Time runs out for climate

In Alaska climate change is happening at such an expedited rate there is no transition period, Greenpeace’s George Pletnikoff told New Europe on 23 October from Anchorage. “There is no transition period. We don’t have time to make the transition and adapt quickly enough to the changes,” he said.
Pletnikoff called for a world-wide ban on exploration and drilling for fossil fuels in the poles. He said it is not too late for action. “What we have to do is fulfill a limit on oil and gas exploration in the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans,” he said. ”The region is in dire straits and in need for humanity’s respect and protection. If we don’t do that then we will have destroyed the world’s oceans and that’s our legacy,” he said by phone.
Pletnikoff, a senior oceans campaigner with Greenpeace who grew up on St. George Island in the Bering Sea, has experienced first hand the devastating effects of climate change.
“Some of our villages are being flooded because of the rise of the ocean’s waters; some of them are being destroyed by coastal erosion caused by the lack of sea cliffs that work as the buffer zone between the ocean and the land,” Pletnikoff said. He explained that sea cliffs work as a breakwater, limiting the amount of the destructive erosion caused by the ocean and the waves.
“We’re seeing our foods moving further and further away from our homes. It’s more difficult to capture food for our nutritional needs; we’re seeing ice that is causing habitat loss for polar bears and seals that need ice for their survival. We’re seeing stress amongst Alaskan native peoples who have survived in this environment for over 10,000 years, our cultures are being eroded and our homes are being destroyed and there is nothing we can do,” he said.
Worried over the possibility of failure in the Copenhagen climate change summit in December, Pletnikoff urged more commitments from world leaders to cut C02 emissions. “It has to be brought down more. It’s a very difficult issue because you’re talking about developed and undeveloped nations. How we define what’s developed? It’s a difficult issue, but CO2 emissions have to be brought down. If that’s not done, then everything else that we’re going to do to deal with climate change is not going to be effective,” the Greenpeace campaigner said.
His comments come just two days after EU environmental ministers have agreed to a set of demands for the upcoming United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen. The agreement commits the EU to cutting its emissions of greenhouse gases by 80-95% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels, as recommended by UN experts. But that pledge will only hold if other developed economies make similar efforts, since it is in the context of necessary reductions by developed countries as a group.  It also commits the EU to pushing for global emissions limits on airlines and shipping companies of 10% and 20% respectively below 2005 levels.
The agreement stresses that the EU is not planning to bring in unilateral limits on the two sectors, since its stance is only for negotiating purposes and any agreement should be enforced globally, in a manner that ensures a level playing field.
“The EU will maintain its leadership role in the world” because of the agreement, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said. Swedish Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren, who brokered it as current holder of the EU’s rotating presidency, agreed. The deal “makes us the key to reaching an agreement in Copenhagen,” he said.
The agreement also puts off a fight between Eastern and Western member states over the issue of up to $150 billion worth of emissions permits which Eastern states gained under the Kyoto Protocol. A row between Eastern and Western member states on 20 October deadlocked talks between finance ministers.
According to EU officials, former-Communist states such as Russia, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States currently hold between 7.5 billion and 10 billion AAUs, with an estimated market value of €75-100 billion ($112-150 billion). The EU’s eastern members are fighting for the right to sell the permits. But Western states say that using the permits would undo efforts to battle global warming because other governments would buy the permits and use them to pay fines for excess emissions, rather than trying to reduce their emissions.
As the December deadline nears, Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt on October 22 called on nations to “put national interests aside” in order to secure a global deal in Copenhagen.
As Greenpeace campaigner Pletnikoff pointedly told New Europe from Alaska if countries do not effectively cut CO2 emissions, “We’re just putting a band aid on the problem. It’ll get worse and worse until God knows what happens.”