Global Warming

Today began the international conference in Copenhagen on climate change. There will be debates on Global warming, carbon emissions and who needs to make the biggest sacrifices to keep the world stable.

Saturday Baltimore had its first winter snow of more than three inches. days like that make me question global warming as well.

Then I remembered that a friend of ours sent us pictures of Nova Olinda do Norte, Amazonas, the town where I met my wife, in September when the floods hit. This was the highest the river has gotten into the town in more than twenty years, making many fear that the snows from the Andes are coming down the Rio Madeira in bigger volume than in the past.

When you look at the pictures and see the destruction remember that this could be a scene of many places if Global Warming continues.

Should Industrial Nations Pay to protect the Amazon Rain Forest?

While most Americans were enjoying Thanksgiving dinner, Brazil's president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that "gringos" should pay the nations that contain the Amazon rain forest to prevent deforestation. He insisted the rich Western nations caused more environmental destruction in the past than the Brazilian loggers and farmers who cut and burn trees in the world's largest tropical rain forest.

In anticipation of the upcoming Copenhagen climate summit, beginning December 7, 2009, President da Silva invited the seven leaders of the nations containing the Amazon Rain Forest to a summit in Manaus, Amazonas. The delegates signed a declaration calling for financial help from the industrial world to halt the deforestation that causes global warming.

Regrettably, the only leaders attending the summit were Guyana's Bharrat Jagdeo and France's Nicolas Sarkozy, representing French Guiana. Peru and Ecuador sent vice presidents or ministers. To President da Silva's embarrassment both the presidents of Columbia and Venezuela cancelled at the last minute.

One positive item to come out of the Amazon Summit was Sarkozy supporting a proposal by da Silva for the creation of a financial transaction tax to build a fund to help developing nations protect their forests.

This and other plans will be discussed in Copenhagen.

It will be interesting to see how the industrial world reacts to the proposal and what counter proposals will be placed on the floor.

The future of the Amazon rain forest and the oxygen it produces is of vast importance to all of us who walk Mother Earth. Let us hope that the world's representatives will keep that in the fore front when they meet beginning next week.