Encouraging new Developments on the issue of Climate Change?

Despite all the recent activity regarding climate change running the gamut from breakthrough
legislation in California regarding groundwater protection to huge protest marches many
experts concur that international talks wont be a decisive factor in climate change policy. A
gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in September 2014 for an international summit
on climate thats meant to kick off 15 months of negotiations aimed at finalizing a climate
change agreement in December 2015. In an article in Forbes Magazine, Michael Levi, a senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations warns:

Climate change has long been approached as the ultimate foreign policy problem. Greenhouse
gas emissions anywhere raise temperatures everywhere. What that means for climate policy is
that emissions cuts anywhere curb global warming everywhere. Since cutting emissions usually
costs money, it makes sense for each country to ask other countries to act while trying to do as
little as possible themselves: that way, they keep their costs to a minimum, but still benefit from
reduced climate change because of what others have done. The danger is that if every country
adopts this attitude, no one will do much of anything. The only way out of this beggar-thyneighbor quagmire, strategists have long assumed, is for countries to reach a legally binding pact
in which they all curb greenhouse gas emissions at the same time.
The Boston Globes Robert N. Stavins has a different take on what the end result of the
international summit on climate change might be. In a September 23, 2014 article Stavins paints
a more optimistic picture when he writes:
The goal now before negotiators is to produce a new international agreement under the
Durban Platform in Paris in 2015, for implementation in 2020, as a successor to the Kyoto
Protocol. This presents the greatest opportunity the world has had in 20 years to make
meaningful progress on this exceptionally challenging issue. The UN summit in New York can
accelerate the momentum toward such a new, path-breaking approach.

Facts about Climate Change from the World Health Organization:

1. Over the last 50 years, human activities particularly the burning of fossil fuels have
released sufficient quantities of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to affect the
global climate. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by more
than 30% since pre-industrial times, trapping more heat in the lower atmosphere. The
resulting changes in the global climate bring a range of risks to health, from deaths in
extreme high temperatures to changing patterns of infectious diseases.
2. From the tropics to the arctic, climate and weather have powerful direct and indirect
impacts on human life. Weather extremes such as heavy rains, floods, and disasters like
Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans, USA in August 2005 endanger health
as well as destroy property and livelihoods. Approximately 600 000 deaths occurred
worldwide as a result of weather-related natural disasters in the 1990s, some 95% of
which took place in developing countries.
3. Intense short-term fluctuations in temperature can also seriously affect health causing
heat stress (hyperthermia) or extreme cold (hypothermia) and lead to increased death
rates from heart and respiratory diseases. Recent studies suggest that the record high
temperatures in Western Europe in the summer of 2003 were associated with a spike of
an estimated 70 000 more deaths than the equivalent periods in previous years.
For more information about climate change, global warming, and landfill engineers please visit
HSAGolden.com.