U.N. report: Poor hit hardest by climate change

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Developed nations must immediately help fight global warming or the world will face catastrophic floods, droughts and other disasters, according to U.N. report released this week.

Exposed mud banks at a reservoir in Spain, November 2007.

The report said rich nations will need to provide $86 billion a year by 2015 to "strengthen the capacity of vulnerable people" to cope with climate-related risks.

"The scenario is that our generation will experience reversals on a grand scale in the areas of health, education and poverty. For the future there is real threat of ecological catastrophe," Kevin Watkins, the report's lead author, told reporters in Brasilia, the country's capital.

Half the cost, $44 billion, would go for "climate-proofing" developing nations' infrastructure, while $40 billion would help the poor cope with climate-related risks. The other $2 billion would go to strengthening responses to natural disasters, the report said.

The report said the United States and other rich nations should pay the biggest share.

The Bush administration said in a statement that one of its top priorities is "to alleviate poverty and spur economic growth in the developing world by modernizing energy services."

Rep. Ed Markey, chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said the report showed the importance of "America moving toward the goal of 80 percent cuts in heat-trapping emissions by the middle of this century."

"This report should give all leaders in Washington the moral imperative to back global warming action in Congress and in the White House," The Massachusetts Democrat said in a statement.

The nearly 400-page Human Development Report comes just a week before the world's nations convene in Bali, Indonesia, to negotiate a new climate treaty.

At the report's release ceremony, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called on rich nations to do their part.

"In Bali we are going to very seriously discuss the price rich countries have to pay so that poorer countries can preserve their forests," Silva said. "Because you're not going to convince a poor person in any country that he can't cut down a tree if he doesn't have the right to work and eat in exchange."

Brazil is home to around 70 percent of the Amazon rain forest -- the world's largest remaining tropical wilderness.

Scientists believe the rain forest can act as enormous sponge to soak up greenhouse gases, but deforestation and burning in the rain forest releases millions of tons of carbon into the air each year making Brazilian one of the leading emitters of greenhouse gases.

The report also found that increased energy efficiency, alternative fuels and even the reduction of trade barriers could go a long way toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The report suggested, among other measures, that a reduction of tariffs on Brazilian ethanol "would generate gains not just for Brazil, but for climate change mitigation."

Brazilian ethanol made from sugarcane is more efficient than the corn-based ethanol produced in the United States, but is subject high U.S. import taxes meant to protect American farmers.

"For Brazil to export ethanol, we have to pay an enormous tariff, almost twice the price, Silva said, adding the that oil producing countries pay no such taxes. "Where is the desire to depollute the planet. We could start taxing petroleum."

Without money from developed countries, the panel found, a warmer world "could stall and then reverse human development" in the countries where 2.6 billion people live on $2 a day or less.

Developed countries, meanwhile, are failing to meet their targets under the current climate treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, for cutting greenhouse gases by 2012, the report said. France, Germany, Japan and Britain have reduced their emissions somewhat, it said, but the European Union is falling short of its goal of a 20 percent cut by 2020.

Scientists have reported temperatures rose an average 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 100 years, bringing the prospect of a century of extreme weather, rising seas, widening drought and disease and harm to fisheries, forests and farmland.

"These impacts ... go unnoticed in financial markets and in the measurement of world gross domestic product," the panel's report said. "But increased exposure to drought, to more intense storms, to floods and environmental stress is holding back the efforts of the world's poor to build a better life for themselves and their children."

Olav Kjorven, head of the U.N. Development Program's bureau for development policy, said help is only natural "when we know that the frequency of droughts and floods is going up."

Because of global warming, he said, 600 million more people in sub-Saharan Africa will go hungry from collapsing agriculture, an extra 400 million people will be exposed to malaria and other diseases and an added 200 million will be flooded out of their homes.

"We're suggesting 1.6 percent of (global) GDP -- still very affordable," Kjorven said. "The countries of the world that are the principal culprits, if you wish, for creating this problem in the first place need to act strongly to safeguard the future of those that have done nothing to cause this problem but are the most vulnerable."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Experts promote the global warming diet

WASHINGTON (AP) -- America's obesity epidemic and global warming might not seem to have much in common. But public health experts suggest people can attack them both by cutting calories and carbon dioxide at the same time.

Cut calories and carbon dioxide emissions by walking instead of driving, say doctors and scientists.

How? Get out of your car and walk or bike half an hour a day instead of driving. And while you're at it, eat less red meat. That's how Americans can simultaneously save the planet and their health, say doctors and climate scientists.

