date: Mon, 25 Oct 1999 09:43:56 -0400
from: Adam Markham <grassland@erols.com>
subject: More good stuff on the scenarios
to: "'Andrew Kerr'" <101322.3724@compuserve.com>, "'Claude Martin'" <claude.martin@wwfnet.org>, "'Mike Hulme'" <m.hulme@uea.ac.uk>

This was an editorial in yesterday's Japan Times. Adam

Copyright 1999 The Japan Times Ltd. 
The Japan Times

October 24, 1999, Sunday

LENGTH: 798 words

HEADLINE: Save the beaches

BODY:
There are words that wake us up - like "free" or "prize" or "espresso" - 
and then there are words that put us to sleep. Unfortunately, the latter 
group includes most of the working vocabulary of some very well-meaning 
people: "environment," "global warming," "greenhouse gases," all the way up 
to the incomparably sedative "joint emissions targets." "Flexibility 
mechanisms" and "sink enhancement" have probably done more to cure insomnia 
than to avert climatic doom. For all their armory of statistics, acronyms, 
technical jargon and cliches, the scientists and bureaucrats who are 
working so hard to "save the planet" have a terrible record when it comes 
to capturing public attention.

They captured it last week, however, with a headline calculated to jolt the 
sleepiest polluter awake: "Beaches may be gone by 2080s," as this newspaper 
summarized the local aspects of a report released Tuesday by the World Wide 
Fund for Nature. "Beach," with its pleasant aura of sun and surf, is in the 
gold-medal league of attention-getting words, so most readers probably 
paused long enough to learn that, if global warming continues unchecked, 
the sea could swallow all the beaches in Japan by the end of the next 
century. This is a worst-case scenario, but even the most optimistic 
computer simulation sees half the country's beaches under water by the 
2080s.

Cynics might interject here that a) they didn't know Japan had any beaches, 
in the classic sense of "a stretch of sand unencumbered by ugly cement 
structures," and b) nobody would care anyway, since they already visit 
beach-enhanced theme parks all year round. But these are frivolous 
responses to a potentially calamitous situation that the WWF and other 
environmental groups are only just learning how best to publicize.

They are also getting better at timing. This report (preceded by an equally 
dramatic one in August on the likely effects of climate change on world 
tourism) came just days before the opening tomorrow in Bonn of the Fifth 
Session of the Conference of the Parties, or COP 5, of the United Nations 
Framework Convention Climate Change, or UNFCCC.

All those capital letters induce the usual somnolence, but in truth this is 
an important conference to which the world should pay attention. It is of 
course a followup to the famous COP 3, held in Kyoto two years ago, which 
produced the highly regard

ed, but broadly disregarded Kyoto Protocol. This plan binds developed 
countries to "emissions targets" for the period 2008-2012 (meaning 
emissions of ozone-destroying greenhouse gases, the collective culprit of 
global warming) that would be 5 percent lower than their emissions in 1990. 
Or, at least, it would be binding if the aforesaid developed countries 
would get around to ratifying the protocol. Nearly two years after agreeing 
to it, not one has done so. Although they obviously produce most of the 
world's greenhouse gases, they remain paralyzed by concerns about the 
plan's economic implications and how, or even whether, it can be 
implemented fairly. Consequently, their emissions are on track to be 18 
percent higher than 1990 levels by 2010.

Yes (yawn), we've heard those numbers before. But here is what it could 
mean a century from now, in terms a child could understand. For Japan, not 
only will beaches vanish, but coastal cities like Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya 
will be increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic flooding. Worldwide, 
summers will be hotter - in popular tourist destinations like the 
Mediterranean, unbearably so. Coral reefs will die. Arable lands will turn 
to desert. Many wildlife species will disappear because of climatic changes 
affecting habitats. Drought will increase the incidence of forest fires, 
particularly in rain-forest regions like the Amazon. Wetlands will dry up. 
The Earth, in short, will have a different face at the end of the 21st 
century, no matter what restrictions are implemented now. Our imaginary 
child might think this would have economic consequences too, but he would 
also understand the answer: That's a problem for tomorrow's accountants.

The Bonn conference's job is to hammer out ways of implementing the Kyoto 
Protocol so that the rich nations' objections are met - a process to be 
concluded at next year's conference in The Hague. It will have to include 
defining the rules by which developed countries can reduce the costs of 
meeting their targets (hence the "flexibility mechanisms"), establishing 
consequences for failure to comply and, most important, getting developing 
countries more involved. It is crucial, but not at all certain, that COP 5 
will succeed.

If human nature holds true and COP 5 fails, there will still be one ray of 
light for Japan: The ocean will solve its thorny Northern Territories 
problem once and for all.

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH 
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