While much of the negotiations at the UN climate change meet in Bonn (28 March to 8 April) centred around targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions - mainly, but by no means exclusively by industrial countries, and funding developing countries to follow suit - the transfer of energy-efficient technologies was also hotly debated.
This follows in the wake of the negotiations in Bali in 2007, where developing countries, among some 190 present, agreed to take "nationally appropriate" mitigation actions in the context of sustainable development, supported and enabled by technology, financing and capacity-building, in a "measurable, reportable and verifiable" manner. The proviso was that such actions would take into account "differences in their national circumstances".
In Bonn, Greenpeace called for developing countries to reduce their projected emissions by 15-30 per cent by 2020, with support from industrialised countries. As it stated: "Countries in this group range from the very poor nations which have scarcely contributed to climate change, to those that are richer than some industrialised countries and clearly cannot all be treated the same. In order to be fair, the level of action should be based on a country's historical responsibility for emissions and its capability and potential."
After eight years in the wilderness, the US - which has not signed the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012 and will be renegotiated in Copenhagen this December - has returned to the table. President Obama's Special Envoy on Climate Change (India's equivalent is Shyam Saran), Todd Stern made no secret of his country's continuing antipathy to the Kyoto Protocol, which does not require developing countries to commit to reducing their energy emissions. Stern is a Washington lawyer who was a former Clinton While House official.
"We all have to do this together," he told the Bonn conference. "We don't have a magic wand. I don't think anybody should be thinking that the US can ride on a white horse and make it all work ... Let me speak frankly here: it is in no one's interest to repeat the experience of Kyoto by delivering an agreement that won't gain sufficient support at home [in the US] ... Too much time has been lost in sterile debates ... America itself cannot provide the solution, but there is no solution without America."
He also thought that the development challenge was making sure that developing countries have the opportunity to follow a cleaner path forward. "I like to tell the story that earlier this decade, India had only about 55 million people with phone service, but, rather than insist on following the industrialised countries' path of wired service, India leap-frogged to cell phones, with the result that a few years later 350 million Indians have phones. We need a similar leap-frogging of fossil fuels in the world of energy."
India itself, however, said that industrialised countries presented five problems. They ignored their historical responsibility; made unsubstantiated projections of likely future emissions from the developing world; created new categories such as 'more advanced developing countries' [including China, India and Brazil]; demanded that developing countries should deliver low carbon pathways without enabling financial, technological and capacity-building support; and drew unsubstantiated marginal abatement cost curves that showed large low cost abatement options even in the bottom 50 per cent of the world, which includes India, that has negligible historical responsibility and together accounts for only 11 per cent of the current carbon dioxide emissions.
The problem is that energy-efficient technologies are by no means cost-free, and developed countries - which have caused global warming in the first place - haven't put their money where their collective mouths are, despite repeated promises to this effect. In Bonn, developing countries called for relaxation of patents on climate-friendly technologies and products. India, in fact, stressed the need for removing barriers to technology transfer, including a "restructuring of the global Intellectual Property Rights regime".
Shyam Saran specifically referred to India's proposal that the UN climate control regime should set up "innovation centres" for research and development. During a plenary session, Dr Ajay Mathur, who heads the Bureau of Energy Efficiency in Delhi, cited an instance of such potential cooperation by holding up India's first commercially available LED (light emitting diodes) bulb, which had been launched by Crompton Greaves in Pune on 28 March. As Dr Mathur said, "It produces as much light as a 40 Watt incandescent bulb or an 8 Watt CFL (compact fluorescent). This has been introduced by an Indian company, which has entered into an agreement with the Dutch company which designed this LED bulb.
"The engineering and manufacturing of this bulb has been carried out in India, and it is estimated that if all Indians were to replace one incandescent bulb with this bulb, it would save 56 billion kWh of electricity, and 44 million tonnes of CO2 emissions, which would be equal to planting 140 million trees.
"The problem is that this LED bulb costs $24 [Rs.1200], compared to $0.30 for a 40 Watt incandescent bulb. We will, of course, encourage the aggressive adoption of this technology, but it will be limited unless supported by a global regime for the accelerated adoption of climate-friendly technologies. We believe that a network of climate innovation centres would be an effective way to achieve this goal."
Dr Mathur told India Together that while the capital cost of the Pharox bulb was high, it had a five-year warranty. It had a life of 50,000 hours, as against a life of only a fifth of this for a CFL. Even CFL bulbs cost Rs.1000 when they were first introduced. The glass bulb has been manufactured in Firozabad, which is a traditional glass industry centre. Such technology could earn carbon credits because of its low consumption of energy.
