Four years to turn climate change around
The Toronto Sun is reporting in a story Window of Opportunity that US President Obama has just four years to turn climate change around.
“(Obama’s) four-year administration offers the world a last chance to get things right,” said James Hansen [NASA's top climate scientist, director of the Goddard Institute for Space and an adjunct professor of Earth and environmental sciences at Columbia University's Earth Institute] in an interview with the U.K. newspaper The Observer. “If it fails, global disaster — melted sea caps, flooded cities, species extinctions and spreading deserts — awaits mankind.”
Obama’s plan
| Date | Action |
|---|---|
| 2009 | Ensure 10% of electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012. |
| 2012 | Put one million plug-in hybrid cars — built in America — on the road by 2015. |
| 2015 | Create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next 10 years in clean energy. |
| 2019 | Within 10 years save more oil than the U.S. currently imports from the Middle East and Venezuela combined. |
| 2025 | Ensure 25% of electricity comes from renewable sources by 2025. |
| 2050 | Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050. |
What a great start. — DS
February 21st, 2009 at 7:40 am
Go Obama!
Emissions reduction mandates are coming into effect very soon—not just for heavy emitters, but medium and small emitters too. While mandatory reporting is a useful tool for managing carbon change, what is lacking in a lot of these programs is the ability to provide contextual detail, or to showcase emissions reduction achievements. CSA just launched the GHG CleanStart™ Registry based on ISO 14064. It’s a voluntary program, but it covers the same bases as the regulated programs, while also allowing organizations to highlight their successes. Check it out at http://www.csa.ca/carbonperformance