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CIAO Focus, July 2008:
Reducing the World's Carbon Footprint
Source: Union of Concerned Scientists
For the first time, the Bush administration pledged its country to reducing the world's carbon footprint when the president met with his counterparts from the Group of Eight major industrialized nations in Hokkaido, Japan earlier this month. The G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050 and approved a plan to come up with a new international treaty aimed at curbing global warming.
Also attending the summit were members of up-and-coming industrialized countries, the so-called G5 comprised of India, China, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. However, these nations refused to make any firm commitments to the goal of reducing greenhouse emissions.
In January of 2010, representatives from 180 countries are scheduled to meet in Copenhagen to draft a successor agreement to the Kyoto protocol.
This month CIAO takes a look at reducing the world's carbon footprint.
From the CIAO Database:
Breaking the Suicide Pact: U.S.–China Cooperation on Climate Change
Program for the Study of Biofuels, Poverty and Food Security
Changing Climates: Interdependencies on Energy and Climate Security for China and Europe
Crossroads at Mmamabula: Will the World Bank Choose the Clean Energy Path?
Renewables: Looking Toward Inexhaustible Energy
Outside Sources: *
Union of Concerned Scientists
http://www.ucsusa.org/
Climate Change and Economic Growth: Evidence from the Last Half Century
http://www.nber.org/papers/w14132.pdf
How much renewable energy do we use? (Energy Information Administration)
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/energy_in_brief/renewable_energy.cfm
Renewable Energy (International Energy Agency)
http://www.iea.org/textbase/subjectqueries/keyresult.asp?KEYWORD_ID=4116
* Outside links are not maintained. For broken outside links, CIAO recommends the Way Back Machine.