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John Kerry to make clarion call for more action on climate change | John Kerry to make clarion call for more action on climate change |
(7 months later) | |
US secretary of state John Kerry will on Sunday issue a clarion call for the world to do to more to combat climate change, warning the planet is being pushed to “a tipping point of no return”. | |
In his keynote speech the top US diplomat will highlight the fact that Asian nations, many of them low-lying, are particularly under threat from rising sea levels. | |
“Kerry will call on the global community, not just countries but individual citizens around the world, to do more now because addressing the threat of climate change will require a global solution,” a senior state department official said. | |
Kerry, who has long been a passionate advocate of the need to protect the environment, arrived in Indonesia late Saturday for bilateral meetings. | |
On Sunday he toured a mosque to pay tribute to the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. | On Sunday he toured a mosque to pay tribute to the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. |
Later he was to deliver his speech before Indonesian students and professors at a US-run centre in Jakarta. It will be beamed live to other hubs on the islands of Borneo and Sumatra. | |
Kerry will make “the compelling and undeniable scientific case of this growing challenge that is pushing the planet towards a tipping point of no return”, the State Department official said, asking not to be named. | |
Global warming was threatening not just the environment, but also “the economy and our way of life”, the official said. | Global warming was threatening not just the environment, but also “the economy and our way of life”, the official said. |
He will also “underscore the ways in which Asia is particularly impacted”, she added. | He will also “underscore the ways in which Asia is particularly impacted”, she added. |
Along with the United States, Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands, is one of the world’s biggest carbon emitters - in Jakarta’s case because of rampant deforestation. | |
Kerry announced on Saturday in Beijing that China and the United States had agreed to share information on their efforts to combat climate change ahead of 2015 UN-led efforts to set emission reduction goals for after 2020. | |
Together the United States and China account for some 40 percent of total emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming. | |
But traditionally they have been on opposite ends of the bitter debate on how to tackle the problem, with China maintaining it is still a developing country and should not be held to any international regime on emissions reductions. | |
Paris will host the 2015 UN climate change conference at which a new pact to cut global emissions applicable to all countries is due to be hammered out. | |
The Paris talks are aimed at reaching a deal to succeed the 1997 Kyoto treaty, which the United States never ratified, maintaining any global pact must include China. The Kyoto protocol runs out in 2020. | |
The agreement to collaborate ahead of next year’s talks between China, the developing world’s largest emitter, and the United States, the developed world’s biggest greenhouse gas producer, could send a powerful signal to other developing countries to clean up their act. | |
Currently developing countries account for some 55% of global emissions, with developed countries having made major efforts to cut carbon pollutants escaping into the atmosphere. | |
But much of those emissions come from manufacturing goods which are then exported to the developed world. | But much of those emissions come from manufacturing goods which are then exported to the developed world. |
If little is done to reduce emissions from developing countries, experts fear that by 2030 they could account for as much as 60% of all greenhouse gas emissions. | |
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