G8 emissions cut target 'unacceptable': Medvedev aide

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btw wrote:

Devlopmant requires "cheap" energy Asia knows Green Energy is "Expensive" energy. Cap n Trade makes energy EXPENSIVE . Thus a non starter !!!!
China, India etc.. they have 100s of million people to pull out of real poverty ,WHY would they want this ? Why will they NOT use the plenty of cheap coal they have ?

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btw wrote:

China, India etc.. they have 100s of million people to pull out of real poverty ,WHY would they want this ? Why will they NOT use the plenty of cheap coal they have ?

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humm wrote:

Cheap coal produces cheap "Electricity" that is used every place includeing heavy industry.

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MattJ wrote:

<quoted text>
But it is only 'cheap' if the coal companies don't have to pay the full cost of mining and using it. If they did, they would no longer call it 'cheap'.
But as it is, it is the powerless who have to pay the rest of the cost, and they pay dearly for it. Think of the high incidence of coal-caused illnesses in Appalachia as an example (http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/007/ca... ).

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Brian_G wrote:

There is no perfect world, no heaven on Earth, every energy source has byproducts.

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litesong wrote:

<quoted text>
Then live in a vast polluted Chinese city.

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Question wrote:

Coma? Like that white bear in the pic? Is he dead by human bullets or are they getting mysteriously extincted?
Quite invain to propose solar panels and mills, more fun to burn and explode dirty toxic polluting devastating chemical things around ;-))
and to tell that it's good to ecologically suicide.
Whatever climate is going on, pollutions isn't really cool about that.
Without ecology our little planet will be indeed helpless.
Some parts of the planet are already towards coma...

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Earthling wrote:

Not only is an 80% reduction by 2050 unacceptable, it's also an impossible target.
Spain has cut carbon emissions in electricity production to 18.9%, just over 80%, but to expect an overall carbon reduction nearing that figure, in that time, would be national suicide. It is already suffering massive unemployment.

There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we take strong action now. The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change is a serious global threat, and it demands an urgent global response.
This Review has assessed a wide range of evidence on the impacts of climate change and on the economic costs, and has used a number of different techniques to assess costs and risks. From all of these perspectives, the evidence gathered by the Review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.
Climate change will affect the basic elements of life for people around the world – access to water, food production, health, and the environment. Hundreds of millions of people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the world warms.
Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.
In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.
The investment that takes place in the next 10-20 years will have a profound effect on the climate in the second half of this century and in the next. Our actions now and over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century. And it will be difficult or impossible to reverse these changes.
So prompt and strong action is clearly warranted. Because climate change is a global problem, the response to it must be international. It must be based on a shared vision of long-term goals and agreement on frameworks that will accelerate action over the next decade, and it must build on mutually reinforcing approaches at national, regional and international level.
Climate change could have very serious impacts on growth and development. If no action is taken to reduce emissions, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere could reach double its pre-industrial level as early as 2035, virtually committing us to a global average temperature rise of over 2°C. In the longer term, there would be more than a 50% chance that the temperature rise would exceed 5°C. This rise would be very dangerous indeed; it is equivalent to the change in average temperatures from the last ice age to today.
Such a radical change in the physical geography of the world must lead to major changes in the human geography – where people live and how they live their lives.