Word: poznan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...bring apocalyptic foreboding to the climate-change debate quite like Al Gore. Speaking on the last day of the two-week-long U.N. climate-change summit in Poznan, Poland, which concluded on Dec. 12, the Nobel laureate warned delegates from over 190 countries that the time for idle talk on global warming was over. "We now face a crisis that makes it abundantly clear that increased CO2 emissions anywhere are a threat to the integrity of this planet's climate balance everywhere," he said. "As a result the old divide between the North and South, between developed and developing countries...
...important to realize that those actions were taken individually, effectively outside the U.N.'s negotiations framework. The point of the Poznan talks was to smooth the way for a new international pact on climate change next year in Copenhagen, to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. (If you're wondering why the world needs to come up with a new agreement to replace a pact that doesn't expire for another three years - well, that's U.N. speed.) And while U.N. officials maintained that Poznan set the stage for next year's deadline talks, most of the major...
...didn't help that on the same day the Poznan talks concluded, the European Union - long the world's carbon-cutting leader - took a step backward. Europe had previously pledged to reduce its carbon emissions 20% by 2020 - the so-called 20-20-20 plan - and in Brussels on Dec. 12, representatives confirmed that goal. But instead of forcing electric utilities to pay for the right to emit greenhouse gases - as a draft plan from earlier in the year had prescribed - the E.U. bowed to complaints from poorer nations in Eastern Europe, allowing utilities in those countries to continue getting...
...Ultimately, the immediate future of global climate-change action won't be decided in Brussels or Poznan but in Washington, D.C. - where there really is cause for hope. While President-elect Barack Obama (and his top emissaries) steered clear of the Poznan summit - understandable, since the Bush Administration's negotiating team was still in charge - at home the names of his climate and energy teams have been revealed. Lisa Jackson, a respected state official in New Jersey, will head the Environmental Protection Agency, while Carol Browner - head of the EPA under President Bill Clinton - will take a new position...
...will Poznan be a waste? No - provided we put it in the right perspective. Worldwide, our way of life is so wedded to carbon that simply legislating greenhouse-gas reductions may not be possible - as rich nations like Japan, which have struggled to meet their Kyoto obligations, have discovered. Meaningful reductions will require technological advances on energy that have yet to be developed, and the U.N. can't force that process. But it can work to focus the world's attention on climate change and help map out the policy framework - including on issues like tropical deforestation - that will speed...