Gore's Manila visit seen to boost fight against global warming

06/08/10 - MANILA, Philippines - The visit of former United States Vice President and anti-climate change advocate Al Gore will hopefully boost the staggering fight against global warming, a local offiicial noted.

Gore is scheduled to deliver a talk on climate change at the SMX on Tuesday night. He is famous for "An Inconvenient Truth," a 2006 award-winning feature film documentary that educates global warming and its impacts.

According to Climate Change Commission (CCC) Vice Chairman Secretary Heherson T. Alvarez, Gore's visit might awaken countries in taking more vigilant steps in fighting climate change and global warming as its effects will deeply affect low-lying developing countries like the Philippines.

Ongoing climate change negotiations in Bonn, Germany showed that nations are far from reaching a deal to cut half the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 and agree on the disbursement of the $30 billion global carbon budget.

“The Philippine delegation bewails that this cumbersome body is moving like a dinosaur,” Alvarez said in a press release, reiterating that further delays in the climate talks will not prevent harsher storms from hitting countries like the Philippines.

Last December, countries made a deal to avert the impacts of global warming and climate change after extensive negotiations held in Copenhagen but failed to create a treaty to supplement the Kyoto Protocol.

The negotiations allegedly fell short of putting forward a timetable for the said treaty but included an agreement for richer countries to raise funds for developing countries in curbing the effects of climate change.

Alvarez has indicated that around 200 Gigatonnes (Gt) of GHGs is in the atmosphere and nations must address the so-called "Gigatonne gap" through carbon reduction pledges from developed and highly-industrialized nations like the United States and China. - abs-cbnNEWS.com