their weight as well."

"Secondly, I think there is more that developing nations can do, especially the major developing countries, provided they feel rich nations are showing enough leadership," he said.

The U.N. climate chief said China was doing more than following a "business as usual" path of development, as some have suggested. China's agreement to reduce the growth of its emissions was significant because it amounted to about 25 percent of the reductions needed to stabilize emissions and thereby keeping warming in check.

China and the U.S., the biggest producers of global warming gases, could strengthen their offers, de Boer said. "For both of those countries, it's an opportunity to create a new perspective, new jobs, new growth and a new direction."

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The vast majority of scientists who've studied the climate judge that failure to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases quickly "is overwhelmingly likely to lead to changes in climate too extreme and too damaging to be adequately addressed by any adaptation measures that can be foreseen," Holdren said.

Jane Lubchenco, an environmental scientist and marine ecologist who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, gave a demonstration of one possible outcome.

Lubchenco showed a film clip of a living lentil-sized pteropod, a snail-like ocean creature that is also called the sea butterfly. The film then showed what happened to a pteropod shell that was placed in water as acidic as the oceans are expected to become in 2100 if carbon dioxide emissions continue unchecked. Over 45 days, the shell dissolved to nothing.

Pteropods are a primary food source for juvenile salmon, pollack and other fish.