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(05/04/07 4:00am)
BANGKOK, Thailand – There’s no shortage of ideas for high-tech measures to combat global warming: develop clean biofuels made of corn or palm oil, build more nuclear power stations or bury harmful carbon emissions in underground vaults.\nBut those are the last solutions many environmentalists want to hear about.\nFor the green lobby pushing this week for forceful action at a U.N. conference on limiting the rise in global temperatures, such answers either cost too much, delay an inevitable weaning from fossil fuels or get in the way of the real solutions, such as renewable energy and greater efficiency.\n“There are a lot of technologies that are mentioned ... that are not exactly the most sustainable options,” said Catherine Pearse, international climate campaigner for the Friends of the Earth environmentalist group. “We may be replacing one existing problem with new ones.”\nFinding effective mitigation measures at the meeting in Bangkok is crucial to ensuring the world is able to cut greenhouse gas emissions and keep the atmosphere from warming more than 3.6 degrees.\nThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the U.N. network of 2,000 scientists that has produced two landmark reports on global warming this year, was working on a third study, this one on mitigation measures, for release on Friday.\nA draft of the report features a lengthy list of possible solutions: improved energy efficiency like hybrid vehicles, renewable sources such as solar and hydropower, cleaner-burning coal and biofuels, reforestation and even nuclear energy – an option the United States is pushing to give greater emphasis in the final document.\nBut not all the proposals are equal, environmentalists argue, saying some, such as nuclear power, are dangerous, while technologies such as renewable energy sources are not given proper emphasis.\nThe green lobby is a varied group, but the lion’s share of them insist concern over global warming should not lead to increased reliance on nuclear energy.\n“For us, nuclear power is definitely not a solution. It’s dangerous, it’s expensive,” said Shailendra Yashwant, a climate and energy campaign manager for Greenpeace. “The costs involved, the dangers involved, they want us to forget all of that.”\nEven less controversial energy sources have generated opposition among environmental groups.\nBiofuels are seen by many as an excellent option. The U.S. Congress, for example, is working on a proposal that would increase production of biofuels, predominantly ethanol, by seven times by 2022. Such fuels are made from corn, palm oil and other agricultural products.\nBut where some see a profitable way to wean the planet from gasoline, others see even more damage to the environment.\nThe rapidly increasing interest in biofuel production is already driving corn prices beyond the budgets of the world’s poor and leading to an acceleration of deforestation – one of the causes of global warming – as lands are cleared to grow oil palm in places like Indonesia, critics say.\n“You should not be cutting down forests to create fuels,” said Yashwant.\nCoal is increasingly taking center stage in the global warming debate, and for good reason: global hard coal production has increased nearly 80 percent from 1980 to 2005, the World Coal Institute says. China is by far the largest producer.\nCoal, however, is an extremely dirty fuel, and scientists are trying to develop technology to capture the carbon emissions before they are released into the atmosphere, and store them underground or under the ocean.\nBut critics argue the technology is as yet unproven, the storage vaults could leak and that money spent on developing such measures, which would prolong the world’s reliance on fossil fuels, would be better spent making solar and wind power viable.\nNot everyone in the green lobby is opposed to so-called carbon storage. Such a system could be a stopgap measure to cut emissions while the globe converts to non-carbon fuels over the next 50 year, said Stephan Singer of the World Wildlife Fund.\n“It’s like an emergency exit,” Singer said of the storage idea. “The world is running on coal ... If you look at the U.S. and China, you see it.”\nThe United States and others are arguing for a wide diversity of mitigation measures and are especially keen on steps that reap profits and high-tech spin-offs, such as biofuels, and avoid cutting into economic growth.\nStill, some say the world needs to decide which measures should be pursued, otherwise governments will take the cheapest, easiest paths rather than the ones that would cut carbon emissions the most.\n“This is a report that is moving away from the science and moving into the political,” said Pearse. “They’re looking for a silver bullet, and we don’t believe that such a thing exists, not for climate change.”
(09/17/03 5:17am)
PARIS -- Material Girl no more? Madonna says writing children's books is more fulfilling than being a pop chart queen or a movie star.\nHer book, "The English Roses," went on sale Monday, appearing in 100 countries and in 30 languages as the first in her series of five tales for children.\nThe pop diva, whose only book until now was the racy 1992 photo essay titled "Sex," said she wrote the books to teach children some of the life lessons she's learned over the years.\n"The most fun that I've had of all the things I've done creatively has been to write these books," she told reporters in Paris, where the book's 32 publishers were gathered.\n"A lot of it has to do with the fact I'm not doing it to become more famous, and I'm not doing it to become richer. I'm not doing it because I think it's cool," Madonna said. "I'm doing it because I want to share something I know with children."\nHours after its release, the 48-page book was already No. 8 on Amazon.com's sales list. The initial print run is 1 million copies worldwide, with more than 750,000 in the United States, publisher Callaway Editions said. Proceeds will go to charity.\n"The English Roses" is about a friendship shared by four girls and their mutual envy of a beautiful classmate, with illustrations by fashion artist Jeffrey Fulvimari.\nThe inspiration for the five books' coming editions will focus on sharing, accepting mistakes and other themes came from her study of Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism, she said.
