G8 summit emission cut target likely "aspirational" - Reuters

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL2343063320080525">G8 summit emission cut target likely "aspirational"
Sun May 25, 2008 9:52am EDT

By Linda Sieg and Chisa Fujioka

KOBE, Japan (Reuters) - The Group of Eight rich nations
will likely agree to an "aspirational" target for cutting
greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but shun mid-term goals
at a July summit, the top U.N. climate official said on
Sunday.

Ministers and representatives from the G8 and major emerging
countries gathered this weekend in Japan to try to build
momentum for U.N.-led climate change talks, but remained at
odds over who should do what when, and how much.

"Given the stage that we are in the negotiations, it's going
to be quite difficult to get an outcome of the G8 summit that
is really strong," Yvo de Boer, head of the U.N. Climate
Change Secretariat, told reporters after talks among
environment ministers from the G8 and major emerging
countries.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSL2343063320080525

[losthills]

1. "Aspirational...." your word for the day.

One country has to take the lead here, and it's our country. The path begins in November. Wehave got to pound the last nails in the coffin of republican leadership, we have got to end the war in Iraq, and we have to push the democratic party to take bold measures, or develope a new party to push them aside....

[hatrack]

2. No! You don't say!

:eyes:

[The2ndWheel]

3. The Tragedy of the Commons

http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/articles/art_tragedy_of_the_commons.html

"A fair defense can be put forward for the view that the world is infinite; or that we do not know that it is not. But, in terms of the practical problems that we must face in the next few generations with the foreseeable technology, it is clear that we will greatly increase human misery if we do not, during the immediate future, assume that the world available to the terrestrial human population is finite. "Space" is no escape (2). A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero. (The case of perpetual wide fluctuations above and below zero is a trivial variant that need not be discussed.) When this condition is met, what will be the situation of mankind? Specifically, can Bentham's goal of "the greatest good for the greatest number" be realized?"

"We want the maximum good per person; but what is good? To one person it is wilderness, to another it is ski lodges for thousands. To one it is estuaries to nourish ducks for hunters to shoot; to another it is factory land. Comparing one good with another is, we usually say, impossible because goods are incommensurable. Incommensurables cannot be compared."

"Has any cultural group solved this practical problem at the present time, even on an intuitive level? One simple fact proves that none has: there is no prosperous population in the world today that has, and has had for some time, a growth rate of zero. Any people that has intuitively identified its optimum point will soon reach it, after which its growth rate becomes and remains zero."