Actions are required:Don't waste the coming decade

Actions are required:Don't waste the coming decade.

As an important step towards protecting the earth, the new team of the incoming administration has to implement the President-elect Obama’s strong targets of reducing emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and further reducing them to an additional 80 percent by 2050.

And,don't forget this fact;emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by the US in 2007 were 15 percent above 1990’s level.

Professor James Hansen, who heads Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and one of the world's top climate scientists, has written a personal new year appeal to Barack.He has actually lambasted the current style of setting targets through "cap and trade" schemes as not up to the task.

He demanded a three-pronged attack on the climate problem. Firstly, he suggested a phasing out of coal-fired power stations -- which are "factories of death" and which do not incorporate carbon capture. So he wanted to “cut off the coal source". Secondly, he demanded a "carbon tax and 100% dividend".His last proposal was a renewed research effort into ‘fourth generation nuclear plants’ which could use nuclear waste as fuel. However,the nuclear option is not advisable considering the current escalation of nuclear threat.Other proposals have to be seriously addressed.

Anyway,all kinds of options have to be considered, since the time is running out. Already the natural sources are alarmingly depleting. The corporates had always been looting the world with endless ravenous search for profits. Those who consider that the sustainable socio-economic development is the need of the hour, should raise voice against the mindless exploitation of the planet’s natural resources.