As you probably know, a very important set of meetings are happening in Copenhagen this week and next to hammer out new commitments to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations  to a “safe” level to prevent an increase in climate change impacts.  These impacts include flooding of low lying areas, more extreme weather events, loss of productive habitat and cropland, the spread of diseases and pests, extinction of species and many others.

The primary goal of the talks is to come up with new carbon dioxide reduction targets to replace those that were developed at a similar conference in Kyoto in December, 1997.  The Kyoto protocol that was signed at that event called for high-income countries to reduce their emissions by 5% from 1990 levels.  However, few countries made any progress and carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise such that a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide concentrations would be needed now to achieve the original targets.

It is hoped that the growing concensus about the threat of climate change, will cause countries like Canada and the United States, which both have demonstrated very poor leadership on this issue, to agree on new targets and to abide by them.

Continue reading spud! staff show support for climate change talks