Global Warming in Mexico
Mexico Launches Plan to Combat Global Warming - 5/28/07
Mexico promised to plant 250 million trees this year and ban old trucks and buses from the roads as part of a plan launched on Friday to fight global warming.
President Felipe Calderon, handing out trees at a ceremony to promote his national climate change strategy, said there would be cleaner gasoline, more wind energy and more use of solar power in houses, especially in Mexico's sun-baked north.
"The fact that other big countries are not disposed to take on the responsibility and continue to damage the environment must not be an excuse to feign ignorance of our own responsibilities," Calderon said.
Mexico is one of the major developing nations that will take part in a global warming summit in Germany early in June.
Mexico has many environmental problems, including massive illegal logging, old buses and trucks that belch black smoke into the air and pollute cities. It also uses huge amounts of fossil fuels as a major oil producer.
Mexico's Beaches Threatened by Global Warming - 4/23/07
Global warming is threatening Mexico's beaches, one of the nation's most beautiful natural resources and a huge generator of tourism income and jobs.
According to a front-page Earth Day feature that ran in Mexico's national daily Reforma , hurricanes and rising sea levels are eating away hundreds of miles of beaches in five Mexican states, including Quintana Roo in the Yucatan Peninsula. That's the southern Mexican state that's home to the beach city of Cancun and other resorts along the so-called Riviera Maya, the wildly popular Caribbean playground that attracts about 40% of Mexico's international visitors.
Hurricane Wilma swept away much of the sugary sand of Cancun's famed hotel zone in September 2005. The government spent more than $21 million in an attempt to restore the beach, but continued erosion has undone much of that effort.
Melting glaciers are raising sea levels that could swamp thousands of miles of coast line. Global warming is likewise boosting ocean temperatures, which experts say portends more frequent and more powerful hurricanes. Water pollution and real estate developers are destroying mangroves that help shield beaches from erosion.
Mexico Adopts Standards to Measure Global Warming Gases - 8/25/04
Mexico today launched a new partnership that makes it the first country to adopt internationally-accepted standards to measure and report business greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for establishing a voluntary national program.
The partnership, called the Mexico GHG Pilot Program, was launched with the signing of an agreement between Mexico's Secretariat for the Environment and Natural Resources (Secretaría de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales or SEMARNAT), the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).
The two-year partnership will develop a voluntary reporting platform for Mexican businesses, following the internationally accepted Greenhouse Gas Protocol, developed by WRI and WBCSD. It hopes to assist businesses in Mexico to prepare GHG inventories, identify GHG reduction opportunities, and participate in programs to reduce emissions, while at the same time benefitting corporate bottom lines, reducing local air pollutants, and mitigating global climate change.
"While many industries throughout the world have adopted the GHG Protocol, Mexico is the first country to adopt it," said Jonathan Lash, WRI president. "In the absence of international leadership in tackling climate change, Mexico has taken the lead in showing what can be done to mitigate global warming."
Mexico ranks as the 14th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, and is second only to Brazil in Latin America. In 2000, according to WRI's Climate Analyses Indicators Tool, GHG emissions in Mexico equaled 1.4 tons per person, compared with 6.6 tons per U.S. citizen and 1.3 tons per Brazilian.
