Participants at a UN-sponsored environmental meeting here Monday lamented the failure by the US, China and other key countries to sign the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gases.
The delegates at the meeting said the groundbreaking global treaty will be diminished without their support.
The Kyoto accords, the world's most ambitious and complex environmental treaty, legally commit 39 industrial nations and territories, including Japan and Europe, to trim their output of six "greenhouse" gases -- especially carbon dioxide -- by at least 5.2 percent by 2012, compared with 1990 levels.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last month signed a bill confirming his nation's ratification of the protocol, giving the global climate pact the final stamp of approval needed to allow it to come into force on Feb. 16.
But the list of signatories to the international pact does not include the US, China and India -- all major culprits for the worldwide rise in greenhouse gas emissions.
China and India are experiencing a dramatic rise in their greenhouse gas emissions as a result of their rapid economic growth.
And the US -- the largest producer of global-warming gases -- on Monday rejected any discussion of changing its position, calling any talk of a post-2012 regime with Washington's senior climate change negotiator Harlan Watson calling such discussions "totally premature."
Delegates from 150 countries, along with 6,000 representatives from government, industry and non-profit groups, were in Buenos Aires for the UN-sponsored climate change conference, which runs through Dec. 17.
Climatic events linked to global warming have been seen in Argentina, the country's health and environment minister, Gines Gonzalez Garcia, told the delegates.
"In Argentina we have been carrying out a systematic study of those adverse effects, and the evidence gathered indicates that the problem is even worse and is speeding up at a faster pace than formerly anticipated," Gonzalez Garcia said.
The South American nation has experienced more frequent violent storms and tornadoes, a higher recurrence of floods, receding glaciers and a rise in sea level, he said, adding that the climate change poses health risks.
He said these weather patterns are "some of the signs confirming in our country that what were identified as possible consequences of global warming are already taking place.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
SECRETIVE SECT: Tetsuya Yamagami was said to have held a grudge against the Unification Church for bankrupting his family after his mother donated about ￥100m The gunman accused of killing former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe yesterday pleaded guilty, three years after the assassination in broad daylight shocked the world. The slaying forced a reckoning in a nation with little experience of gun violence, and ignited scrutiny of alleged ties between prominent conservative lawmakers and a secretive sect, the Unification Church. “Everything is true,” Tetsuya Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to murdering the nation’s longest-serving leader in July 2022. The 45-year-old was led into the room by four security officials. When the judge asked him to state his name, Yamagami, who
DEADLY PREDATORS: In New South Wales, smart drumlines — anchored buoys with baited hooks — send an alert when a shark bites, allowing the sharks to be tagged High above Sydney’s beaches, drones seek one of the world’s deadliest predators, scanning for the flick of a tail, the swish of a fin or a shadow slipping through the swell. Australia’s oceans are teeming with sharks, with great whites topping the list of species that might fatally chomp a human. Undeterred, Australians flock to the sea in huge numbers — with a survey last year showing that nearly two-thirds of the population made a total of 650 million coastal visits in a single year. Many beach lovers accept the risks. When a shark killed surfer Mercury Psillakis off a northern Sydney beach last
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
RSS