Global warming can't be denied, U.N. official says

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Science Writer

The issues surrounding global warming are clear to Klaus Topfer, under-secretary general of the United Nations, and executive director of the U.N. Environmental Programme.

It's here and it's getting worse.

Count on sea levels to keep rising, and the associated erosion of coastal areas. Count on the effects of climate change making life in Hawai'i and around the world worse.

"It is without any doubt that there are severe impacts of this," Topfer said. "The hope that some regions can benefit is not realistic. There are only losers. There are no winners."

He is the keynote speaker tomorrow morning at the opening of the Mayor's Asia-Pacific Environmental Summit, a conference organized by Mayor Jeremy Harris.

The conference in Honolulu is aimed at bringing together leaders from the major cities and towns across Asia and the Pacific to discuss ways to improve their environments.

A main goal of the summit, which runs today through Sunday, is to find ways to help cities make the changes to operate more efficiently and improve the lives of their residents.

Topfer is an economist and planner and former German minister for the environment.

At the United Nations, he said, one goal is to bring together the best scientific minds to reach a global consensus on what's happening with the environment.

The updated report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents that view, and Topfer believes that while there are naysayers, there is no serious scientific credibility to views that warming isn't happening, that humans aren't responsible or that the results won't be catastrophic.

"We have to act," Topfer said in a telephone interview from New York.

"There is now, really, a common denominator. There is already climate change going on. It's clear that this is linked with human activity. And it is proceeding at a higher speed than expected before," he said.

There is evidence in warming global temperatures, in the thinning of the polar ice caps, in the rising of the level of the seas, in lower-elevation plants moving to higher elevations in the European Alps.

The main culprit is the production of vast quantities of carbon dioxide, pumped into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas.

"We have to do a lot against those emissions, but we must also do something on adaptation, because the change is already occurring," Topfer said.

The consequences for Pacific island nations are "especially disastrous," he said, with rising sea levels drowning the low-lying islands, and warming seas damaging coral reefs that feed the people and protect the coastlines.

Small nations are largely helpless to fix the problem of which they are the primary victims, Topfer said.

"Those responsible for the emissions are not mainly suffering, and those suffering the consequences lack the ability to change it," he said.

A global solution must include measures that reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but which do so at the lowest costs to the economies of the world, Topfer said.

Big cities are key factors in both the problem and the solution, he said. They are where most of the world's fuel is burned, thus where most of the carbon dioxide is generated. And if there are to be changes and more efficient systems, they need to happen in cities.

The summit, being held at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, includes more than 400 delegates from 29 countries. Registration is closed.