Fiddling with Words as the World Melts

This article in The Economist paints a troubling picture. But this is where we are. This is what we are doing, and what we have done for some time: very little. This is what passes for environmental responsibility, commitment and leadership in the world today. Blinkered eyes and myopic, short-term self interest continue to frustrate the compelling need for timely and comprehensive world-wide planning and action.

At least in theory, most of the world’s governments now accept that climate change, if left unchecked, could become the equivalent of a deadly asteroid. But to judge by the latest, tortuous moves in climate-change diplomacy—at a two-week gathering in western Poland, which ended on December 13th—there is little sign of any mind-concentrating effect.

To be fair to the 10,000-odd people (diplomats, UN bureaucrats, NGO types) who assembled in Poznan, a semicolon was removed. At a similar meeting in Bali a year earlier, governments had vowed to consider ways of cutting emissions from “deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries; and the role of conservation [and forest management]”. After much haggling, delegates in Poland decided to upgrade conservation by replacing the offending punctuation mark with a comma.

At this pace, it seems hard to believe that a global deal on emissions targets (reconciling new emitters with older ones) can be reached next December at a meeting in Copenhagen, seen as a make-or-break time for UN efforts to cool the world.

My own views on the global warming threat are expressed in my essay Cassandra's Tears (2006), and unfortunately remain relevant today.

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12815686