RI`s first lady gets UN Award for Promoting Tree Planting Movement

New York (ANTARA News) - Indonesian First Lady Ani Yudhoyono got an award from the United Nations for promoting the planting of millions of trees in Indonesia as part of the Billion Tree Planting Campaign spearheaded by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Agro-forestry Center (ICRAF).

In addition to the First Lady, UNEP also awarded the Indonesian forestry minister for supporting the global tree planting activities

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner presented certificates of appreciation called "Certificate of Global Leadership" to the First Lady and the forestry minister, who were represented by Dana Kartakusuma, Staff Expert of the Environmental Affairs Minister, at the UN headquarters in New York on Tuesday.

"The award from UNEP is encouragement for Indonesia to work harder and intensify tree planting activities to prevent natural disasters such as floods, erosion, and landslides which often hit the country," Dana told ANTARA News.

Indonesia has at least planted 86 million trees as part of the global campaign to fight climate change.

The Billion Tree Planting Campaign, a unique worldwide tree planting initiative, aimed at empowering citizens to corporations and people up to presidents to embrace the climate change challenge, has now set its sights on planting seven billion trees.

UNEP reported that the Billion Tree Campaign has in just 18 months catalyzed the planting of two billion trees, double its original target.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director, said "When the Billion Tree Campaign was launched at the Climate Convention meeting in Nairobi in 2006, no one could have imagined it could have flowered so fast and so far. But it has given expression to the frustrations but also the hopes of millions of people around the world".

"Having exceeded every target that has been set for the campaign, we are now calling on individuals, communities, business and industry, civil society organizations and governments to evolve this initiative onto a new and even higher level by the crucial climate change conference in Copenhagen in late 2009," he said.

"In 2006 we wondered if a billion tree target was too ambitious; it was not. The goal of two billion trees has also proven to be an underestimate. The goal of planting seven billion trees - equivalent to just over a tree per person alive on the planet `must therefore also be do-able given the campaign`s extraordinary track record and the self-evident worldwide support," he added.

The Billion Tree Campaign has become a practical expression of private and public concern over global warming.

Heads of state including the presidents of Indonesia, the Maldives, Mexico, Turkey and Turkmenistan as well as businesses; cities; faith, youth and community groups have enthusiastically taken part. Individuals have accounted for over half of all participants.

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Sinking without trace: Australia's climate change victims

Like Kiribati and Tuvalu, the islands of the Torres Strait are slowly being submerged. But unlike their Pacific neighbours, the plight of their inhabitants is being overlooked.

The Independent, KATHY MARKS, Monday, 5 May 2008

Ron and Maria Passi, who operate Murray Island's only taxi, were out driving the night the king tide struck. Neighbours flagged them down, asking for help, and so it was not until some time later that they saw their own grandchildren standing in the road. "They were shouting 'Granddad, stop the car, the water is coming in the house'," says Ron. "I just slammed on the brakes."

Masig Island, one of the low-lying islands of the Torres Strait - Kathy Marks

The couple's son, Sonny, was outside his fibro shack with his five children, watching the monster surf, lashed by north-west winds, rise ever higher. In the commotion, everyone had forgotten that Sedoi, the baby, was still inside. They heard her crying and found her in her cot, covered in sand. Water had surged in after a wave picked up a big wooden pallet and flung it through the front wall.

No one on Murray had ever seen such a high tide before. Other islands in the Torres Strait, which lies between the far north-eastern tip of the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea, have witnessed similar scenes in recent years. Houses, roads and graveyards have been flooded, and the locals believe they know the reason: climate change.

The low-lying islands that dot the sparkling waters of this region are facing similar challenges to South Pacific nations such as Kiribati and Tuvalu. But while the plight of those countries is well known and is regularly discussed in the international arena, few people outside Australia have even heard of the Torres Strait. Even Australians would have difficulty locating it on the map, and the remote islands – accessible only by light plane – receive few visitors.

