Word: balies
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...with the Kyoto set to go into effect in 2008, this year's talks in Bali will be the most important international environmental negotiations in over a decade. The Kyoto Protocol - which requires developed nations who have ratified the deal to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of about 5% below 1990 levels by 2012 - expires in just five years. Given how long international treaties take to be developed and ratified, the world needs to begin immediately at Bali the process of preparing a successor to Kyoto to be ready by the end of 2012 - otherwise...
Unfortunately, the global political community is a long way from speaking with one voice on anything, and climate change is no exception. We'll know for sure next week, when environment and energy ministers from around the world meet on the Indonesian island of Bali, for the UN's climate change conference. The summit has been held nearly every year since 1992, when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) - the document that has since guided international work on global warming - was hammered out. It was at the 1997 conference, held in Japan, that the Kyoto Protocol...
...major dispute could trip up progress at Bali, however. Under Kyoto, only developed countries were required to make mandatory cuts in their carbon emissions; developing nations like China and India had no such demands. The U.S. has long maintained that it won't sign onto a new deal unless the developing countries are included in a more substantive way - a position unlikely to change even when the occupant of the White House does. Beijing and New Delhi both argue that the vast majority of historical carbon emissions came from the developed nations (CO2 stays...
None of this will actually be decided at Bali. Despite the fact that we are rapidly running out of time to cap carbon emissions - the head of the IPCC has said the world has until 2015 at the latest - Bali is just the beginning of the beginning, not the end. As Claussen points out, a successful summit would be one that, counterintuitively, leaves much undecided - while attaching a firm deadline to the end of negotiations, with 2010 as the latest possible date. With the Bush Administration nearing lame duck status, a 2010 deadline would give a new U.S. Administration time...
...Rudd's ratification of Kyoto, and the perception of an Australian withdrawal from Iraq, could seem like rebuffs of the U.S., but the new PM's next trip after Bali is expected to be to Washington, where Australia can draw on a large reservoir of goodwill accumulated during the Howard era. "I am a passionate supporter of the U.S. alliance," Rudd said during the election campaign, "but good allies of America say, Mate, this time you've got it wrong and you need to do it differently...