UNifeed: CLIMATE CHANGE / COPENHAGEN ADVANCER

CLIMATE CHANGE / COPENHAGEN ADVANCER

Ahead of the climate change talks opening in Copenhagen on 7 December, UN Environment Programme (UNEP) head Achim Steiner calls for "transformational changes" to put the world economy on a low-carbon pathway, and says the only way to achieve this is for all nations to come out of Copenhagen with a framework agreement and firm commitment to financing support packages. UNTV / UNEP / FILE

Duration:04:31Date:05 December 2009

Categories:

United Nations Television, United Nations Children's Fund, United Nations Environmental Programme, WORLD BANK, ENVIRONMENT, POLLUTION,03.05.00, International Atomic Energy Agency

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Full Script

STORY: CLIMATE CHANGE / COPENHAGEN ADVANCER 
TRT: 4.31
SOURCE: UNTV / UNEP / WORLD BANK / IAEA / UNICEF / UNHAS / WSPA / VATTENFALL HANDOUT / GOOD PLANET
RESTRICTIONS: NO ACCESS APTN LIBRARY FOR WSPA, VATTENFALL HANDOUT, AND “6 BILLION OTHERS” EXCERPT
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / FRENCH / NATS

DATELINE: RECENT, NAIROBI, KENYA AND NEW YORK CITY / FILE

SHOTLIST:

FILE – UNTV – JUNE 2008, BAKU, AZERBAIJAN

1. Various shots, oil rigs

FILE – VATTENFALL HANDOUT – DATE UNKNOWN, GERMANY

2. Wide shot, power lines
3. Wide shot, power station (fossil fuel), steam rising from cooling towers

FILE – VATTENFALL HANDOUT – DATE UNKNOWN, DENMARK

4. Wide shot, cranes and raised chute on site of power plant at edge of lake
5. Med shot, grabber lifting load of coal from container

FILE – VATTENFALL HANDOUT – DATE UNKNOWN, POLAND

6. Pan left, coal on conveyer chute to man walking 
7. Med shot, man crouching in front of furnace and viewing fire through window

UNEP – 2 NOVEMBER 2009, NAIROBI, KENYA

8. SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme (UNEP):
“There isn’t a plan B, and any talk of a plan B now would be an extraordinary act of egoism of the current generation over the interest of the next generation.”

FILE – WORLD BANK – 2006, RUSSIA

9. Med shot, carbon emission from cars
10. Wide shot, heavy traffic with carbon emissions

FILE – UNTV – JULY 2007, SAO PAULO STATE, BRAZIL

11. Wide shot, cars in traffic
12. Med shot, car being fuelled

FILE – UNHAS - 2009, KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

13. Med shot, flight attendant inside plane
14. Wide shot, plane taxiing on runway
15. Wide shot, plane in the air

UNTV – 19 OCTOBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY

16. SOUNDBITE (English) Simon Dalby, Professor, Department of Geography, Carleton University:
“We have become a geological agent and we need to change how we’re doing some of that stuff fairly quickly, because we now realize the consequences.”

FILE – WSPA – UK AND NEW ZEALAND, DATE UNKNOWN

17. Various shots, farm animals

FILE – VATTENFALL HANDOUT – DATE UNKNOWN, NASUDDEN/GOTLAND, SWEDEN

18. Wide shot, lines of wind turbines in fields by coast 
19. Wide shot, field of cows with wind turbines 
20. Med shot, four wind turbines in line behind trees

FILE – VATTENFALL HANDOUT – DATE UNKNOWN, GOLDISTHAL, GERMANY

21. Wide shot, aerial view, reservoir surrounded by forest
22. Wide shot, aerial view, hydro-power construction at crest of hill, pipes down hillside

FILE – WORLD BANK – 2008, RWANDA

23. Wide shot, solar energy panels

FILE – WORLD BANK – JUNE 2009, POLAND

24. Zoom out, from roof solar panel to wide hospital

UNTV – 2 NOVEMBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY

25. SOUNDBITE (English) Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research:
“The risk of global warming is comparable to the risk of a nuclear warfare catastrophe. That’s why we think we have to raise our voice, but in the end, it’s society, it’s the politicians that have to make the decision of course.”

