Monday, September 24, 2007

Dueling Climate Change Meetings

The press, pundits, politicians, heads of state and armchair analysts are debating whether the United Nations meeting on climate change or the Bush Administration meeting on climate change will lead to the better solution. This is a very busy week for discussing climate change. AAEA believes there has to be some sort of hybrid with components from each point of view. President Bush is right that we should do nothing to destroy the American economy in attacking climate change and that technology can make a very big difference. But The United Nations is right in recommending some sort of cap and trade program. On one side President Bush opposes mandatory caps and on the other side the caps imposed by the Kyoto Protocol are not working. Kyoto obliges 35 industrial nations to cut emissions by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

AAEA will participate in President Bush's meeting on climate change and will promote its technology-based solutions to climate change. We have developed a Green Carbon Bank and Carbon Mercantile Exchange to promote carbon dioxide offsets. We also support nuclear power and plug-in fuel cell hybrid (lithium ion battery) electric vehicles as the front line technologies to fight climate change. President Bush is promoting the Asia-Pacific Partnership and Methane-to-Markets as his lead programs to fight global climate change. The Bush will address the conferees (heads of 15 industrialised and developing countries) at the Sept. 27-28 conference, which will be hosted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Yvo de Boer, upper right, the head of the Bonn-based U.N. Climate Change Secretariat, will address the UN meeting on Monday, Sept 24. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, upper left, called for the conference of 100 government leaders to discuss climate change in New York, a day before the UN general assembly opens.

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