Although the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012, the EU has till 2015 to purchase carbon credits, which may not exist after then. In the current financial meltdown, the price of Certified Emission Reductions or CERs - the traded cost of reducing a tonne of carbon dioxide - has dropped in the international carbon market but should stabilise in the long term at around 8 Euros, which would work in such a deal without grants or subsidies. "We are working on upscaling this technology even without international support," Dr Mathur said. "The only way to reduce our emissions by half is by the massive transfer of technologies."
India's innovation centres were required for developing such products and also marketing them - virtually creating markets in some instances. The Electricity Act here didn't permit private operators to generate power but there was a huge opportunity for decentralised energy systems to provide electricity and cooking fuel to some 700 million Indians who had to make do without these two basic necessities. For cooking fuel, biomass, which is widely available in rural areas, would be energy-efficient and received a 60 per cent subsidy.
The Bush administration and Obama's too have preferred entering into bilateral environmental agreements with India and China instead of committing to international treaties. Thus Bush had launched the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate, with Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea. At the end of the Bonn conference, the US Deputy Special Envoy on Climate, Dr Jonathan Pershing, told Indian reporters that senior US and Indian officials and businessmen were meeting each other and that there was "enormous support" to facilitate such opportunities.
Flaring landfill gas
For example, according to America.gov, the official website, U.S. and Indian organizations are exploring ways to use methane gas from Indian landfills for fuel, heating and electricity with the Mumbai office of the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute, NEERI. Landfills, decomposing food and paper release gas, including methane gas, which is 23 times worse in trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Methane is also the primary component of natural gas, used as a fuel and energy source.
The trick is to capture the methane before it leaves the landfill and escapes into the atmosphere so that its energy can be harnessed for positive uses," Joe Zietsman, project manager of one Indian landfill investigation, told America.gov. Zietsman is director of the Center for Air Quality Studies at the Texas Transportation Institute, which is part of Texas A&M University.
Zietsman's group is leading a study in Mumbai to investigate the feasibility of converting landfill gas to vehicle fuel or energy sources. Other partners in the study include NEERI, the Texas State Energy Office and Mack Trucks Inc. The investigations are funded by EPA as part of the agency's Methane to Markets partnership - an international initiative advancing cost-effective methane recovery and use as a clean energy source. (See "International Partners Reduce Methane Greenhouse Gas Emissions").
"India is one of 27 partner governments, plus the European Commission, who have joined the partnership to voluntarily reduce methane emissions," Rachel Goldstein, EPA team leader for the landfill methane outreach program, told America.gov. According to Kumar, operating vehicles with LNG would reduce vehicular emissions considerably. This option "could be more relevant for cities like Mumbai, which has a large population and generates about 6,000 tonnes of waste per day."
EPA's Goldstein said the next step "is for each municipality running a landfill to assess their options," including estimating the revenue anticipated from generating electricity and selling the gas. For one Mumbai landfill, the choice has been made. "The Gorai dumpsite will soon be the first landfill in India, as far as we know, to begin flaring landfill gas, when this begins at the end of April," Goldstein said. Worldwide, millions of tonnes of municipal solid waste are discarded daily into sanitary landfills and dumpsites. Landfills are the third-largest human-induced source of methane gas, accounting for about 12 per cent of global emissions.
Developing countries wary
One reason why India and other developing countries may be wary of such deals is that after such technologies are demonstrated on the ground, they may be commercially exploited in the international market. In other words, such pilot projects may be testing grounds to see how this know-how works in tropical conditions. By entering into such deals, the US may seek to avoid parting with patented technologies under a global climate regime.
It has, for example, been pursuing the "carbon capture and sequestration" method of scrubbing carbon dioxide from the chimneys of coal-fired power plants, which would reduce the emissions by up to 80-90%. This carbon dioxide can then be buried deep in the earth or in storage tanks in ocean beds. However, this is extremely expensive and untested technology, which however could conceivably be cost-effective in the long run when the cost of reducing a tonne of carbon rises prohibitively. But right now, there are a range of existing technologies which would help developing countries, but industrial nations have shown extreme reluctance to part with them without a fee. ⊕
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Discovery could ease cancer pain
A breakthrough could lead to drugs to alleviate the pain experienced by cancer patients.
The biology of cancer pain is different to other types of pain, often rendering analgesic drugs ineffective.
Work by a German team, published in Nature Medicine, shows that blocking a specific type of hormone-like molecule produced by tumours could help.
