Archivo categoría «Naturaleza»
By Craig Rucker, executive director of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (THE WASHINGTON TIMES, 29/11/11):
It’s that time of year again. Another holiday season and another United Nations climate conference is getting under way in some remote corner of the world.
The good news for those of us skeptical of global warming fear-mongering is that the chance of U.N. delegates now gathered in Durban, South Africa, agreeing to a revamped global warming treaty is slim. The bad news is that much remains at stake.
Global warming has become the ultimate means for anyone lacking a beneficial product … Seguir leyendo
By Praful Bidwai, a political analyst, an activist and a regular columnist for the Hindu. He is the author of The Politics of Climate Change and the Global Crisis: Mortgaging Our Future (THE GUARDIAN, 28/11/11):
As crucial climate talks begin in Durban, attention is focused on the likely role of the major country groupings. The outcome of the UN climate conference will be largely decided by the interplay of forces between the Basic (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) group formed two years ago, the EU, and the umbrella group of developed countries, led by the US … Seguir leyendo
By Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Laureate and founder of the Green Belt Movement (THE GUARDIAN, 25/11/11):
This article was written by Nobel peace prize winner Wangari Maathai in September, shortly before her death. It addresses some of the main issues she and the Green Belt Movement were intending to raise at the UN climate summit, which starts in Durban, South Africa, on Monday
In 2011 the worst drought in 60 years engulfed the east of Africa, forcing millions into a desperate struggle to survive. Poor governance intensified the consequences: a drought, not unusual for this part of … Seguir leyendo
By Heherson Alvarez, a former Philippine senator and environment secretary, and is currently Commissioner of the Philippine Climate Commission, and John Topping, Jr., President of the Washington, DC-based Climate Institute and a co-author of Sudden and Disruptive Climate Change (Project Syndicate, 23/11/11):
In 1997, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Kyoto Protocol – an agreement among signatory states to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. In 2012, however, the Clean Development Mechanism, a system of carbon credits in which each credit represents a country’s right to emit one ton of carbon dioxide (CO2), is set to … Seguir leyendo
By Leão Serva, journalist and a former editor in chief of Diário de São Paulo. This essay was translated by Benjamin Moser from the Portuguese (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 17/11/11):
In 1888, Brazil became the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery — a profound moral stain for a nation that prides itself today on being a multiracial democracy.
During the long 19th-century struggle against slavery, at a time when abolitionists in Britain were protesting the forced transfer of millions of Africans from their homelands, Brazilian leaders denounced the global abolitionist movement for interfering in the country’s internal … Seguir leyendo
By John Ashton, the Foreign Office’s special representative for climate change (THE GUARDIAN, 14/11/11):
The lesson the world is learning the hard way from the financial crisis is that there is only one boat and we are all in it. To stay afloat, we need rules tough enough to stop systemic risks becoming systemic collapses. This lesson is as true for the environment as it is for the economy.
