Tiempo Climate Newswatch

"If you truly care about greenhouse gases, then you'll support nuclear power," George W Bush, president of the United States, announced ahead of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held last weekend in Sydney, Australia. "Nuclear is a dead end, high risk technology and the proposed research and development will not realize anything for decades. It represents a great missed opportunity for real action at APEC," responded Dave Sweeney for the Australian Conservation Foundation.

The APEC members, including both developed and developing nations, reached agreement on a statement on climate change. "The world needs to slow, stop and then reverse the growth of global greenhouse gas emissions," according to the Sydney Declaration. The Declaration sets a non-binding energy intensity target - an APEC-wide reduction of at least 25 per cent from the 2005 level by the year 2030 - while acknowledging the historic responsibility of the wealthier nations for the climate problem. It also includes a commitment to increase regional forest cover by at least 50 million acres by 2020. The statement affirms that climate change negotiations should take place under the auspices of the United Nations.

"Projected changes in future sea ice conditions, if realized, will result in loss of approximately two-thirds of the world's current polar bear population by the mid 21st century," according to a recent report. Polar bears could completely disappear along the north coasts of Alaska and Russia over the next 50 years.

"There is a definite link between changes in the sea ice and the welfare of polar bears," says the lead author of the new study, Steven Amstrup of the United States Geological Survey. "As the sea ice goes, so goes the polar bear." Polar bears use the sea ice as a platform from which to hunt their main food, seals. Along with other reports, the research has been submitted to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and will inform a forthcoming decision regarding whether or not to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

The latest round of negotiations regarding the future of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Vienna Climate Change Talks 2007, took place at the end of August. Parties agreed that the goal of global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels of 25 to 40 per cent by the year 2020, proposed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, provides "useful initial parameters for the overall level of ambition of further emissions reductions." The target could act as a guide for future discussions.

UNFCC executive secretary, Yvo de Boer, felt that the Vienna meeting had made significant progress. "Countries have been able to reassess the big picture of what is needed by identifying the key building blocks for an effective response to climate change," he said. "There is a consensus that the response needs to be global, with the involvement of all countries and that it needs to give equal importance to adaptation and mitigation."