The team showed that the molecules make nerve endings grow in nearby tissue, causing an acute sensation of pain.
Pain is one of the most debilitating symptoms associated with the many forms of the disease.
It can become excruciating as cancer advances, but tackling it has proved difficult for doctors.
The molecules highlighted by the latest study, by a team at Heidelberg University, were known to play a role in the development of blood cells in the bone marrow.
But this is the first time they have also been shown to have a role in causing pain.
New drugs
The researchers hope their work could lead to new drugs to block this action.
Dr Mark Matfield is scientific adviser to the Association for International Cancer Research, which partly funded the work.
He said: "Identifying one of the ways in which cancer causes pain - in fact, perhaps the main mechanism - is a crucial step towards drugs that could bring relief to cancer sufferers across the world."
Dr Joanna Owens, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said: "It's important that we continue to improve pain relief for people with cancer, and this study reveals an intriguing new avenue to explore.
"What's particularly encouraging is that this research could one day lead to drugs that can block pain locally at the tumour site - which could ultimately lead to more effective pain relief with fewer side effects."
The biology of cancer pain is different to other types of pain, often rendering analgesic drugs ineffective.
Work by a German team, published in Nature Medicine, shows that blocking a specific type of hormone-like molecule produced by tumours could help.
The team showed that the molecules make nerve endings grow in nearby tissue, causing an acute sensation of pain.
Pain is one of the most debilitating symptoms associated with the many forms of the disease.
It can become excruciating as cancer advances, but tackling it has proved difficult for doctors.
The molecules highlighted by the latest study, by a team at Heidelberg University, were known to play a role in the development of blood cells in the bone marrow.
But this is the first time they have also been shown to have a role in causing pain.
New drugs
The researchers hope their work could lead to new drugs to block this action.
Dr Mark Matfield is scientific adviser to the Association for International Cancer Research, which partly funded the work.
He said: "Identifying one of the ways in which cancer causes pain - in fact, perhaps the main mechanism - is a crucial step towards drugs that could bring relief to cancer sufferers across the world."
Dr Joanna Owens, of the charity Cancer Research UK, said: "It's important that we continue to improve pain relief for people with cancer, and this study reveals an intriguing new avenue to explore.
"What's particularly encouraging is that this research could one day lead to drugs that can block pain locally at the tumour site - which could ultimately lead to more effective pain relief with fewer side effects."
Science policy scrutiny 'at risk'
Scrutiny of science policy is at risk, say MPs who have urged the government to establish a House of Commons science and technology committee.
The warning comes in a report by the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee (IUSS).
With science and business merged into the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, "science could be lost in a black hole", they say.
They want the science committee, which was abolished in 2007, re-established.
The Science and Technology Committee was discontinued with the creation of the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills.
This recent merger appears to be the final straw for IUSS committee MPs, who fear that science could disappear in what committee chairman Phil Willis MP called the "all-encompassing 'super department' of Business, Innovation and Skills".
Mr Willis said that the "desire to exploit the UK's world-class science base in order to contribute to economic recovery" was "commendable, valid and not in dispute".
But, he added, "establishing a science and technology select committee is critical both to reassure the science community that proper examination of science and engineering across government remains a priority, and to ensure MPs have an effective and transparent arena in which to hold the government's science policy to account".
The Campaign for Science & Engineering (Case) welcomed the IUSS report.
Nick Dusic, Case's director, said: "The abolition of the Science and Technology Committee was a mistake that the government should rectify.
"Letting parliament re-establish the Science and Technology Committee would show that it is handing power back to the House of Commons.
"Incorporating science scrutiny within a business, innovation and skills committee would severely limit both the scope and frequency of inquiries on science and engineering issues within government."
The warning comes in a report by the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Committee (IUSS).
With science and business merged into the new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, "science could be lost in a black hole", they say.
They want the science committee, which was abolished in 2007, re-established.
The Science and Technology Committee was discontinued with the creation of the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills.
This recent merger appears to be the final straw for IUSS committee MPs, who fear that science could disappear in what committee chairman Phil Willis MP called the "all-encompassing 'super department' of Business, Innovation and Skills".
Mr Willis said that the "desire to exploit the UK's world-class science base in order to contribute to economic recovery" was "commendable, valid and not in dispute".
But, he added, "establishing a science and technology select committee is critical both to reassure the science community that proper examination of science and engineering across government remains a priority, and to ensure MPs have an effective and transparent arena in which to hold the government's science policy to account".
The Campaign for Science & Engineering (Case) welcomed the IUSS report.