A key battle in the campaign to build an effective system of global rules will shortly take place in Durban, where the UN climate negotiations reopen at the end of … Seguir leyendo
Por Bjørn Lomborg, autor de los libros El ecologista escéptico y En frío: la guía del ecologista escéptico para el cambio climático, jefe del Centro de Consenso de Copenhague y profesor adjunto de la Escuela de Administración de Empresas de Copenhague. Traducción: Esteban Flamini (Project Syndicate, 14/11/11):
Cuando el mes pasado el nuevo gabinete de gobierno de Dinamarca se presentó ante la reina Margarita II, el ministro de desarrollo entrante quiso dejar sentadas sus credenciales ecologistas, al llegar hasta el palacio en un diminuto vehículo eléctrico de tres ruedas. El momento fotográfico fue una demostración elocuente acerca de … Seguir leyendo
By Achim Steiner, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of the UN Environment Program (Project Syndicate, 08/11/11):
For the elephants that are returning to southern Angola, after herds were devastated during the country’s civil wars, the battle is far from over. Old land mines, sown during the decades of conflict that ended in 2002, are threatening the lives and limbs not only of people, but also of the growing elephant populations that are crossing into Angola from northern Botswana on ancient migration routes that continue into Zambia. Mines are a particularly stark example of how humans interfere with migratory … Seguir leyendo
Por Cayetano López, director general del CIEMAT (EL PAÍS, 20/10/11):
En noviembre de 2009, la cumbre del clima celebrada en Copenhague se saldó con un sonoro fracaso. Varios de los países de entre los mayores emisores de dióxido de carbono (CO2) a la atmósfera, en particular Estados Unidos y China, cerraron la discusión evitando comprometerse a reducir las emisiones. Sustituyeron un acuerdo de reducciones cuantificables, que habría sido lo único efectivo, por una declaración en la que llamaban a no sobrepasar el nivel de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) en la atmósfera asociado a un aumento de la temperatura … Seguir leyendo
Por Stefan Rahmstorf, profesor de Física del Océano de la Universidad de Potsdam, y director de departamento del Instituto de Investigación sobre el Impacto Climático de Potsdam. Su libro más reciente es The Climate Crisis. Traducción de Kena Nequiz (Project Syndicate, 17/10/11):
Una calamidad silenciosa, en gran medida inadvertida, se ha estado revelando en las últimas semanas en el Ártico. Las consecuencias de largo plazo serán de mayor alcance que las de la crisis de deuda internacional o las de la desaparición de la dictadura libia, que son las noticias que ahora concentran la atención de los medios de … Seguir leyendo
Eric Chivian, who shared the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, is the founder and Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. Rigoberta Menchú is a Guatemalan activist for the rights of indigenous people and a winner of the 1992 Nobel Peace Prize. For more information on how to save Yasuní-ITT, please visit http://www.yasunisupport.org (Project Syndicate, 06/10/11):
Charles Darwin would appreciate the irony of Yasuní National Park in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Yasuní, home to one of the highest concentrations of biodiversity in the world, is itself engaged in what Darwin called “the struggle for … Seguir leyendo
By Karen Sack, director of International Ocean Conservation at Pew Environment Group (THE WASHINGTON POST, 13/09/11):
Deep below the ocean surface lies a cold, hostile environment where the light of day cannot penetrate. The life-forms inhabiting this murky world grow slowly, mature late and take time to reproduce. Many species live 30 years or more, some up to the grand age of 150. Most have not yet been defined by science.
This dark void, which lies beyond any country’s national jurisdiction, is in trouble.
The world’s deep-sea catch is steadily declining, and the high vulnerability of these fish populations … Seguir leyendo
By Gernot Wagner, an economist at the Environmental Defense Fund and the author of the forthcoming But Will the Planet Notice? (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 08/09/11):
You reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season grapes. You do all the right things.
Good.
Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action.
You refuse the plastic bag at the register, believing this one gesture somehow makes a difference, and then … Seguir leyendo
By John C. Mitani, a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 21/08/11):
Viewers of this summer’s Hollywood blockbuster “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” may be surprised to learn that before our earliest ancestors arrived on the scene roughly seven million years ago, apes really did rule the planet. As many as 40 kinds roamed Eurasia and Africa between 10 and 25 million years ago. Only five types remain. Two live in Asia, the gibbon and orangutan; another three, the chimpanzee, bonobo and gorilla, dwell in Africa. All five are endangered, several … Seguir leyendo
By Frances G. Beinecke, the president of the Natural Resources Defense Council who served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling (THE NEW YORK TIMES, 18/08/11):
About 55,000 gallons of oil have escaped into the North Sea since last week from a leaky pipeline operated by Royal Dutch Shell, about 100 miles off Scotland.
Last year, Americans watched in mounting fury as the oil industry and the federal government struggled for five disastrous months to contain the much larger BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
Now imagine the increased danger and … Seguir leyendo