Cabinet in drowning Maldives to meet underwater

The president of Maldives, who last year proposed relocating his entire country, is set to chair an underwater Cabinet meeting this month to highlight the threat global warming and rising sea levels pose to his low-lying nation. “It’s definitely intended to bring attention to how climate change will affect us and to call upon the entire world to come up with a concrete solution,” said Aminath Shauna, the deputy undersecretary in the president’s office, on Wednesday

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Airline industry plans to halve carbon emissions

The global aviation industry has agreed to cut its net carbon emissions to half 2005 levels by 2050 under a plan to be set out on Tuesday by British Airways chief, Willie Walsh. Mr Walsh, who will outline the initiative at Tuesday’s United Nations forum on climate change in New York, said it was the “best option for the planet” and should be taken up at the December Copenhagen summit, where world leaders are due to come up with a new accord on limiting greenhouse gas emissions to replace the 1997 Kyoto agreement

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Study: A Fairer Way to Cut Global CO2 Emissions

At the end of the year, governments from around the world will meet in Copenhagen hopefully to hammer out a new treaty — the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 — to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions. Their lack of time aside, diplomats face a very large, very immovable hurdle on the way to a new Kyoto. Developed countries like the U.S., which refused to ratify the original treaty, are responsible for most of the CO2 in the atmosphere — and more than a century of industrialization has helped make them rich — which would indicate that they should shoulder the lion’s share of future emissions reductions.

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