Facing the consequences

[n2doc]

Global action is not going to stop climate change. The world needs to look harder at how to live with it
Nov 25th 2010 | from PRINT EDITION


ON NOVEMBER 29th representatives of countries from around the world will gather in Cancún, Mexico, for the first high-level climate talks since those in Copenhagen last December. The organisers hope the meeting in Mexico, unlike the one in Denmark, will be unshowy but solid, leading to decisions about finance, forestry and technology transfer that will leave the world better placed to do something about global warming. Incremental progress is possible, but continued deadlock is likelier. What is out of reach, as at Copenhagen, is agreement on a plausible programme for keeping climate change in check.

The world warmed by about 0.7°C in the 20th century. Every year in this century has been warmer than all but one in the last (1998, since you ask). If carbon-dioxide levels were magically to stabilise where they are now (almost 390 parts per million, 40% more than before the industrial revolution) the world would probably warm by a further half a degree or so as the ocean, which is slow to change its temperature, caught up. But CO2 levels continue to rise. Despite 20 years of climate negotiation, the world is still on an emissions trajectory that fits pretty easily into the “business as usual” scenarios drawn up by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The Copenhagen accord, a non-binding document which was the best that could be salvaged from the summit, talks of trying to keep the world less than 2°C warmer than in pre-industrial times—a level that is rather arbitrarily seen as the threshold for danger. Many countries have, in signing the accord, promised actions that will or should reduce carbon emissions. In the World Energy Outlook, recently published by the International Energy Agency, an assessment of these promises forms the basis of a “new policies scenario” for the next 25 years (see chart 1). According to the IEA, the scenario puts the world on course to warm by 3.5°C by 2100. For comparison, the difference in global mean temperature between the pre-industrial age and the ice ages was about 6°C.

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http://www.economist.com/node/17572735

[pscot]

1. Sounds vaguely un-American

Facing the consequences. Smacks of Socialism.

[joshcryer]

2. Heh, Hansen has been saying this for awhile.

[txlibdem]

3. Success will be achieved only if the USA stays home

If we show up it'll be nothing but deadlock and disagreement.

Why does the world pay any attention to anything the US says? We can't even decide that unemployed people should be given enough money so they can eat.

[Nederland]

4. Oh please

If the US stayed home the Chinese and Indians would start shitting their pants because they wouldn't have anyone to blame...

[txlibdem]

6. And maybe they'd be pressured to actually get something done

The US has been a negative influence in every Climate Change negotiation/meeting since time began.

I have absolutely no idea why any country would take anything we say seriously. We're advocating mass suicide when the rest of the world is trying to avert the most deadly effects of the coming disaster. Sorry, we're already too late to avoid much of the non-lethal effects of climate change.

The US' climate and environment slogan should be: coulda, woulda, shoulda.

[inna]

5. more like, global inaction, led by "the land of the brave", whatever.