The cherry blossom festival was an important time for the Japanese emperor’s court. That’s why we can find in the chronicles of the Japanese imperial administration the exact dates on which the festivals took place. Between the years 700 – 1950 B.C. there was hardly ever fluctuation. Since 1950, however, all that has changed – in the last half of the 20th century the peak of the cherry bloom time has shifted eight days.The climate change announced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will shift the borders between climate zones. Let’s take a European example: According to a University of Kassel study, the Alps will mark the geographical path of climate change. In the next two decades in the region north of the Alps field crops will increase, while in the region south of the Alps forest fires, water shortage and harvest losses will become the norm.

The new “benefits” for northern Europe will not last long, though. Due to global warming 20 to 50 percent of the plant species will die out, according to the study, because their ecological habitat will be drastically changed. Heat waves will afflict particularly the southern part of Old Europe; they already had a taste of that there in July 2006. Last summer alone in France 2000 people died from the aftereffects of heat. The third part of the IPCC report will provide solutions for the climate desaster. In Southern Europe in the last hot summers many of the retired people who are affected by the heat the most gathered in the supermarket in front of the fridges.

Two of the leading thinkers on climate change, Peter Goldmark and Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, are addressing the breach between Europe and America over facing up to global warming in an article published in the German magazine "Der Spiegel". They not only see the year 2007 as a possible turning point when Americans finally will step up and act but also develop a practical policy guideline for what Europe should do while it is waiting to see if the US will enact a carbon cap.Read the whole article here

Peter Goldmark, director of the Climate and Air program for Environmental Defense in New York.Foto: www.environmentaldefense.org
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