Greenpeace activists launch a banner at the World Climate Change Conference in Moscow
The UN World Climate Change Conference has reaffirmed the human role in global warming, despite numerous attempts by various climate skeptics to undermine the meeting, held in Moscow during October.
The meeting concluded that: "There is growing evidence of existing, current, measurable changes." There was no new science put forward at the conference to question the threat of global warming. In fact, new information emerged about melting ice caps, global drought, floods, storms, and the spread of disease from warming temperatures.
The Conference concurs with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) recent assessment report, which outlines the predicted human suffering, environmental damage and species loss global warming is expected to cause over the coming decades, particularly in the developing world. The IPCC represents three thousand of the world's best climate scientists.
In the face of mounting evidence, Greenpeace is calling on President Putin of Russia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Putin addressed participants at the Moscow conference, but failed to make an expected announcement regarding the agreement.
In order to become law the protocol must be ratified by no fewer than 55 countries, accounting for at least 55 percent of global emissions in 1990. To date, 119 states, producing only 44.2% of emissions have ratified, accepted, or acceded to Kyoto. Since Bush completely withdrew the USA from the agreement in 2001, Russian ratification is vital to make the treaty binding.
During the 2002 Earth Summit, Russian Prime Minister Kasyanov said that Russia would ratify "soon", a commitment that was later confirmed by President Putin. President Bush met with President Putin in the US in September. Since then, the process of Russian ratification has stalled.
Esso (Exxon-Mobil in the USA), the world's largest oil company and a major contributor to George Bush's Republican Party, has been a powerful lobbying force against Kyoto. CEO Lee Raymond met with Putin in October, and since then there has been speculation about Exxon's involvement in Russia's climate policy. In the USA a memo recently uncovered by Greenpeace suggests that the White House could have used an Exxon front group in an attempt to suppress an EPA study that recognised climate change as having human causes.
The group, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), may have sued the Environmental Protection Agency over the study at the bidding of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Two states' Attorney Generals are demanding an investigation into the links between the White House and the Exxon-funded CEI.
