Word: carbonization
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...will have limits. Chief among them is that any successor to Kyoto needs to be "global," to use Kerry's word - meaning that some of the burden will have to be shared by developing nations whose rapid economic growth will make them responsible for the majority of future carbon emissions. China has continued to insist that it will not accept mandatory caps on emissions, which it sees as an unfair limit to its natural economic growth (a position essentially shared by Washington, which also opposes mandatory caps). One positive change from a decade ago, however, is that most developing nations...
...India views climate change through a political position that prioritizes the responsibility of the rich countries, and rejects mandatory cuts on countries just beginning to industrialize. Their argument is based on population size: Even years from now, when China and India will be emitting much of the world's carbon gas, the average Chinese or Indian will still be responsible for far less global-warming pollution than the average Westerner. The burden of restrictions, they argue, should therefore be shouldered first in the industrialized West...
...That principle helped shape Kyoto in a way that mostly gave developing nations a free pass. But, as Kerry pointed out, warming "is not a per-capita issue; it's a global emissions issue." The climate system doesn't care how little carbon each Indian is responsible for, if collectively they're throwing a whole lot into the atmosphere. So far the world has addressed this on a national level, not a personal one. But it's still hard to refute the argument that developing nations are somehow getting the short end of the stick here - which means we haven...
...evening cocktail parties were just getting started in Bali as former Vice President Al Gore was accepting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, thousands of miles away. In his speech, Gore called for bold and immediate action from the negotiators in Bali, including a universal global cap on carbon emissions. "We must quickly mobilize our civilization," he said. "Something basic is wrong. We are wrong and we must make it right...
...long, long time to agree on anything. So it can sometimes seem, in the torpid heat of Bali, that the calls for action will go unheeded, that we'll never get our act together in time the meet the demands of science, which call for a peak on global carbon emissions to be reached within a decade or so, followed by rapid reductions. That we'll conference ourselves to death...