Paul Hohnen Sustainability Strategies

GREENPEACE CALLS FOR A "GLOBAL DEFENCE AGENDA" TO PREVENT A "CLIMATE HOLOCAUST"

Geneva, June 20, 1991 (GP) -- A "Global Defence Agenda", outlining a strategy to combat global warming, was released by Greenpeace today in Geneva.

The Agenda was presented to the second negotiating session of the Inter-governmental Committee which has been charged with the task of negotiating a draft Framework Climate Convention by June next year. The Committee is meeting in Geneva from 19-28 June, 1991.

"If the overwhelming majority of the world's climate scientists are correct - and there is no reason to challenge their conclusions - the planet is now facing an entirely new set of risks, more threatening than any foreseeable military conflicts", said Paul Hohnen, leader of the Greenpeace observer delegation to the negotiations.

"Unless global warming is halted, its predicted impacts will impose fundamental changes in life-style, and in political and economic systems, possibly in a period of a few decades. In the longer term, the existence of entire cultures and species could be imperilled", he said.

"Droughts in Africa, the flooding of countries like Bangladesh and cyclones wreaking havoc in small island nations are comparatively minor examples of what scientists are saying may be in store for us".

In the face of such risks, Greenpeace called on governments to develop an entirely new generation of "defence" policies to assure national and global security.

"The scientific storm warnings on climate change are now too ominous to ignore", Hohnen said. "It is ludicrous that priority is still being given to big-budget traditional defence projects which will ultimately be powerless to protect us from the 'greenhouse' effect. It is crucial that the world now recognise global warming must be considered our greatest common enemy. "The Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) has less than twelve months to complete a draft Convention to halt climate change. Not a single article has yet been agreed. The purpose of the Greenpeace Agenda is to outline a series of necessary and practicable steps which would combat global warming. continued Greenpeace.

The elements of the Greenpeace Defence Agenda include:

• a climate convention which will identify the main greenhouse gases and their known characteristics, highlight the possible risks and impacts of global warming, and commit the international community to collective precautionary actions which will halt global warming.
• a carbon dioxide protocol to the convention which will commit signatories to reducing their national CO2 emissions by differentiated national targets based on the principles of climate stability and equity.
• other protocols to the convention on energy efficiency and renewable energies which will commit governments to increasing by specific targets the contributions which these technologies can make to reducing CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions.

"An effective response strategy need be neither technically impossible nor economically too costly," said Hohnen. "One study conducted by an international firm of consultants in the Netherlands suggested that deep cuts in global CO2 emissions - the main greenhouse gas - might cost around $30 billion a year.

"This is less than two weeks' global expenditure on armaments. Moreover, development of renewable energies and energy efficiency is likely to create new and expanding industrial opportunities.

"Climate Convention negotiators have a responsibility to ensure that global warming response measures are equal to the threat to national and international interests and that the twenty-first century is not the last century of the Earth as we know it."

Contact: Paul Hohnen, Geneva 41 22 734 3003 .