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Long-awaited electric sports car rolls out

CNN

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- It's safe to say Jeremy Snyder gets a charge out of the two-seat Tesla Roadster whenever he pulls one off the lot, and not because it's equipped with an all-electric engine.

 

As he pulled one of the sleek new automobiles down a side street Thursday and put the pedal to the metal, its lithium-ion battery-powered engine didn't give off sparks. It just emitted a powerful hum, like a much quieter version of a jet taking off.

 

"Accelerate pretty good?" asked Snyder, head of client services for Tesla, who knew the answer.

 

"I call it a turbine sound," he said of the sound. "Because it's an electric motor, it's got 100 percent torque all the time. So it just pulls you like when you're taking off in an airplane."

After several years of development, the Roadster -- with sleek lines like a Ferrari or Porsche and a sticker price of $109,000 -- moves from the drawing boards to the market next week when Tesla's first store opens. It's near the University of California, Los Angeles, in the city's tony Westwood neighborhood, where Beverly Hills, Brentwood and Hollywood practically intersect.

 

"Because it's Hollywood and glamorous, this is the flagship store," Snyder said.

 

The next store is to open in a couple months near Tesla's headquarters in the Silicon Valley city of San Carlos, where the car was developed with venture capital of more than $40 million from such investors as Google Inc. founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. More stores are planned for Chicago, New York and other cities by early next year.

 

Although a fully loaded model can set a buyer back as much as $124,000, that's still cheap compared with a high-end Ferrari. And its 6,831-cell lithium-ion battery pack gives off no emissions.

 

The car goes from 0 to 60 mph in just under four seconds and tops out at 125 mph. It goes 225 miles on one charge and can be fully recharged in 3½ hours, which Tesla officials say should allow most people to drive it to work and back and recharge it at night like a cell phone.

 

Driving from Los Angeles to San Francisco, however, would require stopping in, say, Fresno and plugging its adapter cord into a motel room wall socket.

 

Some critics have expressed concerns about the durability and safety of the lithium-ion battery, which weighs about 1,000 pounds, more than a third of the entire weight of the 2,700-pound Roadster, whose body is made up of carbon fiber materials. Tesla officials respond that the car has passed all required safety tests. They say the battery should last for about 100,000 miles of driving.

 

The company, formed in 2003, is named for inventor Nikola Tesla, a pioneer in the field of electricity. The people buying its cars so far, said national sales manager Doreen Allen, are celebrities, early adopters, wealthy people and environmentalists.

 

Tesla officials say Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, actors George Clooney and Kelsey Grammer and musicians Will.i.am and Flea have ordered Roadsters.

 

It will be a while before anyone can walk in and drive a Tesla home off a lot, however.

 

"Delivery is running about 15 months," Allen said, adding that the company was surprised by the demand.

 

Tesla began taking orders last year for the 600 Roadsters it planned to produce in 2008 and had sold all of them by October, Allen said. The first ones began rolling off the production line six weeks ago, and Allen said all of the 2008 models should be delivered to their owners by March. The first ones should begin going out the door this month.

 

Meanwhile, orders are being taken for 2009 models, with plans calling for production of about 1,500 cars.

 

Eventually Tesla also plans to produce cheaper family vehicles.

 

"There's a model in the works right now, a five-passenger sedan that will be styled comparable to the roadster but a lot roomier to accommodate families, and that is slated for 2010," Snyder said.

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Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study

Thu May 1, 2008 2:31pm EDT

 

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

 

OSLO (Reuters) - Global warming could gradually starve parts of the tropical oceans of oxygen, damaging fisheries and coastal economies, a study showed on Thursday.

 

Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures, according to the scientists based in Germany and the United States.

 

And models of global warming indicate the trend will continue because oxygen in the air mixes less readily with warmer water. Large fish such as tuna or swordfish avoid, or are unable to survive, in regions starved of oxygen.

 

"Reduced oxygen levels may have dramatic consequences for ecosystems and coastal economies," according to the scientists writing in the journal Science.

