Administração Obama e o aquecimento global (II)

A transcrição abaixo é de um discurso do Chefe de Gabinete de Clinton, John Podesta feito, recentemente em Essen, na Alemanha. O discurso pode ser acedido em: Climate Progress » Blog Archive » The Great Transformation: Climate change as cultural change. O seu interesse resulta de diversos factos - destaco dois: sintetiza o que a adminstração Obama está a projectar fazer (ver também aqui); dicute o que se pode (e deve) fazer internacionalmente:

"When it comes to climate change, moments of optimism have been few and far between. But I believe now is a time for measured optimism. Over the last eight years—as the findings of climate scientists became more precise, more accepted, and more worrying— the United States refused to recognize our responsibility to future generations of this planet. Our government played politics at home, and deliberately blocked progress abroad. Just about the only moment of fleeting celebration during those long years was when Kevin Conrad, the chief climate change negotiator for Papua New Guinea, famously told U.S. negotiators: “If, for some reason, you’re not willing to lead, leave it to the rest of us. Please get out of the way.”

Now, with the historic election of President [Barack] Obama, with strong climate policy advocates in both houses of Congress, and with an American public that is engaged and ready to make progress, the United States can do better than just getting out of the way. I can say with great confidence that the new American president sees climate change as the challenge of our time, and is committed to putting the full weight of America’s leadership towards building a new clean energy future. Without a doubt, change has arrived.

And not a moment too soon.

A few weeks ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a new study that found that, without policy action, the effects of climate change will be twice as severe as was estimated just six years ago—the median probability of surface warming is now 5.2 degrees Celsius, compared to a finding of 2.4 degrees Celsius as recently as 2003. Warming, even at this lower range, will result in millions of environmental refugees, violent resource conflicts, and pronounced human suffering, especially for the world’s most vulnerable populations, ironically those whose contribute least to the problem. A new report by the Global Humanitarian Forum found that 300,000 deaths a year are already attributable to climate change-related weather, food shortages, and disease.

The international community must embark on a path that will reduce global emissions and capitalize on the chance to achieve a best-case climate scenario. The silver lining of the MIT study I just mentioned is that, with aggressive policy action, warming can still be kept below two degrees Celsius. But we must act now."