[Committee] FW: an international appeal for action against climate change

[sjs53]

Dear All,
Please consider signing it and including a link to http://www.stopwarming.eu
on thew next bulletin.
Regards,
Stephen

  _____  

From: Arthur Mitzman [mailto:abmitzman at planet.nl] 
Sent: 29 May 2008 11:53
To: sjs53 at cam.ac.uk
Subject: an international appeal for action against climate change


Concerned Citizens against Climate Change
Initiators at the University of Amsterdam: Joep Leerssen, Arthur Mitzman,
Lucas Reijnders
International Advisory Board:
Hedy d'Ancona (NL), Atilio Boron (Arg), Natalie Zemon Davis (US), Fiona Dove
(SA/NL), Terry Eagleton (UK), Gabriel Kolko (NL/Can), Joan Martinez-Alier
(Sp), Bill McKibben (US), Claus Offe (Ger), Jan Pronk (NL), Richard Sennett
(US/UK)



Dear Mr. Stretton,

Concerned Citizens against Climate Change was formed at the beginning of
2008 by faculty members in Environmental Studies, European Studies and
History at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. We are
circulating an urgent appeal  for resumption of international negotiations
to halt the accelerating degradation of the global climate: "Global warming
threatens the future of the earth. Act now, before it is too late." The
appeal is attached and can also be read on our website, www.stopwarming.eu
<http://www.stopwarming.eu/> . 

There are many reasons for urgent action on warming.  While the 2007 report
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change painted a bleak picture of
the future unless greenhouse gas emissions were quickly curbed, in fact the
data used by the IPCC were a year old and the situation has turned out to be
considerably worse than the climate scientists predicted.  On the basis of
the IPCC report, both the UN, at the ineffective UN Bali Conference of
December 2007 and the EU, in its recently announced program for reducing C02
emissions, have aimed at limiting greenhouse gasses to 450ppm and
temperature increases to 2.C, but both UN and EU assumed - also using IPCC
data - that emissions reductions only needed to begin in 2015.  

The November 2007 report of the International Energy Agency, however,
stipulated not 2015 but 2012 as the deadline for a peaking of emissions if
we are to avoid exceeding 450ppm and 2 degrees. Moreover, in April of this
year James Hansen, one of the main sources of the 450ppm, two degrees
centigrade warming limitation, published the results of new research showing
that the last time the 450ppm, 2.C limit was reached, the ice from both
poles melted and sea levels rose dangerously. He now urges a goal of
stabilization at 350ppm GHG, about 10% lower than current levels.  

The appeal has four goals: 

.        to alert the public at large to the seriousness of the situation
and of the necessity to reconsider, in the light of it, conventional wisdom
about "growth"; 
.        to underline the need for broad governmental intervention in the
form of carbon taxes, subsidies and extensive infrastructrual programs in
transport and renewable energy  technology, in addition to the existing
emissions trading schemes, which have been more beneficial to the
corporations involved than to the environment; 
.        to bring mass pressure on the governments to act quickly and
drastically to prevent a catastrophe; 
.        and to indicate the readiness of large numbers of citizens all over
the planet to sacrifice some immediate comforts for the sake of the human
future.

We have started in the Netherlands, where we have received the support of
the directors of most of this country's environmental organizations. For the
past month, we have also been canvassing for signatures in other countries.
There are now over 450 signatories from 25 countries, including seven
members of the European Parliament, a leading member of the Dutch Parliament
and two former Dutch ministers of Environment. Our International Advisory
Board includes Hedy d'Ancona, Richard Sennett, Claus Offe, Otilio Boron,
Fiona Dove, Terry Eagleton, Bill McKibben, Joan Martinez-Alier, Natalie
Zemon Davis and Gabriel Kolko.

We need to persuade the policy makers of the major world powers to take
rapid and effective action to prevent a climate catastrophe. Please sign our
appeal at http://www.stopwarming.eu/?petition=signup. If you have friends or
colleagues who also might want to sign, please send this on to them, or, if
you prefer, send us their addresses and we will do so.

Sincerely,

Arthur Mitzman, (emeritus Professor of History, University of Amsterdam)
for Concerned Citizens against Climate Change 

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