 

The north of the Indian Ocean, along with the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal, is also oxygen-low but the available data showed no substantial change in the size of the oxygen-minimum zone in recent decades.

 

Lothar Stramma, lead author at IFM-GEOMAR in Kiel, Germany, said there were signs the oxygen-low bands between 300 and 700 meters depths were getting wider and moving into shallower coastal waters.

 

"The expansion of the oxygen-minimum zones is reaching more to the continental shelf areas," he told Reuters. "It's not just the open ocean." That could disrupt ever more fisheries.

 

Problems of lower oxygen supply add to woes for the oceans led by over-fishing as the world struggles to feed an expanding population. A U.N. conference in 2002 set a goal of trying to reverse declines in fish stocks by 2015.

 

The scientists said levels of dissolved oxygen in the oceans had varied widely in the past and more study was needed. "We are far from knowing exactly what will happen," Stramma said.

 

In the most extreme case, at the end of the Permian period about 250 million years ago, there were mass extinctions on land and at sea linked to high levels of carbon dioxide and extremely low oxygen levels in the waters.

 

The U.N. Climate Panel said last year that global warming, stoked by human use of fossil fuels, would push up temperatures and bring more droughts, floods, heatwaves and rising sea levels. More and more species would be at risk of extinction.

 

Thursday's study showed that a swathe of the eastern Pacific from Chile to the United States and a smaller part of the eastern Atlantic, centered off Angola, were low in oxygen.

 

Stramma said the oxygen-poor regions were away from major ocean currents that help absorb oxygen from the air. And warmer water is less dense and so floats more easily -- that makes it less prone to mix with the deeper levels of the oceans.

 

-- For Reuters latest environment blogs click on:

 

http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/

 

(Editing by Matthew Jones)

Twelve new springs appear around Buyan Lake, Bali

Denpasar (ANTARA News) - At least 12 new springs have appeared suddenly around Buyan Lake, Buleleng District, which is located around 55 km north of Denpasar.

 

Local farmers are now using water from the new springs for irrigation, Bali provincial forestry service head Made Sulendra said here on Saturday.

 

Some 4.93 sq km wide Buyan Lake is one of four lakes on Bali Island which have become tourist attractions.

 

Sulendra said it was believed the new springs had formed thanks to the massive regreening programs launched by the Bali provincial administration last year. Bali planted at least seven million trees last year, including in areas surrounding Buyan Lake.

Eco-friendly timber firms want incentives

Adianto P. Simamora, The Jakarta Post, Hanoi | Fri, 04/25/2008 12:15 PM

Forestry companies producing eco-friendly timber pleaded at the Asia-Pacific forest conference on Thursday for incentives to help with rising operating costs while demand for sustainable wood-related products remains sluggish.

The Hanoi conference is the leading regional meeting on forestry, attended by more than 600 participants including decision makers, governments, firms, foresters and activists.

Indonesian listed timber company PT Sumalindo Lestari Jaya said that operating costs for producing much-promoted sustainable timber were up about 30 percent.

Sumalindo president director Amir Sunarko told the conference, "When we started logging 16 years ago, we made a commitment to adopt sustainable forest management but during that time we never received incentives,"

Sunarko said government should reduce the burden for "eco-producers" by simplifying red tape while importing countries should reduce tariff barriers for sustainable wood products.

Sumalindo, which operates in natural tropical and plantation forest covering 448,986 hectares in East Kalimantan, has been certificated by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for sustainable forest management of the firm's 267,000 hectares.

He said that since adopting sustainable forestry management, Sumalindo, a member of Singapore-based forestry group Samko Forest Holding, had improved market sales.

Governments in the Asia-Pacific region, which accounts for over half a billion hectares of forest, have long promoted sustainable forest management aimed at slashing poverty, particularly for communities living near forest areas.

Countries importing wood products in the region have adopted policies aimed at restricting illegal logging and promoting sustainable forestry management and eco-timber products.

However, experts said few Asian timber firms were applying for sustainable forest management certificates since local and foreign buyers continued trading in illegal timber products.

