The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico started on 29th November, 2010 with calls for commitment and compromise, as per a Press Release, issued by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
As per the Press Release, Mexican President Felipe Calderón cited last year’s hurricane in Mexico, this year’s floods in Pakistan and fires in Russia as examples of increasing incidences of natural disasters brought about by climate change and already affecting the poorest and most vulnerable.
“Climate change is an issue that affects life on a planetary scale”, he said.
Carbon dioxide is not the only kind of pollution that contributes to global warming. Other potent warming agents include three short-lived gases — methane, some hydrofluorocarbons and lower atmospheric ozone — and dark soot particles. The warming effect of these pollutants, which stay in the atmosphere for several days to about a decade is already about 80 percent of the amount that carbon dioxide causes, as per the New York times.
Veerabhadran Ramanathan, professor of atmospheric physics at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and David G. Victor, professor at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego, writing in The New York Times say from a political point of view, the most appealing greenhouse emissions to reduce are ozone and soot, because they contribute so much to local air pollution. After all, people everywhere care about the quality of the air they breathe and see — even if most of them are not yet very worried about global warming. A desire to clean up the air is a rare point of commonality between developing and industrialized nations.
Energy poverty alleviation will come into play to decide the strategies to slow global warming. The opportunities to reduce black carbon emissions will be discussed. The emissions come mostly from the inefficient and incomplete burning of biomass and unimproved diesel engine emissions, as per the Charcoal Project.
In the course of 2010, all 37 industrialised nations and 42 developing countries, including the largest emerging economies, submitted targets and voluntary actions to reduce or limit greenhouse gas emissions, as per the Press Release.
Photo courtesy: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
