ACT are out of step with the rest of the developed world

World powers accept warming limit
Developed and developing nations have agreed that global temperatures should not rise more than 2C above 1900 levels, a G8 summit declaration says.
That is the level above which, the UN says, the Earth's climate system would become dangerously unstable. US President Barack Obama said the countries had made important strides in dealing with climate change. But the G8 failed to persuade developing countries to accept targets of cutting emissions by 50% by 2050. On Wednesday, the G8 agreed its own members would work towards 80% cuts by the same date.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the G8 had not done enough and should also set 2020 targets. He said that while the G8's Wednesday agreement was welcome, its leaders also needed to establish a strong and ambitious mid-term target for emissions cuts.

ACT, the political party who are the tail owning the dog in its relationship with National are on record as saying that a 2 degree rise in temperature would be ‘beneficial’ for NZ and that C02 is a ‘misunderstood nutrient’. Environmentalists call C02 ‘pollution’, ACT calls it ‘life’, beyond the climate deniers like dear old Ian Wishart and ACT and the oil sponsored spin groups trying to pollute the debate with quack science, the rest of the scientific community are demanding changes before 2020 because a 2degree rise would put the entire planet in danger of breaching feedback loops that could end civilization as we know it with catastrophic abrupt climate change.

ACT’s influence over the Government is happening because of an intellectual vacuum within National – in short National don’t know what it is they actually stand for. They were social conservatives, that failed. They were free marketers, that failed. They were racially divisive, that failed. As National try to reestablish exactly what it is they believe in, that philosophical vacuum is being exploited by ACT, to have a party seriously claim that a 2 degree rise would be all roses and gold for NZ is so bankrupt that it is farcical.

Dr Nick Smith claimed this week at the climate change meeting that we had to sell India coal because if we weren’t India’s dealer for an 18th century filthy energy source then someone else would be. That type of thinking and lack of ethics to pursue trade deals is the exact type of mindset that has put us in this position in the first place.

As the G8 weakly reach for a new arrangement after a decade of lip service we the people need to be the ones who force the change.

2020 is a date that demands solutions, it is interesting that the Pentagon had a very clear idea as to what would happen 11 years from now in 2004…

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is 'plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.