Galery

1

Victoria Mindova

According to research 50 million refugees, victims of climate changes have to find a new land to live in by the end of 2010. Their number will reach 200 million by the end of 2012. 43 small island countries are directly threatened of extinction as a result of climate changes and ocean level increase. The Maldives are one example – on September 24 this year the President of the island country Mohamed Nasheed confirmed that he is negotiating with India to buy land, where the population of a total of 1200 islands (about 400 thousand people), will have to move. Not one of the Maldives islands are higher than six feet or 1.8 meters above sea level.

On a global scale right now 33 gigatons of dioxide are being released in the atmosphere and 8 gigatons out of which are produced in the USA, which represent only 5% of the world population. During the days before the meeting in Copenhagen, all scientists agree that December is our last chance to reach an agreement between the industrially developed countries for the effective reduction of harmful emission release in the atmosphere. The process started by signing the Kyoto Protocol in 1992, which runs out in 2012.

All those facts and problems were presented by Professor Graciela Chichilnisky, lector in the annual symposium “Hour of Greek Economy,” organized by the Greek-American Chamber of Commerce. Professor Chichilnisky is a leading author of the Intergovernmental expert group for climate changes and she is a 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner. She is a professor in Columbia University in New York and she is the author of the Kyoto Protocol. Professor Chishilnisky is also the author of the carbon market theory, where the country producers of big volume of harmful emissions buy from the quotas of countries, which support lower levels of harmful emissions.

She explains that this way the carbon market changes economic values and turns harmful emission release into hollow and expensive business and preserving the atmosphere into a success (in most cases this counts for developing countries, which do not have industrial activities) and aids distribution of global wealth. Expectations of the Copenhagen meeting are to reach an agreement for lowering the emissions with 60% to 80% until 2020. This goal can be achieved under two conditions.

The first one is for the USA and China to reach an agreement for lowering harmful emissions of both countries without affecting the economies of either country. “Agreement will be reached in Copenhagen. The world cannot afford another failure,” forecasts Professor Chichilnisky. The second condition is to create conditions on a global scale for financing new projects and technologies for energy production, which will be environment friendly and wining for the energy industry.