Hugh Speechly of the British Department for International Development's (DFID) Forest Governance and Trade Program said sustainable forestry management was not just an environmental goal, but raised social, political and economic issues.

"Sustainable management of forests in Asia is not just the responsibility of Asian countries but also of developed countries whose seemingly insatiable demand for timber products often drives illegal logging," he said.

"This demand impacts heavily on economies of developing countries and livelihoods of rural communities," Speechly said.

He said timber-producing nations lose more than US$15 billion a year from uncollected royalties due to illegal logging.

"Trade in illegally procured timbers is estimated to depress world prices by up to 16 percent, making it difficult for legal operators to compete," he said.

"The UK's Forest Governance and Trade Program is confronting this problem by harnessing market leverage in timber consuming countries to encourage governance reform in producing countries."

The Danish-owned timber company Dalhoff Larsen & Horneman (DHL) operating in Vietnam said that support for domestic demand for sustainable forest products was also important in promoting eco-friendly products.

Dell mini desktop set to save energy

Techworld.com, By Agam Shah, IDG News Service

 

Small laptops have been hogging most of the limelight lately, but Dell's tiny new PC could bring attention back to desktops.

 

Dell CEO Michael Dell has previewed what he called "the company's smallest and most environmentally-responsible consumer desktop PC." Dell previewed the desktop as part of Earth Day at the Fortune Brainstorm conference being held in Pasadena, California.

 

The small form-factor desktop is 81 percent smaller and uses up to 70 percent less energy than a typical desktop mini-tower, said Anne Camden, a Dell spokeswoman.

 

She declined comment on hardware specifications, brand name or pricing. Details will be released later this year when the desktop is released.

 

The desktop, which stands on a holder, will come in recycled and recyclable packaging, Camden said.

 

It will most likely compete with Apple's Mac Mini and Everex's MyMiniPC, mini desktops with full computing capabilities designed to save desk space.

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RI is "environmental superpower": US envoy

Jakarta (ANTARA News) - In observance of Earth Day, US Ambassador to Indonesia Cameron R. Hume has written an article titled "Indonesia: Environmental Superpower". Following is his article sent to ANTARA on Tuesday:

Anyone who happened to go by the U.S. Embassy over the past few days might have noticed changes. On Saturday, a group of Indonesian children helped put the finishing touches on seven different murals depicting some of the flora and fauna of Indonesia. I am proud to have their paintings displayed outside the Embassy, and glad to see that they are thinking of the environment at a young age. Today is Earth Day, and it is important to take stock of what we are doing to protect these children`s future environment.

Indonesia was a fitting host for the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Bali, in part because its rich biodiversity and natural resources are unsurpassed. Indonesia possesses the highest marine biodiversity on the planet, and one of the largest and most biodiverse tropical forests in the world.

Indonesia is an environmental "superpower," and a natural leader in global efforts to protect the environment. Yet the country faces tremendous challenges to ensure that the next generation will inherit these vast environmental riches. Indonesia is the world`s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, due mainly to large-scale deforestation. Illegal logging is widespread. Energy needs and emissions from power generation and transportation are rising fast. The destruction of coral reefs, overfishing, and other unsustainable practices threaten the livelihoods and welfare of tens of millions of Indonesians who depend on the ocean`s resources, as well as irreparable damage to Indonesia`s unique ecosystems.

Indonesia is taking steps to face these challenges. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and the Government of Indonesia are cracking down on illegal logging and taking action to improve forest governance. They are in the process of implementing a new timber legality standard that will constrict trade in illegally harvested timber.

They have launched a National Climate Change Action Plan and a National Action Plan for the Orangutan Protection. Recognizing the importance of coral reefs and threats to their sustainability due to climate change and unsustainable exploitation, President Yudhoyono also launched the regional Coral Triangle Initiative (CTI) during the Bali conference. Fittingly, 2008 is the International Year of the Reef.

