Before leaving for the Copenhagen convention, the three Tech delegates raised a"Hokies for Hopenhagen" poster, making it available as an ad-hoc campus petition for action at the summit.
Three Virginia Tech students are to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark from Dec. 6-18.
Miranda Peterson, Angie de Soto and Lyndsay McKeever, were among the three selected to attend the conference from Tech.
There will be 10,000 sustainability activists from nongovernmental organizations present at the conference, 5,000 journalists, and world leaders and delegates from 192 countries worldwide, including President Obama and China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.
Earlier, the U.N.’s climate chief told reporters the “time is up” for governments to deliver rapid action on climate change, on the eve of the global summit.
U.N. Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer’s remarks came less than 24 hours before the Monday opening of the climate conference.
De Boer said governments must agree to quick, immediate actions as well as longer-term emission limit schemes and funding commitments.
He also spoke of the need for fast-track aid to help poorer countries limit current and future carbon emissions.
“In short-term financing, I think we need 10 billion for 2010 and 10 billion for 2011 and 10 billion for 2012. That’s in prompt-start financing,” de Boer told the press conference.
“Clearly, though, over time, by 2020 or 2030, we are going to need more significant sums, in the hundreds of billions of dollars, to deal with both mitigation and adaption.
But the first priority for me at the moment is prompt-start financing to deal with urgent needs.”
Of the scheduled Dec. 18 arrival of President Barack Obama in Copenhagen, de Boer said: “I’m happy he is coming toward the end of the conference. I hope that, as part of the negotiating process, he comes with ambitious American targets and strong financial support to reach out to developing countries.”
“Almost every day now countries announce new plans to cut or limit emissions. Never before in 17 years of climate change negotiations have so many different nations made so many firm pledges together,” said de Boer.
ct staff writer katie robidoux
contributed to this report
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Will they be taking some cooked up "hockey stick" graphs to add to the cause?
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One person probably just signed the sign, goes with the theme.
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http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/climate_challenges.html
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"For most Americans, the world beyond the USs borders is nothing more than an irritating nuisance. For this reason, arguments based on appeals about drowning Bangladeshis, starving Africans and flooded islands in Indonesia have little effect. In Hollywood, the United States has an industry that continually pushes the materialistic ideal of Western prosperity to billions of people around the world, while at the same time bombarding them with apocalyptic visions in the form of disaster movies."
http://sweetness-light.com/archive/obama-failed-world-on-climate-change
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It's a shame the whole global warming turns out to be a scam intended to redistribute money from entrepenuers to "researchers" and governments in search of more power.
I actually bought into there for a while, then I started to notice that it wasn't getting warmer and people were getting rich, what a coincidence.
Now we know it's a scam, I guess we don't need to spend millions of dollards sending representatives from the U.S. to Denmark, money this country doesn't have.
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Really? That was your intelligent input? I hope you never reproduce.
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Its funny how doubters could never be bothered to change their mind after wealths of scientific data proving global warming, but now they have "climate gate" and it must be a hoax.
Those scientists have been trying to mislead us yet again, throw them under house arrest with that rascal Galileo!
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Climategate is nothing more than an affirmation of plenty of studies and data proving global warming is not happening.
This also is hopefully a tipping point for the American public to stand up against widespread regulations proposed that will hurt this country immensely.
The American public has grown increasingly skeptical over the past couple years about global warming and given the current economic situation, will not stand for higher taxes to stem the evil carbon dioxide.
All these watermelons really want is more power and a clean place to live.
The late great George Carlin sums it up very well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjmtSkl53h4
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Let me tell you, it is a pleasure reading these comments from Copenhagen! It's very entertaining to see that as you realize your world is changing you get so irritated seeing that you cannot stop it. Dont be afraid to consider something other than the extreme come a little into the middle and hang out with the rest of your fellow human beings for a while. Learn something from them. If you still are a "climate skeptic", I encourage you to read something other partisan publications like those espousing the truths of "climategate", dig deep and find out who is funding the reports you read, and travel a little... there is a whole world of discourse and culture out there that one simply cannot contact by internet or television. Once you come round to the hard to bear truth of man-made global warming (like the populations of nearly every other country on Earth has) you'll probably feel a lot better and realize that the 15,000 delegates here at COP 15 are working for a better world for you and your children to live in. After all, HG Wells once said, "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe". So come join the party. The green movement for a better world for all is just kicking off.
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