Climate+change+in+the+media

 Matt Abell & Kyle Woykovsky

Climate change in the media

The Obama administration today acknowledged that its ability to play a leading role at international climate change is largely dependent on how quickly Congress acts on global warming legislation.

"The president has been very clear that he wants to re-establish the United States as a leader on the issue of climate change,driven by what we are prepared to do domestically." Carol Browner, the president's adviser on energy and climate change issues, told an energy conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this afternoon.

Congressional legislation, Browner said, "is absolutely essential to our position and what we can ultimately hope to achieve in Copenhagen," where more than 180 countries will meet in December to write a new treaty to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to the new treaty, Carbon credits will be issued out to other countries. "We have to set aside a certain amount of carbon credits to ensure that the steel and the paper and other trade-sensitive, energy-intensive industries are not exploited in the near term by the Chinese and others," Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts. The idea behind Carbon credits is that they are issued to industries that use environmental friendly energy and do not produce any carbon, and they are sold to companies who leave carbon footprints. This is to start everyone up on using renewable carbon free energy and those who don't use renewable energy or have large carbon emissions have to pay for someone else emit less carbon.

While the U.S.A. has its trouble with climate change, there are other countries that are working towards trying to fix their climate problems. For instance, the Wall Street Journal has found that the total cost of lost agricultural production and other negative impacts from climate change would be equivalent to as much as 6.7% of gross domestic product in major Southeast Asian countries by the end of this century, more than double the 2.6% loss estimated for the world as a whole. Also in the Phillipines and Indonesia rice production is in danger of decline (34% in Indonesia and 75% in the Phillipines).

Recently, Barack Obama called in the officials of 16 major economic countries to discuss the climate change problem going on in the world. In the meeting the officials discussed the possibility of drafting out a new climate change treaty before the end of 2009. Obama hopes that discussions between the countries will lead to more cooperation between all the countries as they try and fight this terrible problem. The meeting also was found constructive on many levels for many countries, which U.N. Climate Chief, Yvo De Boer thinks is very constructive and a step in the right direction. The final draft of the treaty is scheduled to be done in December when all the world leaders meet in Copenhagen, Denmark, with another meeting to be held before then in Paris, France in the near future.