The payoffs are huge, although unlikely to happen. One numbers-crunching scientist calculates that if all Americans between 10 and 74 walked just half an hour a day instead of driving, they would cut the annual U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, by 64 million tons.

About 6.5 billion gallons of gasoline would be saved. And Americans would also shed more than 3 billion pounds overall, according to these calculations.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering public promotion of the "co-benefits" of fighting global warming and obesity-related illnesses through everyday exercise, like walking to school or work, said Dr. Howard Frumkin, director of the CDC's National Center for Environmental Health.

"A simple intervention like walking to school is a climate change intervention, an obesity intervention, a diabetes intervention, a safety intervention," Frumkin told The Associated Press. "That's the sweet spot."

Climate change is a deadly and worsening public health issue, said Frumkin and other experts. The World Health Organization estimated that 160,000 people died in 2000 from malaria, diarrhea, malnutrition and drownings from floods -- problems that public health and climate scientists contend were worsened by global warming. Officials predict that in the future those numbers will be higher.

The American Public Health Association, which will highlight the health problems of global warming in April, is seeking to connect obesity and climate change solutions, said executive director Dr. Georges Benjamin.

"This may present the greatest public health opportunity that we've had in a century," said University of Wisconsin health sciences professor Dr. Jonathan Patz, president of the International Association for Ecology and Health.

The key is getting people out of the car, Patz and Frumkin told the public health association at its annual convention. Reducing car travel in favor of biking or walking would not only cut obesity and greenhouse gases, they said, it would also mean less smog, fewer deaths from car crashes, less osteoporosis, and even less depression since exercise helps beat the blues.

In a little-noticed scientific paper in 2005, Paul Higgins, a scientist and policy fellow with the American Meteorological Society, calculated specific savings from adopting federal government recommendations for half an hour a day of exercise instead of driving.

The average person walking half an hour a day would lose about 13 pounds a year. And if everyone did that instead of driving the same distance, the nation would burn a total of 10.5 trillion calories, according to the scientist, formerly with the University of California at Berkeley. At the same time, that would cut carbon dioxide emissions by about the same amount New Mexico produces, he said.

"The real bang for the buck in reducing greenhouse gas emissions was from the avoided health expenses of a sedentary lifestyle," said Higgins.

But it's not just getting out of the car that's needed, said Dr. Robert Lawrence of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. A diet shift away from heavy meat consumption would also go far, he said, because it takes much more energy and land to produce meat than fruits, vegetables and grains.

Recent studies support that argument. Last year the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization reported that the meat sector of the global economy is responsible for 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Much of that is indirect, including the fertilizer needed to grow massive amounts of feed for livestock, energy use in the whole growing process, methane released from fertilizer and animal manure, and transportation of the cattle and meat products.

Similar calculations were made in a study in September in the medical journal Lancet.

The average American man eats 1.6 times as much meat as the government recommends, Lawrence said. Some studies have shown eating a lot of red meat is linked to a higher risk for colon cancer.

As for fighting obesity and global warming by walking and cycling, don't expect people to do it easily, said Kristie Ebi. She's a Virginia public health consultant and one of the lead authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.

Citing the decades-long effort to curb smoking, she said, "It turns out changing people's habits is very hard."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Bloomberg pushes carbon tax

SEATTLE, Washington (AP) -- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed a national "pollution pricing" plan Friday that would tax companies directly for the greenhouse gases they release.

Bloomberg in Seattle: His carbon emissions tax plan is similar to a Democratic presidential candidate's.

"If you really want to reduce carbon emissions, tax carbon at the source, which would mean at the mine head, at the oil well, whatever," Bloomberg told more than 100 other mayors at a climate summit sponsored by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Bloomberg suggested a fee of $15 for every ton of greenhouse gas companies emit, with the money used to reduce payroll taxes and finance tax credits for companies that reduce their greenhouse gas pollution.

Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane trap the sun's energy, warming the Earth's surface and lower atmosphere.

Bloomberg's plan is similar to one already proposed by Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut.

Bloomberg said the voluntary and unenforceable emissions targets favored by U.S. President George W. Bush are "like voluntary speed limits -- doomed to fail."

He also said another carbon-reduction approach known as cap-and-trade, which many Democratic candidates have endorsed, is a flawed solution and could create bidding wars.

Under cap-and-trade, power plants or businesses that exceed pollution caps must buy or trade for additional allowances, usually from others that have been able to cut their emissions.

Tony Kreindler, a spokesman for Environmental Defense, said it would be tough to push a carbon tax through Congress and it would not guarantee the same benefits as cap-and-trade.

