Vatican issues new green message for world's Catholics: Protect God's Creation

Pope addresses climate change conference
US church leaders lobby Bush on global warming

John Vidal and Tom Kington in Rome
The Guardian

The Vatican yesterday added its voice to a rising chorus of warnings from churches around the world that climate change and abuse of the environment is against God's will, and that the one billion-strong Catholic church must become far greener.

At a Vatican conference on climate change, Pope Benedict urged bishops, scientists and politicians - including UK environment secretary David Miliband - to "respect creation" while "focusing on the needs of sustainable development".

The Pope's message follows a series of increasingly strong statements about climate change and the environment, including a warning earlier this year that "disregard for the environment always harms human coexistence, and vice versa". Observers said yesterday that the Catholic church is no longer split between those who advocate development and those who say the environment is the priority. Cardinal Renato Raffaele Martino, head of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, said: "For environment ... read Creation. The mastery of man over Creation must not be despotic or senseless. Man must cultivate and safeguard God's Creation."

According to Vatican sources, the present Pope is far more engaged in the green debate than John Paul. In the past year Benedict has spoken strongly on the need to preserve rainforests. In the next few weeks he visits Brazil.

"There is no longer a schism. The new interest in climate change and the environment is not surprising really. Benedict comes out of 1960s Germany, where environment and disarmament were major issues. It's conceivable that his ministry could even culminate in a papal encyclical on the environment," said one analyst. This would be the most powerful signal to the world's Catholics about the need for environmental awareness at every level.

The Catholic church is just one major faith group now rapidly moving environment to the fore of its social teachings. "Climate change, biotechnology, trade justice and pollution are all now being debated at a far higher level by the world's major religions," said Martin Palmer, secretary general of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (Arc).

MORE....

Ex-generals: Global warming threatens U.S. security

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Global warming poses a "serious threat to America's national security" and the U.S. likely will be dragged into fights over water and other shortages, top retired military leaders warn in a new report.

The report says that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water, increased hunger instability from worsening disease and rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. "The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism," the 35-page report predicts.

"Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations," former U.S. Army chief of staff Gordon Sullivan told Associated Press Radio. "Everybody needs to start paying attention to what's going on. I don't think this is a particularly hard sell in the Pentagon. ... We're paying attention to what those security implications are."

Gen. Anthony "Tony" Zinni, President Bush's former Middle East envoy, says in the report: "It's not hard to make the connection between climate change and instability, or climate change and terrorism."

The report was issued by the Alexandria, Virginia-based, national security think-tank The CNA Corporation and was written by six retired admirals and five retired generals. They warn of a future of rampant disease, water shortages and flooding that will make already dicey areas -- such as the Middle East, Asia and Africa -- even worse.

MORE....

Intergovernmental Panel: "many natural systems are being affected."

"Observational evidence from all continents and most oceans shows that many natural systems are being affected by regional climate changes, particularly temperature increases."

The IPCC is the leading body for the assessment of climate change, established by the United Nations to provide the world with a clear, balanced view of the present state of understanding of climate change.

The IPCC does not conduct research on its own. Its core activity is to review and assess the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to the understanding of climate change.

The IPCC 4th Assessment Report (AR4) consists of four volumes that will be released in the course of 2007. Compared to the 2001 report, the AR4 pays greater attention to the integration of climate change with sustainable development and the inter-relationships between mitigation and adaptation. Specific attention is given to regional issues, uncertainty & risk, technology, climate change & water.

Here are the release dates:

February 2 (Paris) - "The Physical Science Basis"
April 6 (Brussels) - "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability"
May 4 (Bangkok) - "Mitigation of Climate Change"
November 16 (Valencia) "The Synthesis Report"

In this second release, Working Group II Report addresses "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability": It provides a detailed analysis of observed changes in natural and human systems and the relationship between those observed changes and climate change, as well as a detailed assessment of projected future vulnerability, impacts, and response measures to adapt to climatic changes for main sectors and regions.

Get the full report here.

World Scientists Issue Global Warming Report

'The World Needs to Act Fast'

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP

As the world gets hotter by degrees, millions of poor people will suffer from hunger, thirst, floods and disease unless drastic action is taken, scientists and diplomats warned Friday in their bleakest report ever on global warming.

All regions of the world will change, with the risk that nearly a third of the Earth's species will vanish if global temperatures rise just 3.6 degrees above the average temperature in the 1980s-90s, the new climate report says. Areas that now have too little rain will become drier.

Yet that grim and still preventable future is a toned-down prediction, a compromise brokered in a fierce, around-the-clock debate among scientists and bureaucrats. Officials from some governments, including China and Saudi Arabia, managed to win some weakened wording.

Even so, the final report "will send a very, very clear signal" to governments, said Yvo de Boer, the top climate official for the United Nations, which in 1988 created the authoritative climate change panel that issued the starkly worded document.

And while some scientists were angered at losing some ground, many praised the report as the strongest warning ever that nations must cut back on greenhouse gas emissions.

The report is the second of four coming this year from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of 2,000 scientists. The new document tries to explain how global warming is changing life on Earth; the panel's report in February focused on the cause of global warming and said scientists are highly confident most of it is due to human activity.

MORE....

Climate experts: Global warming report 'hijacked by bureaucrats'

RAW STORY

Despite issuing numerous warnings on the future dangers presented by global warming, a UN report issued yesterday on climate was grossly inadequate, some top US scientists are claiming.

"The science got hijacked by the political bureaucrats at the late stage of the game," argued John Walsh, a climate expert at the University of Alaska Fairbanks who helped draft parts of the report.

An article in today's Washington Post describes how the US as well as Chinese officials were effective in softening much of the language directed their way. One sentence in particular saying that "Mitigation measures will...be required," to cope with climate change did not appear in the final draft.

One angle the report attempted to examine was the disparity between the countries responsible for the bulk of pollution versus those who will be most impacted by it. "It's the poorest of the poor in the world, and this includes poor people even in prosperous societies, who are going to be the worst hit," said Rajendra Pachauri, who is chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But in spite of the attention paid to global warming's economic dimensions, many scientists argue that the lightening of some of the language in the final draft of the report signifies a desire to ease pressure on rich industralized nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.

While receiving stern criticism from some climate change experts, the report offered what the Los Angeles Times described as a "near-apocalyptic" assessment of global warming's possibilities, which could indlude "Hundreds of millions of people short of water, extreme food shortages in Africa, a landscape ravaged by floods and millions of species sentenced to extinction."

Link to article on Raw Story.com

Report warns climate change 'could mean war'

David Edwards, Raw Story

Reporter Julian Rush of Britain's Channel 4 News details a new report which "warns that climate change could provoke border conflicts and social collapse."

Some scientists believe the world's future desert conditions have already started in Konya Plain of Turkey, in the country's breadbasket. Rush talks with a Turkish environmental activist who says, "I now believe, in 20 years, there will be a new war in this region. It won't break out because of ethic differences. The war will simply be caused by water."

Adds Rush, "The idea that climate change might bring violence and bloodshed in its wake is beginning to be taken seriously in some unusual quarters" in Britain. "[M]ilitary planners are actively looking around the world for climate hot spots, places where British troops may have to be deployed in the future, either to bring aid or to keep the peace after climate conflict."

View the video report on Raw Story here....