Dear Delegation Leader,

OIL FUELS CLIMATE CHANGE

During the next decades, an exciting technological revolution will take place. This will be the ushering in of "the solar century", where an ever increasing part of our energy needs will come from solar energy.This development will mark another historic step ahead in a process that has witnessed humankind relying successively on animal power or the burning trees, coal, or oil, or uranium, to meet our various energy needs.

Scientists tell us that the ability of the sun to provide our energy needs is limited only by our own imagination, and willingness to develop existing technologies. However current distortions in government energy policy mean that billions of dollars are still spent each year on promotion of energy sources we know to pollute our air, water and soil, while only a small fraction of funding is provided for developing clean solar energy.

There are strong economic, social and environmental reasons to end this madness as soon as possible. But there is one additional, and compelling, reason to accelerate the solar revolution. This is the threat of climate change.

After years of research and review, the vast majority of the world's climate experts have reached the conclusion that dramatic climate change will not only occur over the next century, but that it can already be detected. Even the melting of the polar regions has been documented. Impacts such as changing rainfall patterns, and dramatic weather events are mild harbingers of more life-threatening changes ahead. Sea level rise, the loss of crop land and entire species, and the advent of environmental refugees have all been predicted.

Coincidentally, the main source of the polluting gases, such as carbon dioxide, which cause climate change, are coal, oil and gas.

Unfortunately, most producers of these energy sources continue to deny climate science, and try to create alarm among governments and the public about the economic and social impacts of not using their products. They fail to mention that using their products is literally "costing the Earth" and that alternatives exist.

You have already shown some leadership on this issue, by recognising the problem and commiting themselves to "prevent dangerous climate change" in an international convention signed in 1992. However if your governments are to be effective in achieving this goal, you need now to take specific and concrete steps to begin an orderly transition from dependence on fossil fuels to solar energy.

We call on you this week to confirm your dedication to protecting the planet's climate from dangerous change, and to acknowledge publicly that this effectively means a phase-out of fuels as a primary source of energy, probably within a generation. In the same context, we call on you also to announce a more rapid phase-out of all taxpayer subsidies to fossil fuels, and to dedicate all research and development funding to providing clean, renewable energy.

To honour their international treaty commitments, governments of industrialised countries must show their good faith by commiting at the "Climate Summit" in Kyoto, this December, to legally binding targets and timetables to reduce their own carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 20% on 1990 levels by 2005. They should also initiate discussions to organise a fossil fuel phase-out in order to constrain climate change to limits in line with the objectives of the 1992 Climate Convention.

We also call on all oil and coal companies, and their shareholders, to acknowledge their contribution to the climate problem, and to commence immediate discussions on how they can be transformed into energy companies based on solar or other renewable energy sources.

START THE SOLAR CENTURY NOW....