Member of Nobel Prize winner group wants climate message fine-tuned

Oct 16, 2007, 21:32 GMT

Budapest - A scientist connected to the Nobel-Peace-Prize- winning UN climate watchdog group Tuesday called for a more targeted approach to make both developing and developed nations address global warming.

'For every region, climate change is important for different reasons,' said Dr Diana Urge-Vorsatz, who was a lead author on a chapter of this year's series of reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC).

The IPCC team was last week awarded the peace prize, along with former US Vice President Al Gore, for work in educating the public about climate change.

The Hungarian environmentalist was speaking in English after a showing of Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, at Budapest's Central European University, where she teaches.

'Developing countries don't care if you talk about climate change, but if you talk about better social welfare, improved access to energy and reduced morbidity, they listen,' she continued.

She said that the only way to stop developing nations such as India and China from becoming major polluters was to tap into their development goals.

'In developing countries millions of people die because of pollution due to biomass burned for cooking, heating and lighting,' she said. 'If we just replace this with clean stoves or solar power this reduces greenhouse gases and saves lives.'

She said she believed that the IPCC's last report deserved the award because it not only proved that climate change was happening and was very likely due to human activity, but also discredited the argument that a nation's economy has to be sacrificed to tackle the issue.

'There are lots of things you can do at net profit and reduce emissions,' she said. 'Not only can you can have cake and eat it but you will be paid as well.'

She said that developed nations were more likely to address the issue of climate change if they could be persuaded of the economic benefits.

'Energy efficiency increases energy security ... renewable energy is employment-intensive so you create jobs and improve social welfare,' she said.

The US, which contributes about one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gases, has not yet signed on to the Kyoto Protocol to cut emissions, but Urge-Vorsatz said she believed the economic argument was having an impact on Washington.

'This particular message even changed the White House rhetoric,' she said. 'Even [President George W] Bush acknowledged there are opportunities.'