Nick Dusic, Case's director, said: "The abolition of the Science and Technology Committee was a mistake that the government should rectify.
"Letting parliament re-establish the Science and Technology Committee would show that it is handing power back to the House of Commons.
"Incorporating science scrutiny within a business, innovation and skills committee would severely limit both the scope and frequency of inquiries on science and engineering issues within government."
Cold reality of global warming efforts
To some, any suggestion that the world is not on course to make drastic reductions in carbon dioxide emissions smacks of heresy and should be given no credence.
In their view, fossil fuel use simply must be reduced if we are to avoid disaster later in the century.
But, although most politicians subscribe to the view (informed by the scientific mainstream) that urgent action is needed to avoid possibly catastrophic global warming, policy actions do not yet match their words.
Setting targets is easy, achieving them is not.
The much-vaunted European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has turned out to be an ineffective and costly piece of market fixing, which will not achieve its stated aims.
Carbon offsetting is even worse: transferring money to developing countries to fund projects that probably would have been implemented anyway, and with little real impact on emissions.
The carbon emissions market risks being the next bubble to burst.
dose of cold realism is needed if any significant, affordable reductions in carbon intensity are to be made.
Believing strongly that drastic reductions in fossil fuel use are essential does not make them happen; it just ignores the reality that effective action is not taking place.
It is in everyone's interest, whether you fully believe or are sceptical of the received wisdom, to accept this rather than allow policymakers to repeat the mantra of emissions reduction without taking realistic and effective action.
The impression is that governments want to say the right things, but hope that the whole issue will go away before they have to do anything.
Why would so many powerful people say that global warming is the single biggest threat facing humanity and yet fail to take action?
Weather woes
There are probably three main reasons for this.
The first is timescale. Put simply, weather patterns are just not following the sort of steady trend which would instil confidence in IPCC pronouncements.
No amount of "it's even worse than we thought" headlines will convince a sceptical public if the words don't fit with the evidence of their own eyes.
1998 remains the warmest year on record, and since then there has been no discernable upward trend
Last year saw a miserable summer in much of western Europe, and the same countries are in the middle of a winter which has been colder than for many years.
For the average layman, global warming remains a distant prospect.
Politicians are naturally reluctant to impose apparently unwarranted costs on their citizens if those same people can vote them out of office at the next election.
Which leads to the second point: whoever bears the initial cost, ultimately taxpayers (and therefore voters) will have to pay.
Businesses may have to buy emission permits, but (unless the cost is so small as to be meaningless as an incentive to reduce energy consumption) they will pass on the additional amount to their customers.
Whether we care to admit it or not, it is wealth created in the private sector which is taxed and enables the public sector to operate. The two cannot be divorced.
If businesses have higher costs, they either try to absorb them, become uncompetitive and fail (leading to both lower tax revenues and higher welfare costs for the state) or they put their prices up and consumers pay.
After you...
The third reason follows naturally: neither companies nor countries want to go out on a limb.
For almost all countries, it is a case of "we will if you will". If everyone moves in concert, then co-ordinated action is possible.
If some countries are perceived to be benefiting unfairly, then the whole system can fall apart.
This is the reason why agreement on a post-Kyoto deal in Copenhagen in December is going to be so difficult. This is only the first stage of a long process, a setting of targets and commitments.
Experience in the EU, which likes to see itself as setting an example to the rest of the world, suggests that not all countries will leave their negotiated goals unquestioned after agreement is reached.
There is certainly no guarantee that even the most enthusiastic will reach their targets.
Worse, from the point of view of those who see an effective deal as vital, is that Kyoto set rather undemanding goals, which look unlikely to be achieved by all countries who ratified it.
The world recession will cut energy consumption and help reduce emissions (every cloud has a silver lining), but will make no structural changes to how we generate and use energy.
What chance, then, for the far more demanding post-Kyoto targets?
Faced with a less than enthusiastic electorate, suspicious of the motives of other countries and having learnt some hard lessons from the example of Kyoto, it is hardly surprising that politicians try to play a waiting game.
They go with the flow in setting targets for carbon dioxide emissions reductions, but do not take radical action to achieve this because they want neither to alienate voters nor harm the economy.
This is not to say that drastic reduction of fossil fuel use without upsetting most members of the public is impossible.
The answer is to use the best available and most cost effective low carbon technology for base load generation (nuclear power), increase the focus on energy efficiency in all sectors of the economy, and encourage R&D on new transport and power generation technologies.
