UN Climate Conference in Poland

UN Climate Conference in Poland: World Future Council calls for a ‘Poznan Action Plan’

Hamburg, 27th November: The World Future Council (WFC) today called on politicians participating in next week’s UN climate conference in Poznan, Poland, to agree a ‘Poznan Action Plan.’ The Hamburg based non-profit organisation states that the accelerated melting of sea ice and glaciers across the world, due to rapidly increasing global greenhouse gas concentration, demands unprecedented action. The WFC is asking conference participants to agree urgent new measures:

The transformation of taxes on energy into taxes on emissions that could be structured as a progressive annual increase, and
The rapid introduction of policy measures to speed up the deployment of renewable energy across the world as a replacement for fossil fuel technology.

“The world still has not faced up to the dramatic challenges of climate change,” says Herbert Girardet, Programme Director and co-founder of the WFC. “New scientific evidence suggests that we must not just reduce carbon emissions but that we must reduce global carbon concentrations. This is a huge challenge but also a tremendous new economic opportunity. Urgent action is of key importance for the well-being of future generations and must be in accordance with the alarming scientific findings of recent months.” Girardet demands that a Kyoto-Plus agreement must aim for an actual reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations to some 350 ppm CO2eq, which requires concrete steps towards a global zero GHG emissions target.

With regard to the mechanisms that are part of the current Kyoto protocol, the World Future Council calls for a fundamental redesign of the so called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). This redesign should yield actual net emission reductions whilst providing renewable energy development support to emerging countries, rather than allowing industrialised countries to purchase cheap carbon credits without reducing their emissions.

The UN Climate Change Conference in Poznan will bring together representatives of more than 180 countries, as well as thousands of participants from the NGO community. The outcome of the conference will lead the way to a follow-up agreement to be finalised in Copenhagen next year, replacing the Kyoto protocol which will expire in 2012. (sts)

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