The Associated Press State & Local Wire

January 31, 2008 Thursday 5:58 AM GMT

Leaders talk climate change in Hawaii

BYLINE: By AUDREY McAVOY, Associated Press Writer


High school students on Wednesday drew blue chalk lines on city sidewalks marking where scientists believe Oahu's high tide will reach after decades of global warming and rising sea levels. In 50 to 100 years, they expect the Pacific Ocean to shift up to one mile inland from the current shoreline, putting all of Waikiki under water.

The consequences of climate change are dramatic.

In contrast, participants and observers have only modest expectations for what more than a dozen of the world's biggest polluters may do about climate change during a meeting this week in Hawaii.

Yvo de Boer, U.N. climate chief, said
participants which include the U.S. and China would likely use the opportunity to take stock of last month's talks in Bali, where nations agreed to adopt a blueprint for reducing greenhouse emissions by 2009.

Delegates at the closed-door meetings, including top environmental officials reporting directly to presidents and prime ministers, aren't expected to make much progress outlining mandatory limits on the gases.

That's in part because the gathering is only scheduled to last two days.
It's also because the host of the Hawaii meeting, the U.S., has objected to mandatory cuts proposed by the European Union for industrialized nations. Washington has said the reductions would slice too deep, too fast.

Even so, delegates say they expect to use their time in the islands to discuss in greater detail some of the ways countries both industrialized and developing can reduce their emissions.

Among the issues is how developing nations may acquire the technology to burn coal more efficiently. Or capture and store carbon emissions in huge underground containers.
Delegates are also expected to discuss matters like how to help developing countries prevent deforestation.

Jim Connaughton, the chief U.S. delegate and White House environmental chief, said he hoped participants would reach an understanding on how industries, or different sectors, might reduce their emissions. This would complement national efforts, he said.
"Don't know yet. We have to now begin to outline these outcomes, but there's a lot of enthusiasm here for the discussion," Connaughton told reporters after the first day of talks on Wednesday.

Down the hill from the meeting, environmental activists drew a line along seven city blocks showing where ocean levels would likely rise to in the next 50 to 100 years if global temperatures continue to climb.

Alexa Hettwer, 16, said her neighborhood and her school, Iolani, were among the areas expected to be flooded.

"This really brings it home," the high school junior said of the chalking exercise. "I didn't realize everything I knew would be underwater."

De Boer said the rest of the world expects the countries gathered in Hawaii to show leadership on the matter of climate change. He added an agreement from them on how to move forward would help broader negotiations fleshing out the Bali agreement.

"This process can be useful if these major economies can really focus on what they can do to limit their emissions and how they're going to work together to do that," De Boer said.

But he noted negotiators hammering out details of the Bali agreement don't have much time.

When a Bali agreement working group meets in April, three months of the available two years will have passed, he said.

Further, because any draft agreement must be submitted six months ahead of a 2009 meeting in Copenhagen, negotiators have just over one year to prepare a document.

China, Germany, Japan and the United Nations are among those with delegates in the meeting at the East-West Center to end Thursday.

Environmentalists monitoring the meeting from afar voiced frustration with Washington's refusal to adopt an emissions reduction goal.

Given the U.S. is the source of one-quarter of the world's emissions, it is imperative that it start slashing its greenhouse gases to stop temperatures from rising, they said.

"If U.S. emissions keep increasing and we don't start making substantial cuts in the next 10 years you start to foreclose the option of keeping global emissions as low as they need to be to stay below dangerous levels of climate change," said Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists.