Spreading Awareness, Encouraging Action
Africa And Climate Change: The Poorest Of The Poor Affected The impact of climate change generally lands hardest on the poor. 12 million Africans are currently facing drought and famine linked to climate. The only long-term framework for regulating greenhouse gas emissions is a program called Contraction and Convergence. Contraction and Convergence (C&C) is a straightforward model for an international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions. It sets a target for concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and a date by which those concentrations should be achieved. It continues to declare that all citizens of the Earth have an equal right in principle to emit, and will actually be given an equal right by a future date. The individual allowance for each citizen is being derived from the “safe” global target. The economics behind C&C ensure a secure survival by correcting fatal poverty and climate change. The global account so far shows that 33% of people have 94% of the global dollar income and account for 90% of the global historical total of greenhouse gas emissions, while the other 66% of people have 6% of global dollar income and a history of emissions totaling 10%. The ratio of poor to rich life value in all this is worse than 15 to one. A C&C agreement makes is possible for poor countries to finance their future defense against climate change and their “clean development”, by trading their considerable excess emission shares to rich countries. The rich countries would use their capital to retire their “dirty development” and put in place economies that are clean and geared to reduced consumption. Source: The fair choice for climate change, by Aubrey Meyer, BBC News.com, 18 May 2006
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