By Gary Feuerberg

The United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNCCC) will be held from Nov 28 to Dec 9 in Montreal, Canada, and promises to be the largest intergovernmental climate conference since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997. The expectation is that 8,000 to 10,000 participants will be attending from 189 countries and the European Union.

Why all the hullabaloo for the Montreal 2005 climate change conference?

This is not the first such conference but actually the 11th. To sort out all the history, previous conferences, and scientific background related to this issue is a daunting task. The science, politics, and business of climate change is a very complicated subject. It's difficult to follow the many conferences, treaties, protocols, and technological advances.

In general, the leading priority of those concerned about global warming is to "stabilize" the greenhouse gas emissions. Then, hopefully, the earth won't continue to get any warmer, and the glaciers won't melt, flooding will return to normal, air quality will be back where it once was, and so on.

But achieving that goal of stabilizing the CO2 emissions must be achieved in a way that doesn't damage the economies and social development on the planet, referred to by the participants in these discussions as "environmentally sustainable."

As a global problem, there needs to be a global solution. This entails the cooperation of the developed countries and the developing countries towards finding ways, including the development and sharing of new technologies, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and more use of renewable energy. The solution to mitigating global warming involves more than developing technological alternatives to fossil fuels (natural gas, oil and coal), but requires government interventions of various kinds that affects the economies of the developed (e.g., U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Japan) and developing countries (e.g., China, India), which in turn affects social development, poverty, and so on.

Finding and promoting "environmentally sustainable" solutions figures prominently in the thinking, whether it be the industrialized developed countries or the developing nations. Such a level should be achieved within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened, and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.

Summary of How We Got to the Montreal Conference

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or, short, FCCC) was an international environmental treaty that produced a UN conference, popularly known as the "Earth Summit," held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The treaty aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gas, based on the belief that the latter was a significant contributor of global warming.

The treaty as originally framed set no mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual nations and contained no enforcement provisions; it is therefore considered legally non-binding, serving as a framework that virtually all nations could agree upon. When 54 nations ratified the treaty by 1994 (including the United States) it went into force.

However, the treaty included provisions for updates (called "protocols") that would set mandatory emission limits. The parties have been meeting annually, called, "Conferences of the Parties (COP)" to assess progress in dealing with climate change, and in Kyoto, Japan, (COP-3), the parties negotiated the Kyoto Protocol - which has become much better known than the UNFCCC itself - to establish legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted by COP-3 in Dec 1997 after intense negotiations. Most industrialized nations and some central European economies in transition agreed to legally binding reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of an average of 6%-8% below 1990 levels between the years 2008-2012. If the industrialized nations cannot reduce their emissions to target levels below their 1990 emissions level, they must buy emission credits or invest in conservation.

Most of the responsibilities fall on the developed countries. The developing countries avoid restricting growth as their social development and ending poverty hold a higher priority than emissions control. Additionally, developing countries are not expected to implement their commitments under the Convention unless developed countries supply enough funding and technology.

The United States would be required to reduce its total emissions an average of 7% below 1990 levels, but the Clinton administration followed by the Bush administration, declined to participate, and the latter did not forward the treaty to the Senate for ratification, fearing that agreement to the standards would adversely affect the U.S. economy. The Kyoto Protocol went into effect (among those nations that ratified) this year—Feb 17, 2005 when 150 nations ratified or agreed to it. This adds significance to the Montreal conference next week.

The late Joke Waller-Hunter, who was executive secretary of the UNCCC, said: "The 16th of February 2005 marks the beginning of a new era in international efforts to reduce the risk of climate change. The Kyoto Protocol offers powerful new tools and incentives that governments, businesses and consumers can use to build a climate-friendly economy and promote sustainable development."

Recent Briefing by British and Canadian Representatives in Preparation for Montreal 2005

Towards the aim of explaining what can be hoped for at the upcoming Montreal conference, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) sponsored a briefing by British and Canadian government officials in Washington DC on Nov 8th in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. EESI was founded in 1984 by a bipartisan group of Members of Congress concerned about energy and environmental issues.

The briefings by a British and a Canadian government representative were filled with great hope of implementing and improving on the Kyoto conference, and "launching discussions for the future," to use Sharron Lee-Smith, the Canadian representative, "for long-term cooperative action."

James Reilly from the British Embassy spoke of the leading role that the Blair government is playing on climate change. He showed a chart how the UK's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions had declined and was now on target to meet the Kyoto standard in 2008-12. The US, by contrast, was well off its target of minus 7%; in fact there has been an 11.6% increase since 1990.

Reilly spoke of the Gleneagles Summit in July 2005, which was a meeting in Scotland of the G8, an informal group of eight countries: U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom that discussed progress on global warming in July. Participating also were developing countries: Brazil, China, South Africa, India, and Mexico. At Gleneagles, the leaders agreed to an action plan to "exploit cleaner energies… including measures to develop technologies such as bioenergy and cleaner coal…and to finance investment in clean technologies in emerging economies."

Sharron Lee-Smith said Montreal 2005 will be "the most important global climate change meeting since Kyoto 1997." She spoke of the need for developed countries to "de-link emission and economic growth." Smith said that we need to improve what we achieved so far (e.g., Kyoto) and called upon business and the private sector "to focus their talent and ingenuity to create …innovations," including "a low carbon future."

Global Warming: How Winter is Declining.

The explanation for global warming goes like this, which was culled from the UNFCCC website (http://unfccc.int).

Carbon dioxide is the chief culprit. Greenhouse gases, such as water, carbon dioxide, ozone, and methane make up only 1% of the atmosphere, but they act like a blanket around the earth, or like the glass roof of a greenhouse, trapping heat and making the planet 54 degrees F warmer than it would be otherwise. The problem is that the natural levels of these gases are being supplemented by emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas, which makes the blanket "thicker," which change is causing the warming of the earth's surface—known as "enhanced greenhouse effects." The UNFCCC also mentions methane and nitrous oxide produced by agriculture, and man made gases that don't dissipate very fast, which are also results of man's activities.

Computer climate models estimate that the average global temperature will rise by 2.5 to 10.4 degrees F by the year 2100. The most convincing evidence of global warming is the decline of winter.

* Arctic air temperatures increased by about 9 degrees F during the 20th century -- ten times faster than the global-mean surface temperature. In the Russian Arctic, buildings are collapsing because permafrost under their foundations has melted.

* Snow cover has declined by some 10 per cent in the mid- and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere since the late 1960s. The annual duration of lake and river ice cover apparently shortened by about two weeks during the 20th century.

* Almost all mountain glaciers in non-polar regions retreated during the 20th century. The overall volume of glaciers in Switzerland decreased by two-thirds.

Source The Epoch Times