But to start to move in this direction needs policymakers to acknowledge the hard fact that the present unwarranted faith in power from renewables and emphasis on punishing emitters is going nowhere.
In their view, fossil fuel use simply must be reduced if we are to avoid disaster later in the century.
But, although most politicians subscribe to the view (informed by the scientific mainstream) that urgent action is needed to avoid possibly catastrophic global warming, policy actions do not yet match their words.
Setting targets is easy, achieving them is not.
The much-vaunted European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has turned out to be an ineffective and costly piece of market fixing, which will not achieve its stated aims.
Carbon offsetting is even worse: transferring money to developing countries to fund projects that probably would have been implemented anyway, and with little real impact on emissions.
The carbon emissions market risks being the next bubble to burst.
dose of cold realism is needed if any significant, affordable reductions in carbon intensity are to be made.
Believing strongly that drastic reductions in fossil fuel use are essential does not make them happen; it just ignores the reality that effective action is not taking place.
It is in everyone's interest, whether you fully believe or are sceptical of the received wisdom, to accept this rather than allow policymakers to repeat the mantra of emissions reduction without taking realistic and effective action.
The impression is that governments want to say the right things, but hope that the whole issue will go away before they have to do anything.
Why would so many powerful people say that global warming is the single biggest threat facing humanity and yet fail to take action?
Weather woes
There are probably three main reasons for this.
The first is timescale. Put simply, weather patterns are just not following the sort of steady trend which would instil confidence in IPCC pronouncements.
No amount of "it's even worse than we thought" headlines will convince a sceptical public if the words don't fit with the evidence of their own eyes.
1998 remains the warmest year on record, and since then there has been no discernable upward trend
Last year saw a miserable summer in much of western Europe, and the same countries are in the middle of a winter which has been colder than for many years.
For the average layman, global warming remains a distant prospect.
Politicians are naturally reluctant to impose apparently unwarranted costs on their citizens if those same people can vote them out of office at the next election.
Which leads to the second point: whoever bears the initial cost, ultimately taxpayers (and therefore voters) will have to pay.
Businesses may have to buy emission permits, but (unless the cost is so small as to be meaningless as an incentive to reduce energy consumption) they will pass on the additional amount to their customers.
Whether we care to admit it or not, it is wealth created in the private sector which is taxed and enables the public sector to operate. The two cannot be divorced.
If businesses have higher costs, they either try to absorb them, become uncompetitive and fail (leading to both lower tax revenues and higher welfare costs for the state) or they put their prices up and consumers pay.
After you...
The third reason follows naturally: neither companies nor countries want to go out on a limb.
For almost all countries, it is a case of "we will if you will". If everyone moves in concert, then co-ordinated action is possible.
If some countries are perceived to be benefiting unfairly, then the whole system can fall apart.
This is the reason why agreement on a post-Kyoto deal in Copenhagen in December is going to be so difficult. This is only the first stage of a long process, a setting of targets and commitments.
Experience in the EU, which likes to see itself as setting an example to the rest of the world, suggests that not all countries will leave their negotiated goals unquestioned after agreement is reached.
There is certainly no guarantee that even the most enthusiastic will reach their targets.
Worse, from the point of view of those who see an effective deal as vital, is that Kyoto set rather undemanding goals, which look unlikely to be achieved by all countries who ratified it.
The world recession will cut energy consumption and help reduce emissions (every cloud has a silver lining), but will make no structural changes to how we generate and use energy.
What chance, then, for the far more demanding post-Kyoto targets?
Faced with a less than enthusiastic electorate, suspicious of the motives of other countries and having learnt some hard lessons from the example of Kyoto, it is hardly surprising that politicians try to play a waiting game.
They go with the flow in setting targets for carbon dioxide emissions reductions, but do not take radical action to achieve this because they want neither to alienate voters nor harm the economy.
This is not to say that drastic reduction of fossil fuel use without upsetting most members of the public is impossible.
The answer is to use the best available and most cost effective low carbon technology for base load generation (nuclear power), increase the focus on energy efficiency in all sectors of the economy, and encourage R&D on new transport and power generation technologies.
But to start to move in this direction needs policymakers to acknowledge the hard fact that the present unwarranted faith in power from renewables and emphasis on punishing emitters is going nowhere.
Climate activists blockade Rudd's office
Activists took to the streets and blockaded the prime minister's Sydney office protesting the Rudd government's response to climate change.
Streets were blocked off as protesters in Sydney marched from the harbour to Kevin Rudd's city office, where they staged a short sit-in protest against the carbon emissions scheme.