FILE – IAEA – 10-22 FEBRUARY 2009, MUMBAI / KALPAKKAM / KADAKULAM, INDIA

26. Wide shot, street scene with bus
27. Wide shot, poor residential area

FILE – IAEA – 10-22 FEBRUARY 2009, MUMBAI / KALPAKKAM / KADAKULAM, INDIA

28. Zoom in, nuclear power plant under construction

FILE – WORLD BANK – JULY 2009 - KUREIMAT, EGYPT

29. Wide shot, tractor hauling solar panel
30. Med shot, men carrying solar panels and framing them

FILE – WORLD BANK – CHINA 2009

31. Wide shot, skyline
32. Wide shot, street scene

ARCHIVE – UNTV – DATE AND LOCATION UNKNOWN

33. Various shots, trees being cut down

UNEP – 2 NOVEMBER 2009, NAIROBI, KENYA

34. SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme (UNEP):
“If you look at the cost of not acting on climate change, and you look at the cost of making that transition to a low carbon economy possible, to help countries, particularly vulnerable countries to adapt, then you can see that the price tag is neither very high, nor is it impossible for a global economy to bring that resource to the table. But it requires political will and it requires a fair and equitable framework. That is the challenge, not the amount of money.”

FILE – UNICEF – 8-9 OCTOBER 2009, ISIOLO, EASTERN KENYA

35. Wide shot, pastoralists and their livestock in search of water
36. Wide shot, a dead cattle and a woman walking

FILE – UNICEF – 18 AUGUST 2009, BERBERA SOMALILAND, SOMALIA

37. Med shot, child standing
 
UNTV – 5 NOVEMBER 2009, NEW YORK CITY

38. Wide shot, Arthus-Bertrand talking to man before a screening of his film ‘Home’
39. SOUNDBITE (French) Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Photographer/filmmaker and UNEP Goodwill Ambassador:
“There is a collective denial today, no one wants to believe what we know. Me, I’m trying to get people to believe what we all know, that the world is changing, and especially that human impact on earth, our impact, is changing our climate.”

GOOD PLANET – EXCERPT FROM “6 BILLION OTHERS”

40. Montage of faces
41. SOUNDBITE (English) Resident of Yukon, Canada:
“Well I don’t believe climate change is happening; I know climate change is happening [laughs].”
42. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Resident of Peru:
“… this year we had a very low production for all the crops. It’s caused by climate change…”
43. SOUNDBITE (Bangla) Resident of Bangladesh:
“What we fear is the sea. The sea is my only fear. Where will we go?”
44. SOUNDBITE (Mandarin) Resident of Taiwan:
“[Typhoon Morakot was so violent that] I got the impression that the village was destroyed in two seconds. Twenty people were killed instantly [cries].”
45. SOUNDBITE (Swahili) Resident of Kenya:
“We are hungry. There is no more water at all, everybody is hungry, and children cannot go to school…”
46. SOUNDBITE (Malagasy) Resident of Madagascar:
“I don’t know who I can turn to so I’m addressing you, mothers and fathers, you leaders, you foreigners.”

STORYLINE:

After a rollercoaster lead-up lasting months, climate change talks in Copenhagen are set to open Monday (7 December) with the aim of hashing out a global deal to cap greenhouse gas emissions, largely caused by fossil fuels.

Senior UN officials have pressed world leaders to agree on three main points by the end of Copenhagen: individualized targets by industrialized states to reduce emissions by 2020, a list of actions by developing nations, and clear short- and long-term financing to help poorer countries mitigate and adapt to climate change.

In an interview for UNifeed, the head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), Achim Steiner said that in order to try and reverse some of the drivers of global warming, “transformational changes” were needed.

The only way to move the entire world economy towards a low-carbon pathway was through a global agreement, he said, and if that could not be reached in Copenhagen, the cost of losing time would be “enormous”.

SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme (UNEP):
“There isn’t a plan B, and any talk of a plan B now would be an extraordinary act of egoism of the current generation over the interest of the next generation.”

