Wilson's climate change views go global - Belfast Today

East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson penned an article in last Friday's News Letter in which he expressed strong doubts that global warming is caused by man.
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Thousands of people from around the world are still logging into the News Letter website to read his views and dozens have joined in debate.

Mr Wilson has placed himself at odds with mainstream environmentalists, both locally and internationally.

At home, his views have been condemned by a range of groups including the UUP, the Green Party, Sinn Fein, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and Friends of the Earth.

But in today's News Letter two international scientists from the International Climate Change Coalition, Tom Harris and John McLean, defend the minister.

New Zealand: Odd stuff from Mark Franklin

"Whether there is climate change or not we already have the obligation,'' says [chief executive of the new TZ1 carbon derivatives market Mark] Franklin, "because New Zealand, as one of 38 developed countries signed up to the Kyoto Protocol.''

This means between now and 2012 our carbon footprint must reduce at an annual rate across the signatories, averaging less than the emissions output generated in 1990. New Zealand has been allocated 309.5 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent to reduce over that period.

For Franklin the argument whether Earth is a casualty of global warming is a speculative one and not, he says, all that relevant to his job. "I understand the scepticism,'' he says. "New Zealand contributes 0.2% of the world's emissions so people say we won't have any impact but we will be pariahs if we don't comply.