The Daily Telegraph AU
Wednesday 16 May 2007
Australia's drought is a "wake-up call" on global warming, the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit has heard.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is hosting the conference in NY along with former US President Bill Clinton, made the call overnight at the summit's launch.
Mayors from some of the world's largest urban areas - including Sydney's Lord Mayor Clover Moore - have united and called on cities to unite and take the lead in tackling climate change.
"As cities produce three-fourths of the carbon emissions, we must act," said London Mayor Ken Livingstone, the head of the C40 large cities, describing climate change as "the single biggest threat to the future of humanity."
"Whatever the discussions within our governments, as cities we are not waiting," he told leaders from 46 of the world's most polluted cities, from Cairo to Shanghai and Los Angeles to Bangkok.
Livingstone said the summit aimed to "create a critical mass that puts the world on the path to avoid a catastrophic climate change ... We came to take decisive actions to reduce our own carbon emissions," he said.
The summit, which opened late yesterday and runs through Thursday, is expected to include several joint initiatives that harness the cities' combined purchasing power.
The event is being organised in conjunction with the Clinton Climate Initiative, part of the foundation set up by former US president Bill Clinton, who is due to address the summit on Wednesday.
The summit has also attracted dozens of major corporations, including GE, Deutsche Bank, Swiss Re, JP Morgan Chase, Shell and Siemens, who are either offering technological expertise or financial backing for green projects.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg criticised governmental inaction on climate change, telling delegates: "We need no new technology, we need no new invention, all that is required is political will."
"If they don't act, we will. Shame on them but we cannot sit around and watch our environment deteriorate and put this world in jeopardy," he said. "We are willing to stand up, we think it is one of the seminal issues of our time."
Other topics up for discussion at the summit include beating traffic congestion, making water systems more efficient, adopting renewable energy sources, increasing recycling, reducing waste and improving mass transit.
When London hosted the inaugural large cities summit in 2005, only 18 cities took part. With climate change now one of the most pressing hot-button issues, the number of cities represented has more than doubled.
"Even here in the United States things are beginning to move," said New York's deputy mayor, Daniel Doctoroff. "The time for debate is over, the time for action is now."
He explained how a plan to manage an expected boom in the city's population over the coming decades had evolved into proposals to trim carbon emissions by 30 per cent before 2030 and restrict vehicle access into Manhattan.
"So many companies are now taking it seriously," he said.
Some 500 US mayors were also at the summit to show their objections to the policies of President George W Bush, who has refused to sign up to the Kyodo Protocol, which commits countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
"Mayors took action because we have to, because the federal government was silent," said Douglas Palmer, head of the United States conference of Mayors.
Australian Water Crisis Could Be Worse Than Thought
By James Grubel
Reuters
Wednesday 16 May 2007
Canberra - Water shortages facing Australia's drought-hit prime agricultural area might be worse than expected, the government was told on Wednesday, as river towns braced for unprecedented restrictions on water use.
The head of an inquiry into relocating farming to Australia's tropical north, Bill Heffernan, told the Australian Financial Review that the amount of water flowing into the major Murray-Darling river system could be 40 percent less than thought.
However, Australia's Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull said there was no reason to panic and Heffernan's concerns about over-counting surface and ground water had been accounted for.
"The problem is one we are aware of," Turnbull told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio, adding there was no need for the government to increase a A$3 billion ($2.5 billion) 10-year plan to buy water back from drought-ravaged irrigators.
Prime Minister John Howard in April urged Australians to pray for rain and told farmers along the Murray-Darling they would receive no irrigation water without higher inflows into the rivers in the lead up to winter.
The river basin, the size of France and Spain, accounts for 41 percent of Australia's agriculture, 90 percent of the country's irrigated crops and A$22 billion worth of agricultural exports.
Turnbull acknowledged the drought meant more surface water was needed to replenish ground water systems, which have suffered because of a seven-year dry spell across large parts of eastern Australia.
Heffernan told the Australian Financial Review newspaper that scientists appeared to have double-counted the amount of water likely to flow into the Murray-Darling because they did not account for the link between underground and surface water.
"Forty percent of the inflow into the Murray-Darling comes from ground water. So when you have been accounting for it as a separate resource, this is a serious error," Heffernan said.
Heavy rains in the southern Murray-Darling Basin in late April lifted hopes that water shortages might soon end. But May storages in major dams remained near record lows of around 12 percent capacity, the Murray-Darling Basin Commission said.
The latest water warnings come as New South Wales state, which has more than 80 percent of its farmlands in drought, told about 100 towns along the Murray and Darling rivers to impose tougher limits on how residents used water.
People in Australia's main cities are already enduring water restrictions, including bans on washing cars and outlawing the use of sprinklers to water gardens. But most riverside towns have only voluntary water-saving measures.
New South Wales state Water Minister Phil Koperberg wrote to to 20 regional councils to demand they implement the top level of water restrictions before July 1.
In northern Queensland state, miner Rio Tinto Ltd./Plc. on Wednesday said it would cut 160 jobs at its Tarong coal mine because its customer, Tarong Energy Corp, would cut power generation by 70 percent to conserve water.
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