(02/12/03 4:32am)
"Unless you have a process prewired, a consensus on what the Security Council would do ... then it's possible that the referral in and of itself would be ineffective," said Scott Snyder, Asia Foundation representative in South Korea. "There is not a consensus in favor of sanctions."\nThe move to the Security Council is part of a U.S. push to involve other countries in the dispute, which North Korea has cast as exclusively between Pyongyang and Washington. Washington, however, has not said specifically that it would seek sanctions.\nSecretary of State Colin Powell has urged China, North Korea's main ally, to take a larger role in convincing Pyongyang to give up its nuclear plans. On Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Thomas Hubbard, reiterated the U.S. preference for a multilateral approach.\n"The Board of Governors of the IAEA ... will meet soon, and we expect it to relay its concerns about North Korea to the United Nations Security Council," Hubbard said at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security in Seoul. "The world community must continue to insist, clearly and firmly, that North Korea must not disregard its international obligations."\nSeoul has already done what it could to delay IAEA referral to the Security Council. The Vienna-based nuclear agency considered meeting on Feb. 3, but moved the meeting to today after South Korea pleaded for more time for talks with the North.\nSouth Korea relented after the North refused to commit to specific steps to defuse the standoff during talks in Seoul in January, and Southern envoys failed to win a widely expected meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in subsequent talks in Pyongyang.\nA top South Korean Foreign Ministry official, Chun Young-woo, conceded Monday that it was "almost certain" the North Korean dispute would be referred to the Security Council.\nThe South has not come out specifically against U.N. sanctions, but Seoul's approach has been constant: engagement and negotiation is the way to clinch an agreement with the North.\nSouth Korea has also attempted to calm fears of the danger represented by North Korea's nuclear development. On Monday, Prime Minister Kim Suk-soo said there was no proof Pyongyang already has a nuclear bomb as U.S. officials have asserted.\nWhile South Korea is not a member of the Security Council, two veto-holding members have expressed strong skepticism about shifting the Korean dispute to an international forum.
(08/30/02 5:29am)
PARIS -- French President Jacques Chirac insisted Thursday that any military action against Iraq be decided by the U.N. Security Council, joining the chorus of leaders urging Washington to exercise restraint in its plans against Baghdad.\nChirac, in a speech to French ambassadors in Paris, called the possibility of unilateral U.S. action "worrying", and said it would be contrary to "the cooperation of states, the respect of law and the authority of the Security Council."\nChirac's comments come as the Bush administration is debating an invasion or bombing campaign to remove Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power. Washington accuses Iraq of rebuilding facilities to produce weapons of mass destruction.\nOn Thursday, two prominent lawmakers urged President Bush to ask Congress for authorization before launching an attack, approval administration officials have said is not necessary. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., called for a full debate and vote in Congress.\nChirac's speech firmly put France on the list of nations urging Bush to go slow on his war plans. The German chancellor called on Washington to consult fully with allies on its plans, and the British Foreign Office suggested setting a deadline for Saddam to allow the return of inspectors.\nThe Iraqi government said on Thursday that it was ready to negotiate.\n"There's still room for diplomatic solutions to avert a war with the United States," said Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, who met with Syrian officials in Damascus to raise support for Iraq's position.\n"We take the American threats seriously as we know the (U.S.) administration is mad and criminal," Ramadan said before heading to Beirut, where a meeting with Lebanese President Emile Lahoud was scheduled for Friday.\nTurkey, a longtime U.S. ally, has also expressed doubts about an attack. It proposed tighter trade sanctions against Iraq rather than a military operation in two days of talks with high-level Bush administration officials.\nThe French president, who in past statements has expressed strong support for U.S. demands that Iraq accept the weapons inspectors, reiterated his view that the United Nations should be consulted before an attack on Baghdad.\n"If Baghdad persists in refusing the unconditional return of inspectors, the Security Council will have to decide which measures to take," Chirac said in a speech at the Elysee presidential palace.\nChirac did not say whether France -- one of five nations on the Security Council that maintains veto power -- would support a measure supporting military action against Iraq.\nThe speech also indicated the French government was seeking a balance between its support for U.N. consultation on Iraq and its sympathy with Washington's concerns about the security threat posed by Baghdad.\nAs recently as Tuesday, Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin said that the Iraqi defiance of international rules was "unacceptable"