Merkel pleads to Congress to wake up to global warming
Interesting story by William Douglas at McClatchy:
German Chancellor Angela Merkel made an impassioned plea Tuesday to a joint session of Congress to work together on efforts to curb global warming and to help forge a binding climate-change deal at an international meeting next month.
"We need an agreement on one objective: Global warming must not exceed 2 degrees Celsius," Merkel said, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. "To achieve this, we need the readiness of all countries to accept internationally binding obligations. We cannot afford missing the objectives in climate protection that science tells us have to be met."
Merkel said that people must tear down mental walls that blocked them from seeing the plight of future generations if warming continued unchecked. The world’s nations will meet next month in Copenhagen, Denmark, for climate talks. She said they’d need to find the same resolve that Germans had when they brought down the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989.
"And then, in Copenhagen, we shall be able to overcome this wall separating the present from the future, in the interest of our children and grandchildren, and in the interest of sustainable development all over the world," Merkel said.
She urged the United States to join Europe in setting a limit on heat-trapping gases from fossil-fuel burning.
"It is true there can be no agreement without China and India," she said. "But I’m convinced that once we — Europe and America — show ourselves willing to accept binding agreements we will also be able to convince China and India to join."
Failure to cut emissions also would result in missed opportunities for sustainable economic growth from clean energy, the German leader said.
Democrats stood and cheered during her comments on climate change, while many Republicans sat without applauding, reflecting the partisan divide on the issue.
"She’s going to be disappointed," said Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. He doesn’t accept the view of the vast majority of climate scientists, who say that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels and deforestation are responsible for a rise in global temperatures over recent decades. [Of course, Joe is paid huge sums by the oil & gas industry to fight attempts to control global warming. - LG]
The Republican-Democratic split on climate change also was evident Tuesday in the Senate. Republicans boycotted a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, blocking the panel from moving a bill that would put mandatory limits on emissions for consideration by other Senate committees…
