Still In Denial About Global Warmingby Sunny Lewis, AlterNet.org
The Bush Administration’s fingerprints are all over a draft of an international plan to combat climate change, weakening it beyond repair.
The G8 plan to combat climate change has been "watered down" to satisfy the United States, an environmental group said last week after viewing a leaked draft prepared in advance of next month's G8 Summit at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland. Friends of the Earth reacted "with anger" at the content of the draft communique on climate change entitled "Gleneagles Plan of Action," and dated June 14. Compared to an earlier draft leaked on May 2, which itself had no specific targets or timetables for action, this version appears to be even weaker. The latest draft "worryingly even calls into question scientists' warnings that global climate change is already under way," Friends of the Earth said.
On June 7, the national science academies of all the G8 countries -- Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States -- plus the three largest developing countries, Brazil, China and India, issued joint statement declaring "there is now strong evidence that significant global warming is occurring."
"It is likely that most of the warming in recent decades can be attributed to human activities," the scientific academies said, adding, "The scientific understanding of climate change is now sufficiently clear to justify nations taking prompt action."
Friends of the Earth International's climate campaigner Catherine Pearce said, "Every reference to the urgency of action or the need for real cuts in emissions has been deleted or challenged. Nothing in this text recognizes the scale or urgency of the crisis of climate change."
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