Families, young children and the elderly gathered in every state capital and Canberra dressed in red as part of the "climate emergency" message.
The rallies attracted about 6,000 people nationwide, and included environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Wilderness Society who want an emissions scheme ditched in favour of an alternative dubbed "Plan B", which includes the phasing out of coal-fired power stations.
The protest movement also wants 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020.
Government legislation setting up the scheme is due to go before the Senate during the next sitting in June, but the coalition and the Greens have indicated they will block the bill.
Australian Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne, who addressed 1,200 activists in rainy Hobart, said her party would block the government's carbon emission's trading scheme (CPRS) unless it committed to 40 per cent cuts by 2020.
"What we need is a can-do mentality rather than listening to the people who say we can't do it," Senator Milne told AAP.
"The Australian Greens will oppose the CPRS legislation because the target is not ambitious enough."
NSW Greens Upper House MP Lee Rhiannon told Sydney's 2,000-strong crowd the government's scheme would not cut reliance on fossil fuels.
"The world is on red alert, urgent action is needed to rein in runaway climate change now," Ms Rhiannon said.
"The prime minister needs to recognise that baby steps is not what is needed, we need the giant leap to a zero emissions future.
"We know that achieving that is not going to come with the carbon pollution reduction scheme - that's a scam."
As protesters chanted, climate change minister Penny Wong defended the government's position.
"Like the people who are at these rallies this government does want to take action on climate change," Senator Wong told ABC Radio.
"The best way to take action on climate change is for senators to pass these laws that will for the first time reduce Australia's carbon pollution."
A leaked United Nation analysis, dated June 6, says that on conservative estimates, rich countries need to embrace 25 to 40 per cent cuts in emissions by 2020, below 1990 levels, to give the world a chance of avoiding a two degree temperate rise.
Labor is promising carbon cuts of 25 per cent by 2020 if an ambitious climate change agreement is reached at the UN climate change talks at Copenhagen in December.
Australian National University earth sciences visiting fellow Andrew Glikson told the Canberra rally the government's flagged emissions targets were inadequate.
"Government listens to economists, they listen to corporations, they listen to lawyers. There are no scientists at that level," Dr Glikson said.
Streets were blocked off as protesters in Sydney marched from the harbour to Kevin Rudd's city office, where they staged a short sit-in protest against the carbon emissions scheme.
Families, young children and the elderly gathered in every state capital and Canberra dressed in red as part of the "climate emergency" message.
The rallies attracted about 6,000 people nationwide, and included environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Wilderness Society who want an emissions scheme ditched in favour of an alternative dubbed "Plan B", which includes the phasing out of coal-fired power stations.
The protest movement also wants 100 per cent renewable energy by 2020.
Government legislation setting up the scheme is due to go before the Senate during the next sitting in June, but the coalition and the Greens have indicated they will block the bill.
Australian Greens climate change spokeswoman Christine Milne, who addressed 1,200 activists in rainy Hobart, said her party would block the government's carbon emission's trading scheme (CPRS) unless it committed to 40 per cent cuts by 2020.
"What we need is a can-do mentality rather than listening to the people who say we can't do it," Senator Milne told AAP.
"The Australian Greens will oppose the CPRS legislation because the target is not ambitious enough."
NSW Greens Upper House MP Lee Rhiannon told Sydney's 2,000-strong crowd the government's scheme would not cut reliance on fossil fuels.
"The world is on red alert, urgent action is needed to rein in runaway climate change now," Ms Rhiannon said.
"The prime minister needs to recognise that baby steps is not what is needed, we need the giant leap to a zero emissions future.
"We know that achieving that is not going to come with the carbon pollution reduction scheme - that's a scam."
As protesters chanted, climate change minister Penny Wong defended the government's position.
"Like the people who are at these rallies this government does want to take action on climate change," Senator Wong told ABC Radio.
"The best way to take action on climate change is for senators to pass these laws that will for the first time reduce Australia's carbon pollution."
A leaked United Nation analysis, dated June 6, says that on conservative estimates, rich countries need to embrace 25 to 40 per cent cuts in emissions by 2020, below 1990 levels, to give the world a chance of avoiding a two degree temperate rise.
Labor is promising carbon cuts of 25 per cent by 2020 if an ambitious climate change agreement is reached at the UN climate change talks at Copenhagen in December.
Australian National University earth sciences visiting fellow Andrew Glikson told the Canberra rally the government's flagged emissions targets were inadequate.
"Government listens to economists, they listen to corporations, they listen to lawyers. There are no scientists at that level," Dr Glikson said.
