Germany:Industrial Nations Are Climate Killers

[The.Greenbase@gb.greenpeace.org]

>> GREENPEACE CLIMBERS STILL ON SMOKESTACK: INDUSTRIALISED


                    ************************
                    GREENPEACE PRESS RELEASE
                    ************************
 
>> GREENPEACE CLIMBERS STILL ON SMOKESTACK: INDUSTRIALISED
NATIONS ARE CLIMATE KILLERS
 
BERLIN, 28 March 1995 (GP) The three Greenpeace activists who
spent their first night up the smokestack of a 2000MW German coal
fired power station today called upon the 175 Governments
gathered in Berlin for the Climate Summit to stop talking, start
action, cut C02 and go solar.
 
The climbers: Erhard S. and Gero L. from Germany and Dan R. from
the United States (1) joined a Greenpeace press conference in
Berlin by satellite from 193m up the smokestack at Frimmersdorf
near Cologne.   
"We are up here to bear witness to the source of climate change.
You know what the solutions are," they said to Governments.  "You
have the power to make the fossil fuels part of history and take
us into a solar future. We are staying here until the end of the
Summit --waiting for  you to save us from the climate
catastrophe."
 
Dr Oliver Worm from Greenpeace Germany noted the opening remarks
by German environment minister Angela Merkel.  "According to Mrs
Merkel she is very concerned at the threat to the small island
states from climate change.  She appears to know about the
effects and says that there is no need to wait for further
scientific confirmation of climate change before governments take
action on real reductions.  Therefore Germany along with all
developed countries must now cut their own C02 emissions by 20%
by 2005, as the AOSIS Protocol proposes. As the chair of the
Climate Summit, Mrs Merkel is responsible for ensuring that this
meeting adopts the protocol."
 
"The German Government has promised much, done little and, if it
wants to take the role of leadership, must act now." 
 
Recent months have seen the most substantive confirmation to date
that climate change has already begun.  The most alarming
evidence to date is the recent report of a 65 km (40 mile) long
crack in the Larsen Ice Shelf in Antarctica -- according to
scientists probably the first time this has happened in 20,000
years and the result of a 2.5 deg C warming. 
 
"What more evidence do these governments need before they will
face up to taking decisions to cut C02?" asked the activists on
the chimney. "Right now they are only arguing about the rules,
and most are going backwards."
 
Greenpeace endorsed the proposal of a Protocol from the Alliance
of Small Island States (AOSIS), a group of low-lying island
states who stand to lose the most in the face of rising sea
levels.  
 
Some governments' own commitments are the same as this proposal -
-cutting C02 20% by 2005 -- some even better, yet there is still
no agreement to even start negotiating such an instrument.  
 
 
Greenpeace looks to the European Union to take a leadership role
in getting a protocol in place.  The EU Council of Environment
Ministers has actually drafted the elements for a negotiating
mandate for such a protocol, to be agreed by the meeting.
Meanwhile other industrialised countries -- particularly the
United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan, appear
determined to actively block its progress.
 
"It is up to the developed world, which produces 75% of the
world's man-made C02 emissions, to make these cuts, and to help
developing countries make the switch to renewable forms of
energy, such as solar energy," said Kirsty Hamilton of Greenpeace
International.
 
Greenpeace today produced the 1994/95 update of the "Climate Time
Bomb", a catalogue of the latest climatic events since 1990 which
are warnings of what is to come as greenhouse pollution
accelerates.  
* Global temperatures in 1994 were the third warmest on record.  
 
* In the North Pacific, 80% of zooplankton, at the bottom of the
marine food chain, have been lost, and scientists point to the
warming of the oceans from climate change as the only possible
explanation.
 
* Temperatures in Antarctica have risen 2.5 deg C this century.
Scientists fear the crack in the ice shelf, and the huge iceberg
which is double the size of Berlin, is an early warning of much
larger changes to come in Antarctica which could increase sea-
level faster than previously estimated.
 
 
For information please call Greenpeace at the Summit on 
++49 30 304 1432 or 304 1433
Action site ++49 172 381 8142
Greenpeace on the Internet:  http://www.greenpeace.org/     
or http://www.cyberstore.ca/greenpeace/climate/html 
 
 
(1)  For legal reasons we cannot give the full names of the
climbers.