Carbon Dioxide Goal Too Ambitious, Say Lawmakers

COPENHAGEN — A future global climate change treaty must limit the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm), and not 450 ppm, the currently proposed level, Samuel Fankhauser told a meeting of pro-environment legislators from the eight most industrialized countries and emerging economies here. But they felt the goal was not feasible.

A British economist and researcher on climate change, Fankhauser said the limit he is urging is the only way to avoid the irreversible bleaching of coral in coastal areas, with all that this implies for people's livelihoods and the environment.

Climate change activists form a giant 350 on the International Day of Climate in Almaty on October 24. The display is a part of the 350 global campaign, which calls for a reduction of atmospheric carbon dioxide to the safe threshold of 350 parts per million (ppm). Current levels stand at 387 ppm. (Photo: Reuters)

As evidence for his claim, Fankhauser quoted new scientific results from marine biologists and zoologists in Australia, the UK and Kenya, who published a joint study Sept. 29 in the Marine Pollution Bulletin reporting that when the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) rises above 350 ppm, "most reefs worldwide are committed to irreversible decline."

This is a major concern, given the key importance of coral reefs in providing food and environmental resources to one billion people in the poorest countries of the world, Fankhauser told the Oct. 24-25 legislators forum in Copenhagen.

Acidification of seawater due to uptake of CO2 from air causes coral to lose the algae that live in symbiosis with it and provide it with food. Without the algae, the coral loses its color and becomes bleached; it is less able to reproduce and is exposed to diseases, and if the bleaching process is not reversed, the coral dies.

The forum in Copenhagen was convened by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (GLOBE), and attended by 120 legislators from the Group of Eight (G8) most industrialized countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States), emerging economies Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa, and Australia, South Korea and the host country, Denmark.

The present concentration of CO2 in air is 387 ppm, and rising. A goal to limit atmospheric CO2 to 450 ppm is being discussed at preparatory negotiations for the 15th United Nations Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 15), to be held Dec. 7-18 in Copenhagen, which is to try to reach agreement on new emissions reduction targets from 2012.

Carbon dioxide concentration in air is measured as the number of CO2 molecules divided by the total number of all molecules in the air, including CO2 itself, after water vapor has been removed. The result is expressed as parts per million, so that a value of 0.0004, say, is expressed as 400 ppm.

Faced with Fankhauser's proposal, the chair of the GLOBE forum, British MP Barry Gardiner, asked the 120 legislators present whether they believed limiting CO2 concentration to 350 ppm by 2050 was practicable.

Only two legislators said yes. Reacting to such a display of pessimism, Gardiner told the meeting: "We should be terrified."

"If you of all people do not believe that an ambitious goal is realistic, then we are lost," he said.

This is more emphatically so, given that GLOBE leaders said the forum was organized "to decide on key guiding principles to enact climate change legislation" in the participating countries, in order to "make a significant step towards limiting global temperature rise to two degrees Celsius, to avoid devastating runaway climate change."

Other world leaders taking part in the forum, like Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said the forum was "a critical staging point ahead of the formal COP 15 negotiations" to draw up a new climate change treaty.

Indeed, at the legislators' forum, economists, environmentalists and officials from international organizations presented updated scientific information that confirmed the seriousness of the environmental and social crisis facing humanity.