Why no 'bail-out' for Earth?

2008-12-03 20:10

Richard Ingham

Poznan - The head of the world's top climate scientists says he is stunned at the trillion-dollar cheques that have been signed to ease the banking crisis when funding for poverty and global warming is scrutinised or denied.

In an interview on the sidelines of the UN climate talks here in Poland, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Nobel-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said he was both astonished and dismayed at the imbalance.

"It seems very strange, what has happened in the past two or three months," he told AFP.

"It defies any kind of logic, if you look at the type of money that the world has spent on these bailouts, $2.7 trillion is the estimate, and it's been done so quickly and without questioning."

Pachauri recalled that when the Millennium Development Goals for attacking poverty and sickness were being drawn up, a panel chaired by Ernesto Zedillo, the former president of Mexico, suggested "a fairly modest estimate" of $50 billion a year in help for poor countries.

"But everyone scoffed at it. Nobody did a damn thing," Pachauri said in the interview on Monday.

"(Yet) here, you've got agencies, you've got organisations that are not only responsible for their own failure, but the failure of the entire economic system, and they get cheques worth $2.7 trillion. I find this amazing... What can you say, what can you do?"

Major economic spring-clean

Pachauri suggested that this two-sided story illustrated a "distortion" in the economic system.

Carbon emissions - the fossil-fuel pollution that stokes climate change - were another example, whereby the true cost of using or abusing natural resources was not factored in to calculations, he said.

"Once the dust settles and we know the direction the world is going to move in, I think there will be a very deep and major reappraisal of the way we've been growing economically," said Pachauri.

"I think we will have a major spring-clean of the economic system... I believe that you will get a shift towards much more efficient use of natural resources, much more efficient use of energy, and certainly doing away with a lot of waste."

The December 1-12 talks in Poznan, taking place under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are intended to serve as a springboard to an ambitious new treaty to slash emissions of greenhouse gases beyond 2012.

The deal is scheduled to be completed in Copenhagen in December 2009.

Pachauri, who also made a speech to the conference, pointed to the latest scientific evidence on climate change, put forward last year in the IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report - a landmark document that helped earn the panel the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize alongside Al Gore.

A 'fleabite' by comparison

Only seven years are left, warned Pachauri, for global emissions of greenhouse gases to peak and then start declining, in order to stem warming to around 2 °C over pre-industrial levels.

Tackling the problem would cost less than 3% of the world's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2030, a fleabite when compared to the bill that would come from drought, flood, rising sea levels and storms, he said.

Pachauri added that he was pressing for a meeting with US President-elect Barack Obama to drive home his message.

"If I can get 10 minutes with him, that's all I'll need," he said.

- AFP