Global warming is already seriously affecting our planet. Climate change threatens many areas around the world with more intense storms, flooding, droughts, decreased food production, water scarcity, and disease. The world’s poorest people will bear the brunt of the impacts, even though it is the United States and other rich countries that are largely responsible for the greenhouse gas pollution that causes climate change.
Responses to climate change must be aggressive and immediate, just and equitable, and must take into consideration the disproportionate role that the United States has played in creating global warming. Friends of the Earth is working through our global network, and here in the United States with partner groups, to make climate equity part of the global warming solution.
In late 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark will host the global community for climate negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). To avoid dire consequences from climate change, countries will need to agree to fundamental changes at a global level. These include a shift to clean energy production in developing countries, a halt to rapid rates of deforestation, particularly in areas with tropical forests, and plans for addressing the unavoidable climate impacts. In order to combat global warming pollution without compromising basic development needs like health care and education, developing countries will require funding for these efforts from the United States and other industrialized countries.
To achieve an equitable and just climate policy, and to reach an equitable international agreement, the United States must adopt policies that will:
The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capacities, which underpins international negotiations under the UNFCCC, should guide Congressional climate policy. This fundamental principle, which is grounded in fairness, is based on differing historical responsibilities among countries for climate change, and differing abilities to address this crisis. The overwhelming responsibility of the United States and other industrialized countries for anthropogenic climate change and the fundamental inequalities of its impacts should be central to climate legislation.
