COP 15 Magazine

ОБГОВОРИТИ НА ФОРУМІ

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Saving the world...

By Oksana MYKOLIUK, The Day

A summit on climate change and global warming, which gathered representatives of about 100 UN member states, ended the other day in New York. The summit’s initiator, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, believes that humankind has only 10 years to save itself because climate changes will be irreversible under unfavorable conditions and that it is the moral and political duty of every country. This kind of international forums devoted to man’s influence on the environment as well as various nature-conservation campaigns have become very topical over the past few months in a number of countries, Ukraine being no exception. The point is that Copenhagen will host on December 7 an historic conference of the representatives of 200 counties which are supposed to undertake to radically cut the atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases. This will be preceded by the adoption of a new document which will replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2013.

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Ukraine's carbon windfall an issue for Copenhagen

AP/Michael von Bülow

Ukraine's economic collapse has produced a potential multibillion-dollar bonanza, allowing the country to reap windfall carbon credit profits from the smokeless smokestacks of its industrial shutdown.

The industrial collapse has been bad for jobs but good for the climate. Ukraine produces less than half the greenhouse gases it did 20 years ago, and under a trading system devised in the negotiations for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, curbing the gases blamed for global warming, it is allowed to sell credits for every ton of carbon dioxide saved.