UN climate chief confident of global warming pact
U.N. climate delegates completed their first rough sketch of a new global warming agreement Friday, a draft replete with gaps and competing ideas that await decisions by political leaders.
At the end of a two-week negotiating session, the rift lay more clearly exposed between industrial and emerging nations - and within those blocs - on the obligations of the 192 countries involved in the talks to control greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.
The end result, due in six months, will determine the course of development for generations in the economies of rich and poor countries, as well as the planet's health.
Though conceptual issues remained unbridged, officials and environmental activists agreed the negotiations progressed toward drafting the framework for the accord that is due to be completed in December at a major conference in Denmark.
World leaders will meet several times later this year, beginning with a Group of Eight summit in July, with climate change on the agenda.
Yvo de Boer, the top U.N. climate change official, said he was confident of reaching an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen, though it will lack details that will require further work.
The latest round showed that governments "are committed to reaching an agreement, and this is a big achievement," he told reporters.
The draft, which began with 53 pages when this session began June 1, ballooned by Friday to about 200 pages as delegations inserted language to be negotiated later. The second draft was expected to be whittled down to a more manageable size at the next round of talks in August.
Environmental activists said they were concerned at incremental pace of talks.
"We see no political breakthrough. Instead, delegates are just preparing themselves for battles to be fought at later meetings," said Kim Carstensen of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. It was helpful to clarify their positions, he said, but "we're losing time."
Scientists say industrialized nations must cut emissions by 25 to 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent climate disasters, such as coastal flooding from rising sea levels, severe weather events, and variations in rainfall and temperatures that will affect agriculture and wipe out species of plants and animals.
Pledges from advanced countries fall far short of that range. WWF calculated that the declarations from wealthy countries amounted to a total emissions cut of just 10 percent.
There is no question that industrialized countries must raise their sights higher," De Boer said.
The talks aim to craft a deal in Copenhagen to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required 37 industrial countries to cut emissions a total 5 percent from 1990 by 2012. It made no demands on developing countries, and the U.S. refused to sign on to that deal.
Now, the U.S. and the European Union say swiftly developing countries like China, India and Brazil must accept some commitments, although they would be of a different nature and legal force than the commitments of the industrial world.
Jonathan Pershing, the chief U.S. delegate, said that unlike the industrial countries China should not have national caps on its emissions.
Beijing should have binding actions, but not binding outcomes, said Pershing, who broke away from the Bonn talks earlier this week to join a U.S. delegation to Beijing.
"Our expectation of China is that they will take domestic actions that can be measured, quantified and reported," he said. "They will be bound to those actions both domestically and in the international arena. That is not the same thing as saying that those actions have to have an outcome that is binding."
On Thursday, India's chief delegate Shyam Saran said his country rejects any limitations on its development, but is willing to allow outside scrutiny of programs built from international funding and the transfer of technology.
With one-third of its 1.2 billion people lacking electricity, India needed to continue growing, and its historical emissions could not compare to the carbon pumped into the atmosphere over the past 150 years by the industrial West.
Saran rejected any idea of scrapping the Kyoto Protocol, which classifies countries as those with emissions targets and those with no obligations at all.
But that structure was unlikely to remain unchanged in Copenhagen to account for emerging economies that would also include South Korea, Brazil and South Africa.
"The world is a lot different now," said Andrew M. Deutz, of The Nature Conservancy, an advocacy group. "To make decisions you need to have the developing countries at the table, and they are going to have to participate" in the solution, he said.
At the end of a two-week negotiating session, the rift lay more clearly exposed between industrial and emerging nations - and within those blocs - on the obligations of the 192 countries involved in the talks to control greenhouse gases blamed for climate change.
The end result, due in six months, will determine the course of development for generations in the economies of rich and poor countries, as well as the planet's health.
Though conceptual issues remained unbridged, officials and environmental activists agreed the negotiations progressed toward drafting the framework for the accord that is due to be completed in December at a major conference in Denmark.
World leaders will meet several times later this year, beginning with a Group of Eight summit in July, with climate change on the agenda.
Yvo de Boer, the top U.N. climate change official, said he was confident of reaching an ambitious agreement in Copenhagen, though it will lack details that will require further work.
The latest round showed that governments "are committed to reaching an agreement, and this is a big achievement," he told reporters.
The draft, which began with 53 pages when this session began June 1, ballooned by Friday to about 200 pages as delegations inserted language to be negotiated later. The second draft was expected to be whittled down to a more manageable size at the next round of talks in August.
