Climate Change Policy: World Leaders Discuss the Future of Global Warming

Global Warming is on everyone’s radar these days. Scientists throughout the world continuously warn that human activity is adding an alarming amount of pollution to the earth’s atmosphere causing catastrophic shifts in weather patterns. Photographs prove the steady melting of the Alps (see picture at left) and polar icecaps while studies are released daily, citing findings such as: “The average number of Category 4 and Category 5 hurricanes worldwide has nearly doubled over the past 35 years.” Clearly, global warming can no longer be disputed. It is happening at a frightening rate and has finally captured the population’s attention.

In light of these growing concerns, world leaders have met extensively over the past year to discuss what can be done on political and economic levels. Last week’s United Nation and United States talks focused on creating a new climate change agreement to replace the soon-to-expire 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The United State’s participation represents a significant change in the Bush Administration’s stance on global warming. Historically, President Bush has been skeptical over the seriousness of climate change however, during the September 28 meeting, he finally admitted that it is imperative that nations reduce their pollution levels. Still, Bush and the UN disagree over the methods that should be used to reach this goal. UN leaders maintain that mandatory binding emissions targets will be most effective while the Bush Administration insists that a voluntary-based approach, in which individual countries set their own goals and use new technology to achieve them, would be better. Although the administration has finally demonstrated its willingness to negotiate about climate change, the disaggregated approach it suggests will be ineffective in the long run.

Bush’s proposed national plan recommends the use of “aspirational goals” rather than binding measures to reduce global greenhouse emissions. He suggests a framework that allows, “each nation [to] decide for itself the right mix of tools…to achieve results that are measurable and environmentally effective”, yet this proposition is extremely unspecific. Although the U.S. may be able to create its own effective national solution, there is no guarantee that other countries, without concrete guidelines, will act in a way that is most supportive of a global effort. Bush’s lackluster proposal frustrated critics such as Mogens Peter Carl, the EU’s director general for the environment, who have been advocating the need for “specific targets for emissions reductions, rather than broad goals.” If the past is any indicator of the future, all should heed Carl’s advice. Since the mid 1990s, international leaders have instated broad goals under the Kyoto Treaty in the hopes of reducing climate change, but these have been largely ineffective. Most industrialized countries’ levels of emissions remain unacceptably high and trends indicate that they will continue to rise unless something drastic is done (see graph at right). The UN’s strategy will potentially fill this need by holding states legally accountable to a set of global standards and penalizing those who don’t adhere.

Furthermore, Bush’s national approach is inadequate because it fails to address the time constraints of the issue. If countries are obligated to create and implement their own climate change goals, this could take years of extra planning. According to many global warming experts, however, time is a resource we don’t have. “There is no more time for longwinded talks about unenforceable long-term goals,” said David Doniger, climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We need to get a serious commitment to cut emissions now.” In support of Doniger’s claims, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report earlier this year indicating that global warming effects will happen faster than we expected: “Hundreds of millions of Africans and tens of millions of Latin Americans who now have water will be short of it in less than 20 years. By 2050, more than one billion people in Asia could face water shortages.” These disappointing statistics prove the need for an immediate plan. Fortunately, the UN’s proposal calls for the creation of one set of standard global rules which can be implemented far more quickly than almost two hundred national programs.

Despite the aforementioned shortcomings of the U.S. plan, Bush does wisely point out the need for an economy that is receptive to new, environmentally-safe technology. If both sectors don’t work together, reducing fossil fuel emissions will be near impossible. However, Bush wants to tackle this on a national rather than global level, and allow countries to individually decide how to implement technology into their economy. While this level of freedom may be manageable for rich states, many poor or developing nations don’t have the stable economy or infrastructure needed to support such an endeavor. It is hard to imagine Ghana or Ecuador investing in global warming technology while simultaneously trying to battle poverty, hunger and corruption. However, under the UN proposal, poorer nations won’t be given the same strict targets that will be allocated to the developed world. Ban Ki-Moon, UN secretary-general, said during the UN meeting that these nations should be given, “incentives to act without sacrificing economic growth or poverty reduction.”
Although this may leave some developed countries disgruntled about having to cover the costs for those who can’t fund environmental action alone, the time has come to stop pointing fingers at one another a recognize the severity of climate change. Perhaps a global binding agreement will initially put strain on the developed nations’ economies but when it comes to the perpetuation of the planet, money should be no issue. And, ironically, if we do nothing to prevent global warming, the economic damage caused by climate change disasters will far outweigh the economic strain created by stricter emission laws. Maybe investing billions of dollars in prevention technology seems excessive now, but when another hurricane like Katrina hits, causing $200 billion in damages(see photo at left) and taking over 1,300 lives, that initial sum will surely seem insignificant.