Status of Targets of Climate Change Conferences

Industrialized nations have agreed to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% by 2010. However, these promises have yet to be ratified and passed into international law.

Status of Targets of Climate Change Conferences Male: Outside the conference chamber and meeting rooms of the climate conference in Bonn, demonstrators are pressing the governments inside to listen to the great majority of scientists who say global warming is upon us and threatens global catastrophe. Governments have been talking about the issue since the United Nations meeting in Vienna in the mid 1980’s. This is no less than the 5th time that the world’s governments have met since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. In Rio, the evidence had grown stronger and promises were made to combat global warming. Since the Kyoto Protocol was agreed in 1997, the last vestiges of doubt have been dispelled. John Prescott: The science is no longer about weather but when. The lost of the tropical rain forest, drought, famine in -- flooding in our costal lowlands, the threat to the small island states, the spread of diseases like malaria and now we have the terrible events in -- for which we extend our deepest sympathy to the Indian people. It is the latest in the succession of tragedies which has set the alarm bells ringing around the world. Male: Industrialized nations have agreed to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% below the levels of 1995-2010. However, these promises have yet to be ratified and passed into international law. Worst still the world’s larges emitter of carbon dioxide, the United States which is responsible for 25% of global emissions with just 6% of the global population is lacking far behind the other industrialized countries in reducing emissions. Philip Clapp: US leadership on decision is absolutely critical. We are after all huge proportion of the worlds emissions and developing countries can't be expected to step forward and make reductions in their emissions if the world’s leading polluter doesn’t do anything about it. Male: In Bonn, the devil is in the detail. The task at hand is to strike agreements on the details of the complicated mechanisms that were agreed at the Kyoto Conference in 1997. There, industrialized nations decided they could help make their emission reductions indirectly by paying for poorer countries to pollute less. This was like buying carbon credits from themselves. Frank Loy: We don’t think we can meet our Kyoto target which is a very tough target. It took one of the toughest targets at any line at Kyoto. We don’t know how to meet that without the benefit of Kyoto and the Kyoto mechanisms. Male: The strategy of meeting targets by paying for emissions reduction abroad has angered many. Athena Ronquillo-Ballesteros: They actually admitted on the floor that the signed this Kyoto Protocol and they’ve signed this treaty because of the presence of the flexibility mechanisms which basically says that they are not willing to do anything in a large huge way domestically, but they are willing to meet their commitment overseas. And to me that’s hypocrisy. Male: However there is a possibility that climate accord could be ratified without the agreement of the United States. Jennifer Morgan: Because you have a large group of countries who said, “We’re going to make this protocol law by the year 2002.” Ten years after the Rio Earth Summit that included a very important group of countries like the European Union and all of the member states, Japan, New Zealand and a whole range of developing countries. The group that came forth here in Bonn makes up 80% of the amount that is needed to make this protocol law. Male: It is the enormous power of US businesses that upheld the US Congress back from full support of the treaty seeing them selves as under threat. Yet ironically, it could well be business that suffers most from the US government outside a climate treaty. John Prescott: The threat that there actually might be an emission’s trading system and a protocol in effect by 2002 of which the United States might not be a part is going to -- I think make a number of business people in the United States they could get because what that means is you’re going to have billions of dollars in benefits to companies in other nations who actually start becoming more energy efficient and all of a sudden they're not going to be a part of this new more efficient energy account. Male: Some American businesses have already seen the dangers from being excluded from a climate treaty. Under the combined banner of the center for global change, they are lobbying for early US succession to the accord. Judith Bear: We’re multi-national corporations. We deal in global business markets. We have global competitors, we have global governments that we must answer to so we have a burden of responding to the regulatory regime ultimately when there is a mandate for targets in time tables but we also have a competitive mission to bring products to the market that are going to satisfy the regulations and the compliance as well as the competition that we face. United Technology’s corporate philosophy is be there first. Male: A cost line crumbles into a rising C. Higher temperatures allow a parasite to invade. Species unable to adapt are lost forever. Yet more evidence with global warming is making an impact. But when it adds to pressure on the international community to take the level of action many scientists and environmental groups are demanding. Michael Meacher: There’s no doubt that CO2 emissions are increasingly producing very serious and damaging effects. Now you can say that all of these would’ve happened anyway but we are increasingly seeing that once in a century phenomena are now happening every year. And most people and the scientists certainly believe that this has great deal to do with global warming. We have got to act for the future of mankind.