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World's airlines pledge to cut emissions by 2050
Matthew McDermott, Treehugger
Aviation accounts for only 3% of carbon emissions from the global transport sector, but it's a number that's growing. Not to mention that those emissions often have a higher warming potential than ones emitted elsewhere. Radiative forcing anyone? Well, to address these concerns the International Air Transport Association committed Saturday to new emission reductions targets and fuel efficiency improvements:

At the International Civil Aviations Organization High Level Meeting in Montreal, the IATA set the following targets: 1.5% annual fuel efficiency improvements through 2020; 50% reduction in carbon emissions (from 2005 levels...) by 2050; and, stabilizing aviation emissions from 2020, with carbon-neutral growth thereafter.

Government Support for Sustainable Biofuels Requested
To help with this, IATA threw the ball into government's court. IATA Director General Giovanni Bisignani said, "We can fly the plane efficiently, but governments must deliver improvements in air traffic management," and added, "Governments must also accelerate the development of the legal and fiscal framework to support the use of sustainable biofuels."

Here's the declaration itself: Elements of an ICAO Position for COP15
(12 Oct 2009)

Cars must be electric, says climate tsar
Michael McCarthy, The Independent
Britain's ambitious policies to cut carbon dioxide in the fight against global warming are still not enough, the official climate change watchdog warns today in its first annual report.

Even though the Government has created a detailed plan for transition to a low-carbon economy, a "step change" is still needed in the pace of reducing carbon emissions, and in fact the rate should be more than doubled, says the Climate Change Committee.

This will have to involve everything from a comprehensive national home insulation strategy to creating a fleet of 1.7 million electric cars with the infrastructure to support them – otherwise, says the committee, on current rates of progress, the "carbon budgets" to which the Government has committed itself are unlikely to be met...
(12 Oct 2009)
(The report can be accessed here.)

Climate Change: Four Degrees of Devastation
Stephen Leahy, IPS
The prospect of a four-degree Celsius rise in global average temperatures in 50 years is alarming - but not alarmist, climate scientists now believe.

Eighteen months ago, no one dared imagine humanity pushing the climate beyond an additional two degrees C of heating, but rising carbon emissions and inability to agree on cuts has meant science must now consider the previously unthinkable.

"Two degrees C is already gone as a target," said Chris West of the University of Oxford's UK Climate Impacts Programme.

"Four degrees C is definitely possible...This is the biggest challenge in our history," West told participants at the "4 Degrees and Beyond, International Climate Science Conference" at the University of Oxford last week.

A four-degree C overall increase means a world where temperatures will be two degrees warmer in some places, 12 degrees and more in others, making them uninhabitable.

...In a four-degree warmer world, adaptation means "put your feet up and die" for many people in the world, Oxford's Chris West said bluntly. "In accepting the many alarming impacts, we see that it (a four-degree C increase) is not acceptable."

The climate negotiators heading to Copenhagen in December must accept the fact that the world's carbon emissions must eventually stop - and stop completely. There is no sustainable per capita carbon emission level because it is the total amount of carbon emitted that counts, explains Myles Allen of the Climate Dynamics group at University of Oxford's Atmospheric, Oceanic and Planetary Physics Department...
(9 Oct 2009)
Sent in by EB contributor billhook, who writes: