James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies since 1981, said attempts to forge a global deal on cutting emissions after the Kyoto treaty expires were based on a "fundamentally wrong" approach.

"I would rather it not happen if people accept that as being the right track because it's a disaster track," he told The Guardian newspaper ahead of the December 7-18 summit.

Hansen is highly sceptical about a favoured measure of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, a cap-and-trade system under which a progressively stricter 'right to pollute' is exchanged in a carbon market.

Instead, he has previously argued for a direct tax on fossil fuels as the only realistic way to achieve the necessary cuts.

"The approach that's been talked about is so fundamentally wrong that it is better to reassess the situation," Hansen told The Guardian.

"I think it's just as well that we not have a substantive treaty, because if it is going to be the Kyoto-type thing, and people agree to that, then they'll spend years trying to determine exactly what that means and what is a commitment, what are the mechanisms.

"The whole idea that you have goals which you're supposed to meet and that you have outs, with offsets (sold through the carbon market), means you know it's an attempt to continue business as usual."

Hansen, who made headlines worldwide in 1988 with his US Congress testimony that climate change was already well under way, compared the current approach to the Catholic Church's use of indulgences in the Middle Ages.

Sinners paid the bishops to give them redemption, a system that was patently absurd but suited both sides.

"We've got the developed countries who want to continue more or less business as usual and then these developing countries who want money and that is what they can get through offsets," Hansen said.

However, he insisted there was still hope, telling The Guardian: "I find it screwy that people say you passed a tipping point so it's too late.

"In that case what are you thinking: that we are going to abandon the planet? You want to minimise the damage."

earlier related report
Australian PM shrugs off climate bill defeat
Sydney (AFP) Dec 3, 2009 - Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd shrugged off the damaging defeat of his key carbon-trading bill on Thursday and played down the chances of an early election.

Rudd, in his first comments on the legislation's failure, said he had "always" intended to serve a full three-year term and called on "wiser heads" in the opposition to back the bill when it is reintroduced in February.

The prime minister passed up the chance to call snap polls after the bill's second defeat on Wednesday, which will leave him empty-handed at this month's UN climate talks in Copenhagen.

He said the opposition, now led by climate-change sceptic Tony Abbott, was taking a more extreme stance than ex-prime minister John Howard, who famously refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

"It seems that the Liberal Party are now saying they don't want an ETS (emissions trading scheme) at all, which would put them into a more extreme position than Mr. Howard," he said, according to public broadcaster ABC.

"This summer provides a great opportunity for calmer, wiser heads of the Liberal Party to prevail."

Abbott, who ousted Malcolm Turnbull as Liberal Party leader during the turbulent debate, has said he will oppose the third reading of the bill, which he describes as a "great big new tax."

Rudd's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) aimed to cut emissions blamed for global warming by between five and 25 percent from 2000 levels by 2020, depending on what action is taken at the UN summit this month.

But it ran into strong objections from the industrial and agricultural lobby as well as the conservative opposition, which ousted its leader Turnbull for supporting the cuts.

Rudd, who will be a "friend of chair" at the December 7-18 Copenhagen talks, campaigned on a strong environmental platform and ratified Kyoto as one of his first acts after taking office in 2008.

The meeting, under the 192-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, is aimed at thrashing out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Related Links
Climate Science News - Modeling, Mitigation Adaptation

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News