Much work remains. Protecting our planet is a long-term, cooperative endeavor. The United States can be Indonesia`s "super-partner", and President Yudhoyono has invited increased U.S. environmental partnership. We already collaborate on anti-illegal logging activities, and support the Heart of Borneo Initiative to protect the forest habitat in Kalimantan. We work together to protect endangered orangutans. Our two governments are negotiating a large fund to conserve tropical forests, under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act. We already fund marine programs in Indonesia and the region, and have pledged initial support of over $4 million to the Coral Triangle Initiative.

Indonesia needs electricity to grow, but it should use clean-coal and renewable energy technologies to meet its rapidly increasing energy needs. Indonesia can retrofit existing "dirty" electricity-generating coal plants, build new, cleaner ones, and harness Indonesia`s potential 27,000 megawatt geothermal capacity. The Clean Technology Fund that President Bush announced last year, and which the United States is developing in cooperation with the World Bank, Japan, the United Kingdom, and other partners, has the potential to be an important tool in dealing with the clean energy challenge.

Working together, we can protect rainforests, conserve biodiversity, avoid the collapse of global fisheries, and combat climate change. The challenges are great, but our cooperation shows great promise for the future

On this Earth Day, let us remind ourselves that we are all connected. How Indonesia and the U.S. treat their forests and oceans will affect the rest of the world, and all of our children`s futures

.

Freshening of deep Antarctic waters worries experts

By David Fogarty, Reuters, Fri Apr 18, 2008 4:13pm

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Scientists studying the icy depths of the sea around Antarctica have detected changes in salinity that could have profound effects on the world's climate and ocean currents.

The scientists returned to the southern Australian city of Hobart on Thursday after a one-month voyage studying the Southern Ocean to see how it is changing and what those changes might mean for global climate patterns.

Voyage leader Steve Rintoul said his team found that salty, dense water that sinks near the edge of Antarctica to the bottom of the ocean about 5 km (3 miles) down was becoming fresher and more buoyant.

So-called Antarctic bottom water helps power the great ocean conveyor belt, a system of currents spanning the Southern, Pacific, Indian and Atlantic Oceans that shifts heat around the globe.

"The main reason we're paying attention to this is because it is one of the switches in the climate system and we need to know if we are about to flip that switch or not," said Rintoul of Australia's government-backed research arm the CSIRO.

"If that freshening trend continues for long enough, eventually the water near Antarctica would be too light, too buoyant to sink and that limb of the global-scale circulation would shut down," he said on Friday.

Cold, salty water also sinks to the depths in the far north Atlantic Ocean near Greenland and, together with the vast amount of water that sinks off Antarctica, this drives the ocean conveyor belt.

This system brings warm water into the far north Atlantic, making Europe warmer than it would otherwise be, and also drives the large flow of upper ocean water from the tropical Pacific to the Indian Ocean through the Indonesia Archipelago. Read whole story

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Bandung students learn from farmers in nature, cultural tour

Slamet Susanto & Tarko Sudiarno, The Jakarta Post, Kulonprogo, Yogyakarta, Wed, 04/13/2005 12:35 PM

Plowing, growing rice and cooking with wood stoves are part of the daily routine for rural people. For students of Bandung International School (BIS), however, thesetasks are a rare, once-in-a-lifetime experience.

This not surprising, because most of the 45 BIS students following the nature and cultural tourism program in Sendangsari village of Kulonprogo, Yogyakarta, are foreign nationals with accustomed to a modern lifestyle not the life of hardship and toil in rural Indonesia.

Bandung International School students get hands-on experience at planting rice in a paddy (JP/Tarko Sudiarno)

"Enough, enough!" yelled Sabina, who had been driving a cattle-pulled plow for less than five minutes. The student from Denmark was shouting for help as she tried to get down from the plow. She was apparently disgusted at the sight of the cow peeing and emptying its bowels right in front of her.

"It's all right, miss,natural manure, beneficial to plants," said the plow driver while helping Sabina to descend.

But Sabina expressed her pleasure at taking a leisurely walk around the village and observing the cultivation process while familiarizing herself with local farmers' traditions.

