we're not scared!

here's what the key players in our carbon emitting world are pledging to do about their emissions, post COP15. what does this show? it shows we're not scared! give us what you got, Earth, we don't fear you! only wimps are afraid of global warming and rising sea levels. we've all watched waterworld, and kevin costner has showed us we can still float around on boats even if there's no more land!


Nations Carbon Emissions Reduction Checklist

* India has pledged carbon intensity cuts of 20-25 percent by 2020.
* Brazil has pledge absolute emissions cuts of emissions by 39 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, mainly through measures to slow deforestation.
* South Africa reportedly plans to submit a target of 34 percent below projected levels by 2020, though there's some concern whether it can back that ambitious target with action.
* Japan reiterated its plan to achieve absolute emissions cuts of 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, provided other major emitters pledge ambitious plans as well.
* Indonesia may be late, it's said to be contemplating a cut of 26 percent below projected levels by 2020.
* Canada will submit the same lame target as the U.S.: 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. [Although, as Matt points out today, this actually allows Canada to emit more carbon than before]
* Australia has pledged absolute emissions cuts of at least 5 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, up to 25 percent contingent on the actions of other countries.
* China said it "will endeavour to lower its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP ["carbon intensity"] by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 compared to the 2005 level." That would, of course, allow China's emissions to continue rising in absolute terms; it has said it foresees emissions peaking in 2030.

The EU has pledged to reduce emissions 20% below 1990 levels by 2020.

The island nations the Maldives will reduce emissions by 100% by 2020, making them the first carbon neutral nation.

And of course, the US brings up the rear of the industrialized world by offering a paltry 17% below 2005 levels by 2020.

So that's where all the cards lay at the moment--scattered, too weak to prevent a great temperature rise (with the given reductions, temperatures would rise 3.5 C this century, which is considered to be disastrous), and discouraging enough to prompt critics to claim there will be no global climate treaty this year, either. The only nation that could feasibly inspire real, necessary change at the moment is the US--and we all know how eager the Senate is to help the US lead on climate issues. So for the time being, it looks like the so-called 'global climate accord' is a piecemeal agreement of stitched-together promises and voluntary pledges.

more from TreeHugger.

Home

a few days ago ago, i watched Home, a beautiful film about us that is at once documentary, science fiction, drama, thriller and horror. directed by yann arthus bertrand, this moving journey through our own world felt as though i was drifting across the kind of surreal pandorean landscape that could only be imagined with a US$300 million budget.



in two hours, the little computer screen in my room (i had inexplicably passed up a chance to watch Home in the cinema last year in an event organized by my own company) showed me more about my planet than possibly any other thing i've read or watched. i stared in growing amazement as the narrator told the story of my Earth, accompanied by a gripping soundtrack and real-life aerial footage that often looked so bizarre that they might as well have been CGI images.


i had no idea that all this was, in fact, my own backyard.

the world that i have grown so familiar with is one of brick and concrete lined superfluously with neat rows of rainforest trees that shade not the rainforest, but fast-moving metal boxes on painted asphalt. and while we bask in our government's assurance that this self-proclaimed "garden city" is doing its part in protecting the fragile balance of nature that sustains our lives, it really isn't. we are one of the worst polluters in the world, but the nature of our economy makes it very difficult for us to take concrete steps to save this planet, so say our leaders. for instance, our booming population and our affluent way of life puts us way up there in terms of carbon emissions per capita, relative to other countries. but for the sake of the economy, we are encouraged (often explicitly) to have more and more children, each of them wearing elephant-sized carbon boots. topics relating to public transport and hybrid cars appear occasionally in the news, but most of the time it is to announce yet another hike in prices. bicycle lanes have been tried out in small neighborhoods, but most of singapore is still a cyclist's worst nightmare.

and the bad news is, it's like that everywhere else -- only sometimes a lot worse.


in the meantime, the real world, the beautiful eden that few of us have ever really experienced, is disappearing. it chilled me to my bones to hear the narrator in Home talk about ice sheets disintegrating, of low-lying nations (like ours) submerged in the sea, of rainforests being completely wiped out -- all in a matter of decades. decades as in 10 to 20 years, not 80 to 90 years. which means that within our lifetime, the world as we have barely had time to know it will be gone, and the beautiful creatures that fascinated us in our childhood would be mere legends when we talk about them to our children.




what was made brutally clear at the end of this film (as well as in An Inconvenient Truth which i had watched a week before) was that this is our home, and that there is ONLY ONE of it. once it's gone (and it's going), there's no back-up Earth. that's it.

it's frightening. and what's more frightening is that i don't know what to do about it.