Mitigating climate change

Today's General News - Wednesday December 12, 2007

EDITORIAL

Mitigating climate change

The two-week United Nations Climate Change Conference got under way in Bali last week, with representatives from over 180 countries in attendance. Today, the relevant ministers of these countries will begin the high-level segment of discussions and negotiations to plot the next phase of the global response to climate change.

In the run-up to the conference the focus has been on the responsibilities of the rich industrialised countries versus the poorer developing countries to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions, especially carbon dioxide. What should be clear to all is that if the mounting scientific evidence is correct, all nations will have to do much, much more to slow and, sometime in the future, to reach a plateau in global warming.

Somewhat surprisingly, it now looks like the goal imposed by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol of an overall 5% reduction in CO2 emissions by industrialised nations compared to 1990 may be met within the five-year time frame between 2008 and 2012. As has been widely pointed out, however, this situation is due in large measure to factors that have little to do with active efforts to reduce emissions, such as the collapse of the former Soviet Union after 1990 and the stagnation of those economies. Some industrialised nations, such as Germany, have made real strides in converting to cleaner technologies, but a number of others have actually increased emissions substantially over the last 17 years.

With the commitment by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to add Australia to the list of Kyoto signatories, that leaves the United States as the last holdout among industrialised nations. This seems very likely to change after President George W Bush leaves office in January 2009. But in reality the 5% reduction is far from adequate, and it is still very much in question whether the rank and file of industrialised nations will really be up to the task of reducing emissions 25-40% over 1990 levels by 2020, as is specified in the preamble to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The talks in Bali are preliminary to more talks which will decide what sort of targets should be laid down for the next phase of the convention, after 2012. Developing nations are scrambling to keep their immunity from emissions targets intact, while developed nations are saying that without countries like China and India on board there is little point in their making sacrifices.

There are convincing arguments from developing nations that they should have the same opportunities to become wealthy using fossil fuels that the industrialised nations had, and that on a per capita basis developed countries are far less polluting. However, as Nobel Prize winner Al Gore pointed out recently, if rapidly growing economies continue to develop energy infrastructures based on fossil fuels, it is a recipe for disaster.

There will probably be few firm decisions made in Bali, and there is a possibility that the lines will be further drawn between rich and poor nations. More hopefully, what can and should come out of this conference is an acknowledgement that all nations have a responsibility to take a leading role in mitigating climate change. In future years, historians may marvel that as a people we put economic growth above the health of the planet. This applies not only to climate change, but to related issues such as biodiversity and availability of clean water.

One major accomplishment that may come out of Bali is a bargain in which developed nations would offer economic incentives to developing nations to protect the world's tropical forests, which play a key role in absorbing CO2.

A commitment to R&D in clean technologies and making them feasible in everyday life is also needed, and certainly China and India, as well as Thailand, have the expertise to play a major part here. Moreover, wealthier nations should agree to accelerate the transfer of existing clean technologies to developing nations.

Bangkok Post