Forgetting the cow dung, Sabina joined her classmates to try her hand at planting rice. "It's quite interesting. I once saw this in Sukabumi (West Java)," she said. 

Tyler, a BIS student from Canada, looked at the muddy field intently, then plunged into the mire and gestured as though he was swimming.

"It feels like snow. The difference is that mud is warm and makes the body dirty," he remarked.

"Help me, help me.!" still another student cried as his legs slid down into the mud to his knees. Some of his friends came near but instead of helping, they jostled each other before finally falling together into the sludge, laughing.

Apart from learning local crop planting methods, the students were also introduced to rural community traditions, such as the use of the bedug, a big drum, as a means of communication to signal the start of a village meeting.

"In the city, residents keep their money at banks and can withdraw it any time through an ATM. Villagers save their money by raising cows," the students' guide explained. "Cattle constitute a form of savings for rural people and will be sold when they have urgent needs, just like in a bank transaction."

Greening and replanting various plants, as well as an introduction to different wildlife species of Indonesia in the Yogyakarta Wildlife Rescue Center (PPSJ), were also part of the BIS students' village tour program.

They were taught how to feed animals, take care of them and release them back into their natural habitat. The animals were originally confiscated by authorized government agencies and placed under the PPSJ's care.

Jonas, a BIS history teacher, said the stroll around the village was very conducive to building a close relationship between teachers and students. He said this helped teachers to better understand the students' needs to create the best method of teaching.

"Such close association and awareness of what students want contribute to their learning process," stressed Jonas, who has been in Bandung since 1998 and has two children with his wife, who is from the area.

Observing traditional activities, he added, made students conscious of what it really meant to struggle for life.

"So far, (the students) have lived in big cities and most of them come from established families, enjoying pleasant living conditions and never before knowing the toils of life," he pointed out.

The village experience will increase their knowledge in addition to the science subjects they learned in class.

"After graduation, I hope they will have a broader perspective," Jonas said.

The educational benefits of the village tour were deemed extremely valuable to the students' education that it has been made into a regular activity.

"This program is part of the school curriculum and is regularly carried out to broaden students' horizons," Jonas said.

Meanwhile, PPSJ director Sugi Hartono revealed that the wildlife center, in cooperation with relevant agencies and local communities, was promoting cultural tourism in rural areas.

As we are in the hilly region of Menoreh, we call our cultural and nature tourism zone Menoreh Green Land," he said.

A BIS students rides a traditional plow as a farmer assists the team. (JP/Tarko Sudiarno)

According to Hartono, Menoreh Green Land offers genuine rural tourism covering crop planting methods and local traditions. Visitors are also served typical foods that are unique to the area. The land's extensive hills and rapidly flowing rivers for rafting are also open to exploration in their natural conditions.

Since its founding in 2003, the PPSJ has accommodated 4,194 animals representing 54 species, of which 2,873 have been rehabilitated and released back to the wild. Among these animals are sea hawks (Haliatus leocogaster), pig-snout tortoises (Carettoscelis insculpta), bondol hawks (Haliastur Indus) and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus).

Four hectares of the PPSJ's 14-ha area are reserved for wildlife conservation and the remainder for a variety of outbound games.

"We also aim to nurture a love of wildlife among students at an early age so that they will become a succeeding generation that cares for the ecosystem, rather than one that only exploits nature as is the case today," Hartono said.

He also hoped an increase in tourists to the area would help improve the community's welfare.

"Local people can make extra income from their food stalls, homestays and the sale of handicrafts as souvenirs," continued Hartono.

"Although not all villagers are aware of the importance of tourism, through dialogs on its direct economic benefits, we are sure they will come to fully support the effort," he said.

 

A Shift in the Debate Over Global Warming

By Andrew C. Revkin, The New York Times, April 6, 2008

The charged and complex debate over how to slow down global warming has become a lot more complicated.

Most of the focus in the last few years has centered on imposing caps on greenhouse gas emissions to prod energy users to conserve or switch to nonpolluting technologies.

Leaders of the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change — the scientists awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year with former Vice President Al Gore — have emphasized that market-based approach. All three presidential candidates are behind it. And it has framed international talks over a new climate treaty and debate within the United States over climate legislation.

But now, with recent data showing an unexpected rise in global emissions and a decline in energy efficiency, a growing chorus of economists, scientists and students of energy policy are saying that whatever benefits the cap approach yields, it will be too little and come too late.

The economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, head of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, stated the case bluntly in a recent article in Scientific American: “Even with a cutback in wasteful energy spending, our current technologies cannot support both a decline in carbon dioxide emissions and an expanding global economy. If we try to restrain emissions without a fundamentally new set of technologies, we will end up stifling economic growth, including the development prospects for billions of people.”

What is needed, Mr. Sachs and others say, is the development of radically advanced low-carbon technologies, which they say will only come about with greatly increased spending by determined governments on what has so far been an anemic commitment to research and development. A Manhattan-like Project, so to speak.

And time is critical, they say, as China, India and other developing nations march headlong into the modern world of cars and electric consumption on their way to becoming the dominant producer of greenhouse gases for decades to come. Indeed, China is building, on average, one large coal-burning power plant a week.

In an article in the journal Nature last week, researchers concerned with the economics, politics, and science of climate also argued that technology policy, not emissions policy, must dominate.

“There is no question about whether technological innovation is necessary — it is,” said the authors, Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado; Tom Wigley, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research; and Christopher Green, an economist at McGill University. “The question is, to what degree should policy focus directly on motivating such innovation?”

Proponents of treaties and legislation that would cap emissions don’t disagree with this call to arms for new, low-carbon technologies. But they say the cap approach should not be ignored, either.

One of them is Joseph Romm, a blogger on climate and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit group pushing for federal legislation to restrict greenhouse gases.

“Of course we need aggressive investments in R. and D. — I for one have been arguing that for two decades,” Mr. Romm wrote in a post to his blog, climateprogress.org. “But if we don’t start aggressively deploying the technologies we have now for the next quarter century, then all the new technologies in the world won’t avert catastrophe.”

Another expert who has emphasized the importance of capping emissions, Adil Najam of Boston University, said he hoped this emerging debate would not distract from doing whatever is possible now to curb emissions.

“You can do a tremendous lot with available technology,” said Professor Najam, one of the authors of the intergovernmental panel’s report on policy options. “It is true that this will not be enough to lick the problem, but it will be a very significant and probably necessary difference.”

But Professor Pielke and his co-authors say that a recent rise in emissions — particularly in fast-growing emerging powers — points to the need for government to push aggressively for technological advances instead of waiting for the market to force reductions in emissions.

Mr. Sachs pointed to several promising technologies — capturing and burying carbon dioxide, plug-in hybrid cars and solar-thermal electric plants. “Each will require a combination of factors to succeed: more applied scientific research, important regulatory changes, appropriate infrastructure, public acceptance and early high-cost investments,” he said. “A failure on one or more of these points could kill the technologies.”

In short, what is needed, he said, is a “major overhaul of energy technology” financed by “large-scale public funding of research, development and demonstration projects.”

At the same time, China and India continue to insist that economic growth is both their priority and right. They argue that the established economic powers should be responsible for spearheading the research to reduce carbon emissions. After all, the United States and Europe spent more than a century growing wealthy by burning fossil fuels.

Developing countries repeatedly made that point last week in Bangkok in the latest round of United Nations talks over the shape of a new climate agreement. But the United States rejected a proposal from China that 0.5 percent of the gross domestic product of industrialized countries be used to disseminate nonpolluting energy technologies.

As if to underscore the energy and emissions trajectories in Asia’s emerging powerhouses —and the priority placed on growth there and among important international institutions — the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank is planning to vote on Monday on helping to finance a four-billion-watt complex of coal-burning power plants, the “Ultra Mega” complex, in Gujarat State in India.

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