Word: summit
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...face its moment of truth at a summit in Brussels tomorrow, when French President Nicolas Sarkozy will attempt to cajole his fellow leaders into agreeing on an ambitious package of emission-cutting measures. The so-called 20-20-20 plan aims to reduce 20% of greenhouse gases by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, raise renewable energy's share of the market to 20% and cut overall energy consumption by 20%. (Read TIME's Heroes of the Environment...
There was no shortage of questions surrounding this year's United Nations climate-change summit, which began Dec. 1 in Poznan, Poland. The most obvious: Where was everyone going to stay? Only the fifth-largest city in the sixth-largest country in Europe, Poznan is a curious choice to host one of the most important international conferences of the year, with more than 10,000 delegates, scientists, activists and journalists meeting to map out the future of global climate change action...
That being said, the Poznan summit is only a waypoint on the road to negotiating a new Kyoto Protocol; it's not the final event. Kyoto, which mandated greenhouse-gas reductions for developed nations (except the U.S., which never ratified the treaty), will expire in 2012. And last year, at the contentious Bali summit, delegates managed to paper over disputes - including those among the U.S., which under the Bush Administration has generally played the spoiler at these talks; the European Union, which has routinely argued for the most stringent carbon reductions; and the big developing nations, like India and China...
...midst of a leadership vacuum on climate change (see below), progress out of Poznan will likely be slow and more about process than measurable targets. "Poznan was never going to be a conference where a spectacular outcome was to be expected," said French climate ambassador Brice Lalonde at the summit. "We hope for a spectacular outcome in Copenhagen next year. You can't expect a mouse to give birth to a mountain - it will only give birth to a mouse." (Translation: Small town, small summit, small expectations...
...longer has the power to bring talks to a standstill, as it has in past years (other countries are now treating the Bush team like an annoying houseguest that has overstayed his welcome), Obama can't be anything but vague for now. Although he sent observers to the summit, many greens wish he had deployed a high-level representative - like Vice President-elect Joseph Biden - to focus the world's attention on Poznan. As it is, the U.S. vacuum is the perfect excuse to justify the generally slow progress of the talks. Yet once Obama takes over...