Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Climatewatch: lesser known CO2 emission sources

It seems a lot of the attention to curbing emission these days goes to what's under our eyes, though the solutions may be complicated, expensive or take a long time to implement.
Recent studies though (relevant enough to determine IPCC to include them in their assessment of our current situation in their meeting last month) point out the 8% of the the yearly CO2 emissions are due to degrading peatlands in South East Asia:
For peat's sake
Incidentally, this places Indonesia, home to 90% of these emissions (in Kalimantan and Sumatra) in the third place worldwide, after the US and China!
And apparently, this source of emissions is the easiest and cheapest to address (reported as such even by IPCC) making it very possible (and relatively fast) to put a significant dent in our soaring emission rates.
However, like with all good things, if they do not have the money, and foreign nations are not willing (what's their interest?) to lend that aid - and even the Kyoto framework does not offer a helping hand with initiatives of this sort - then which way do you turn? It can be said "it's their problem, let them deal with it"... I fully agree - and now, if you will excuse me, I need to go turn up my A/C - it's awfully hot in my office today!

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