"It's not a baseless solution, but when it comes to fixing climate change, by far the best option is cap-and-trade," Kreindler said.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Greenland's ice sheet melts as temperatures rise

ILULISSAT, Greenland (CNN) -- From the air, Greenland's ice sheet, the second largest on Earth, appears to be perfectly still.

A boat sails by an iceberg floating in the Jacobshavn Bay near the town of Ilulissat, Greenland.

But below the surface, the ice sheet is in constant motion, as ice built up in the interior pushes toward the coast in the form of massive glaciers. During warmer months, ice from these glaciers melts into the ocean.

It's an age-old process that scientists say has sped up in recent decades because of global warming.

The fear is that melting ice from Greenland and other Arctic areas could cause sea levels to rise enough to flood low-lying cities, such as Shanghai, China, and New York City, displacing millions of people in the process.

A recent report from the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made up of scientists from around the world, estimates the sea level rise by 2100 could be as much as 1 feet.

"That sea level rise is only based on melt from ice sheets, and does not include a new fast flow of ice we have detected in Greenland that is generating additional icebergs," said Dr. Konrad Steffen, a climate scientist with the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Steffen estimates sea levels could rise three feet over the next century, a stark prediction that could wreak havoc around the world if it comes to pass. Greenland holds enough ice to cause sea levels to rise 23 feet if the entire ice sheet melted, a development few scientists expect to happen anytime soon. But global sea levels have been rising at the rate of three millimeters per year since 1993.

For each of the past 17 years, Steffen has spent one month at a remote research site called Swiss Camp, located 300 miles north of the Arctic Circle in Greenland. He monitors the changing ice sheet through a network of global positioning systems and weather stations, which have recorded a dramatic rise in temperatures since the mid-1990s.

"When we came here in 1990, the first two, three years were actually colder than normal. Then in 1994, 1995, it started to warm steadily and since then, we've had a temperature increase during the winter months of 4.5 degrees centigrade, 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit, which is very large, the largest temperature increase on earth," he said.

The rising temperatures feed what scientists call a "positive feedback loop." As the air warms, it melts ice on the sea and snow on land. This exposes more water and land to the sun. Those surfaces in turn absorb more of the sun's heat, leading to more snow melt and ice melt.

"When you look at our satellite analysis, we can see the melt area of Greenland over 30 years has increased by 30 percent," Steffen said.

Despite all the changes in Greenland, this is not the first time temperatures have risen on the world's largest island. During the 1920s and 1930s, there was a significant warming trend that occurred without the level of man-made greenhouse gases recorded in our atmosphere today. The majority of scientists say greenhouse gases are the chief cause of global warming.

The fact Greenland has warmed before leads some scientists to question how worried we should be about the current warming trend. Dr. Patrick Michaels, a climatologist, is part of a small group of climate change skeptics. He said Greenland's warm past didn't cause the ice sheet to disappear.

"Well, this happened for 50 years in the early 20th century, and it happened for a millennium after the end of the last ice age," he said. "And the ice didn't shed off it."

But Dr. Jay Zwally, a climate scientist with NASA, said he thinks the latest trend is different.

"The current warming trend in Greenland is very extensive and is not likely to be explained by natural variability alone," he said. Zwally said the warming is consistent with scientific predictions about the effects of man-made greenhouse gases.

Last year, satellite data collected by NASA scientists revealed Greenland is losing 100 billion tons of ice each year, more than it is gaining from snowfall in the interior. Steffen and others have also detected a new, faster movement of the ice sheet, causing the glaciers to dump more ice into the ocean, where it melts and contributes to sea-level rise.

Part of this faster flow is caused by moulins, deep holes in the ice sheet that allow water to flow beneath the surface.

"During the summer months, as the ice sheet melts, large running rivers of melt water snake down through the ice, to the bedrock base below," Steffen said.

Last year, researchers lowered a camera into a moulin to explore the depth and flow of the melt water. Once the melt water from the surface reaches the bedrock below the ice, it can lift the ice sheet and provide a layer of viscosity for the ice to move faster toward the sea, a process that could accelerate as Greenland continues to warm.

Steffen hopes his prediction of a three-foot rise in global sea level by 2100 won't become a reality. But he warned that even if we are able to reduce the world's carbon output from cars and power plants, it will take a long time for Earth's climate to stop warming and seas to stop rising.

"Even if we reduce our carbon dioxide output, the climate will continue to warm," he said. "So even by stopping the increase of carbon dioxide today, we will have a warming, we will have sea level increase."

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