Environmental activists said they were concerned at incremental pace of talks.
"We see no political breakthrough. Instead, delegates are just preparing themselves for battles to be fought at later meetings," said Kim Carstensen of the World Wildlife Fund for Nature. It was helpful to clarify their positions, he said, but "we're losing time."
Scientists say industrialized nations must cut emissions by 25 to 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 to prevent climate disasters, such as coastal flooding from rising sea levels, severe weather events, and variations in rainfall and temperatures that will affect agriculture and wipe out species of plants and animals.
Pledges from advanced countries fall far short of that range. WWF calculated that the declarations from wealthy countries amounted to a total emissions cut of just 10 percent.
There is no question that industrialized countries must raise their sights higher," De Boer said.
The talks aim to craft a deal in Copenhagen to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which required 37 industrial countries to cut emissions a total 5 percent from 1990 by 2012. It made no demands on developing countries, and the U.S. refused to sign on to that deal.
Now, the U.S. and the European Union say swiftly developing countries like China, India and Brazil must accept some commitments, although they would be of a different nature and legal force than the commitments of the industrial world.
Jonathan Pershing, the chief U.S. delegate, said that unlike the industrial countries China should not have national caps on its emissions.
Beijing should have binding actions, but not binding outcomes, said Pershing, who broke away from the Bonn talks earlier this week to join a U.S. delegation to Beijing.
"Our expectation of China is that they will take domestic actions that can be measured, quantified and reported," he said. "They will be bound to those actions both domestically and in the international arena. That is not the same thing as saying that those actions have to have an outcome that is binding."
On Thursday, India's chief delegate Shyam Saran said his country rejects any limitations on its development, but is willing to allow outside scrutiny of programs built from international funding and the transfer of technology.
With one-third of its 1.2 billion people lacking electricity, India needed to continue growing, and its historical emissions could not compare to the carbon pumped into the atmosphere over the past 150 years by the industrial West.
Saran rejected any idea of scrapping the Kyoto Protocol, which classifies countries as those with emissions targets and those with no obligations at all.
But that structure was unlikely to remain unchanged in Copenhagen to account for emerging economies that would also include South Korea, Brazil and South Africa.
"The world is a lot different now," said Andrew M. Deutz, of The Nature Conservancy, an advocacy group. "To make decisions you need to have the developing countries at the table, and they are going to have to participate" in the solution, he said.
Australians demand climate action
Thousands of demonstrators have rallied across Australia to demand greater government action to protect the environment from climate change.
The National Climate Emergency Rallies called on Australia to take the lead at the UN environment summit in December in Copenhagen.
Activists also want an end to Australia's dependence on cheap and plentiful supplies of coal.
It is one of the world's worst per capita emitters of greenhouse gases.
'Strong grip'
Protesters were urged to wear red to highlight the risks of global warming.
In Sydney, rally organiser Moira Williams said that a coalition of trade unions and religious groups, as well as students and environmental campaigners, was pushing for immediate action.
"We need to be making these alliances and be stronger than the fossil fuel industry that currently has such a strong grip on climate policy in Australia.
"That is the positive in this rally and in this year - that we need to build that movement and it does need to come from the ground up, because at the moment we are not seeing any action from the top down."
Scientists have warned that Australia is particularly vulnerable to the effects of a shifting climate.
As temperatures increase, there are predictions that coastal communities will be threatened by rising sea levels, while other parts of the country could suffer more severe droughts, cyclones and bushfires.
The government in Canberra has repeatedly stressed that tackling climate change is a priority.
The National Climate Emergency Rallies called on Australia to take the lead at the UN environment summit in December in Copenhagen.
Activists also want an end to Australia's dependence on cheap and plentiful supplies of coal.
It is one of the world's worst per capita emitters of greenhouse gases.
'Strong grip'
Protesters were urged to wear red to highlight the risks of global warming.
In Sydney, rally organiser Moira Williams said that a coalition of trade unions and religious groups, as well as students and environmental campaigners, was pushing for immediate action.
"We need to be making these alliances and be stronger than the fossil fuel industry that currently has such a strong grip on climate policy in Australia.
"That is the positive in this rally and in this year - that we need to build that movement and it does need to come from the ground up, because at the moment we are not seeing any action from the top down."
Scientists have warned that Australia is particularly vulnerable to the effects of a shifting climate.
As temperatures increase, there are predictions that coastal communities will be threatened by rising sea levels, while other parts of the country could suffer more severe droughts, cyclones and bushfires.
The government in Canberra has repeatedly stressed that tackling climate change is a priority.
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