I have a story in 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.
China and India led a bloc of developing countries pushing for a last-minute shift of the phrase “measurable, reportable, and verifiable” within the text of a “road map” for the next two years of talks. The American negotiators, taken by surprise, scrambled to see if this gave the world’s emerging powers an escape route from any obligations under whatever emerges in 2009. “We are not prepared to accept this formulation at this time,” said Paula J. Dobrianksy, the lead representative of the United States, eliciting a growing stream of boos.
After a series of “interventions” (U.N. speak for statements) by other countries, Mr. Conrad, whose main interest was in preventing total breakdown of the talks, decided to push the edge a bit. My print story gives a bit more context. Suffice it to say that the Americans, following Europe, backed down and accepted the new wording. The fight to extract commitments from China, which has pulled into the lead in annual greenhouse-gas emissions, will continue, even as other countries push to extract commitments from the United States.
In reviewing events in Bali for this week’s story, I reflected 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. The one huge difference is that China wasn’t even mentioned in those days. That, of course, makes the situation now even harder.)
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?
Let’s Be Sensible on Global Warming
Christian Science Monitor, June 30, 1992
By Andrew Revkin
Andrew Revkin’s latest book is “Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast,” published by Abbeville Press in conjunction with the American Museum of Natural History’s new exhibition on climate change. His previous book, “The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest,” won a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.
At the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro an army of environmental activists and members of the press talked of the need to “Save the Planet” as if we were on the brink of a climatic apocalypse that will turn this rare blue sphere into a cinder of bedrock. Hardly likely.
Meanwhile, a counterforce of conservatives charged that the threat of global warming is overblown, and any actions to fight it will ruin the economy. George Bush, who continues to label environmentalists “extremists,” has embraced this view. Columnist George Will has even written, “Some environmentalism is a ‘green tree with red roots.’ ”
With all this hype, it might be useful to check the facts and see if we actually know anything about how humans may be meddling with Earth’s atmosphere. There are hard facts. And some sensible people actually have well-reasoned proposals for dealing with this matter.
1. There is a greenhouse effect. Water vapor, carbon dioxide, and a few other atmospheric gases act like the glass panes of a greenhouse, allowing sunlight in to warm the planet but preventing heat from escaping.
The proof is that Earth is warm. Without its insulating blanket of “greenhouse gases,” the planet would have an average temperature of zero degrees Fahrenheit instead of the balmy 59 degrees we currently experience.
2. Concentrations of carbon dioxide and several other greenhouse gases have been rising at an accelerating pace since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Locked in bubbles of ancient air trapped in glaciers is a precise record of carbon dioxide stretching back 160,000 years. In that span, the amount of CO2 in the air fluctuated between 190 and 280 parts per million — low during ice ages and high during warm intervals.
But CO2 never rose higher than 280 parts per million until around 1890, when the burning of fossil fuels and forests began to generate enormous amounts of this gas. The concentration now is 356 parts per million. That’s a 22 percent rise in just over 100 years — a rate of change far faster than anything nature has come up with. Barring some miraculous post-Rio conversion, levels of carbon dioxide from human activities will double from pre-industrial times in the coming century.
3. The planet is warming. There has been some criticism from skeptics who say that temperature records are inaccurate. But other data strongly support the idea that things are heating up. Temperature readings in holes drilled through permafrost in the Arctic show a sharp recent warming trend. The winter snow pack covering the northern hemisphere has retreated markedly over the past few decades.
So, these are a few of the facts: certain gases warm Earth. Concentrations of these gases are rising rapidly because of human activities. Finally, the global temperature has risen significantly since levels of these gases began to rise.
Obviously, the case is not open-and-shut. It’s still possible that the current warming trend is some natural variation caused by factors we don’t understand. One thing seems fairly clear: If levels of carbon dioxide continue to rise at the current rate, there is a significant chance that disruptive climate shifts will occur within the lifetimes of children born today. The list of potential consequences is familiar: coastal flooding, searing droughts, wars over shrinking water supplies, accelerated extinction of species.
In essence, by fiddling with the global thermostat, we are conducting a potentially hazardous physics experiment. Things might turn out just fine. Or they might turn out terribly. The trouble is, we’re all sitting in the test tube.
Some people maintain that even if a dramatic climate change does occur, we’ll adapt without too much fuss. Others insist that actions can be taken today — such as greatly increasing the efficiency with which we use energy — that will cut the risks of climate change while offering society other benefits.
That was the conclusion of the National Academy of Sciences, which last year reported, “Despite the great uncertainties, greenhouse warming is a potential threat sufficient to justify action now.” One of the authors of that statement was Robert Frosch, the head of research for General Motors Corporation — hardly a radical environmentalist. Unfortunately, quiet, sensible voices such as his have been drowned out in all the noise from left and right.
Global warming presents a critical test of two uniquely human attributes: reason and foresight. It is up to all of us to seek out the facts and decide on a course of action.
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