Human-generated greenhouse gas emissions have contributed to a rise in global temperature by almost three-quarters of a degree Celsius during the last century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

To avoid disastrous change, the scientific community says industrialized countries need to aim for emission reductions of 20 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.

Pledges so far have fallen short, and a recent UN report found that harmful greenhouse gas emissions produced by industrialized countries rose for the seventh consecutive year in 2007.

SOUNDBITE (English) Simon Dalby, Professor, Department of Geography, Carleton University:
“We have become a geological agent and we need to change how we’re doing some of that stuff fairly quickly, because we now realize the consequences.”

Projections indicate that if emissions are allowed to rise at their current pace and double from pre-industrial levels, the world would likely face a temperature rise of two to four-and-a-half degrees Celsius by 2100.

One of the world’s leading climate scientists recently told a high-level briefing at UN Headquarters in New York that he hoped “at the very least” nations would agree in Copenhagen to confine global warming to less than two degrees. That increase already implied considerable negative impacts on nature and humanity, warned Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and chair of the German government’s Advisory Council on Global Change.

SOUNDBITE (English) Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research:
“The risk of global warming is comparable to the risk of a nuclear warfare catastrophe. That’s why we think we have to raise our voice, but in the end, it’s society, it’s the politicians that have to make the decision of course.”

One of the main sticking points among negotiators heading to Copenhagen has been the financial support developing countries want from the rich world to finance adaptation measures and help them with low-emission growth.

The UN estimates the minimum short-term financing needs at $10 billion in fast-track funding annually over the next three years, with medium-term needs through 2020 at $100 billion annually.

But who should pick up what share of the tab – the biggest emitters, with China now topping the list ahead of the United States, or those nations that have profited from decades and decades of unchecked exploitation of natural resources?

Either way UNEP chief Steiner says that financing a deal in Copenhagen is not as difficult as it is sometimes made out to be.

SOUNDBITE (English) Achim Steiner, Executive Director, UN Environment Programme (UNEP):
“If you look at the cost of not acting on climate change, and you look at the cost of making that transition to a low carbon economy possible, to help countries, particularly vulnerable countries to adapt, then you can see that the price tag is neither very high, nor is it impossible for a global economy to bring that resource to the table. But it requires political will and it requires a fair and equitable framework. That is the challenge, not the amount of money.”

To help generate the political will to take on a challenge that will affect millions of people, UNEP has enlisted the help of renowned photographer and filmmaker Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

The UNEP Goodwill Ambassador’s new film “6 Billion Others – Climate Voices”, consisting of six hundred interviews conducted in 17 countries and produced with support from UNEP and several other UN agencies, will be launched in Copenhagen.

SOUNDBITE (French) Yann Arthus-Bertrand, Photographer/Filmmaker and UNEP Goodwill Ambassador:
“There is a collective denial today, no one wants to believe what we know. Me, I’m trying to get people to believe what we all know, that the world is changing, and especially that human impact on earth, our impact, is changing our climate.”

GOOD PLANET – EXCERPT FROM “6 BILLION OTHERS”

SOUNDBITE (English) Resident of Yukon, Canada:
“Well I don’t believe climate change is happening; I know climate change is happening [laughs].”
SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Resident of Peru:
“… this year we had a very low production for all the crops. It’s caused by climate change…”
SOUNDBITE (Bangla) Resident of Bangladesh:
“What we fear is the sea. The sea is my only fear. Where will we go?”
SOUNDBITE (Mandarin) Resident of Taiwan:
“[Typhoon Morakot was so violent that] I got the impression that the village was destroyed in two seconds. Twenty people were killed instantly [cries].”
SOUNDBITE (Swahili) Resident of Kenya:
“We are hungry. There is no more water at all, everybody is hungry, and children cannot go to school…”
SOUNDBITE (Malagasy) Resident of Madagascar:
“I don’t know who I can turn to so I’m addressing you, mothers and fathers, you leaders, you foreigners.”

The Copenhagen conference, set to begin on 7 December and culminate in a summit-level gathering on 17 and 18 December, aims to reach accord on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. That 1997 pact – part of a larger UN climate change treaty – featured strong, legally binding measures committing 37 industrialized states to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the period from 2008 to 2012.

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