The Climate Challenge. Same as it Ever Was?

By Andrew C. Revkin

A negotiator from Pakistan sought to comment during the final session at climate talks in Bali in December. (Credit: IISD / Earth Negotiations Bulletin

I have a story coming in Tuesday's Science Times looking at the latest round of climate-treaty talks, one month ago in Bali, from the vantage point of Kevin Conrad, the young man who represented Papua New Guinea and shook things up with a strong rebuke of the United States in the final tumultuous session. (An Associated Press video report is on YouTube.) It turns out things were not quite as they appeared.

In reviewing events in Bali for this story, I reflected a bit on nearly two decades of efforts to use treaty-making as a means of curbing heat-trapping emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and forests. The original 1992 Framework Convention on climate had ambitious pledges, but no teeth. The Kyoto Protocol, added in 1997, created a cap-and-trading system for emissions, but hasn't blunted the rising tide of greenhouse gases. A story of mine from 1992 is included below, providing a sobering sense of déjà vu.

Maybe the Bali meeting will be seen as a turning point in the long run. It was the first session where countries committed, reluctantly, to define by a date certain, 2009, a long-term target for limiting the gas buildup. Or maybe President Bush's parallel effort to extract "aspirational" climate goals from the "major economies" - a polite way of saying major emitters - will be the venue where progress is made. The next meeting of that group comes in Hawaii later this month.

Time will tell. But time is marching on, and emissions continue to climb. To illustrate how little has changed, I thought it worthwhile to post a story I wrote back in June, 1992, at the close of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where the first climate treaty was completed. It is an op-ed piece, published in the Christian Science Monitor around the time my first book on global warming was published. (Don't worry about a conflict of interest here; the book, Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast, has been out of print for more than a decade).

Before I came to The Times in 1995, I spent a stretch mainly writing books and freelance articles, during which I could express personal views. I have a different journalist role now, of course, so keep that in mind as you read on. Some of the science has evolved, of course, but the broad-brush issues remain the same. (A similarly sobering look at how Rio's divisions and issues were little different than those in Bali can be found in this archive of stories on the summit from The Times.)

Can you think of ways to break the longstanding deadlock over the interrelated issues of supplying energy for a growing world while limiting climate hazards?

New York Times

http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/the-climate-challenge-same-as-it-ever-was/index.html?ex=1358658000&en=ad5aff3606fa5681&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss