Brian T. Watson: New climate pact doesn't go far enough to end 'insane' reliance on fossil fuels

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December 17, 2011

Brian T. Watson The Salem News Sat Dec 17, 2011, 08:22 AM EST

The 17th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference came to a close last Sunday. Held in Durban, South Africa, the meeting was attended by representatives from 194 countries whose goal was to come up with a plan to reduce the volume of carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere.

Currently the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement created in 1997, is the sole international treaty restricting the CO2 emissions of some (not all) industrial nations. The protocol established targets — i.e., total annual tons of CO2 — that were meant to be legally binding on the countries that signed it. Unfortunately, many industrial countries, including ours, never ratified the agreement and others failed to meet their targets.

The other major weakness with the protocol was its provision that poor, developing nations were exempt from adhering to any pollution targets. The thinking in 1997 was that the industrial world had created the global warming mess and therefore should be responsible for cleaning it up.

Today, 15 years later, modernization and globalization are rapidly transforming many of the developing nations, and consequently their CO2 emissions have risen dramatically. Brazil, China, South Africa and India produce rapidly growing amounts of atmospheric carbon waste. China actually passed the United States five years ago to become the world's biggest CO2 polluter. India is now third.

Flawed though they are, many of the Kyoto Protocol's provisions expire in January 2012, so the Durban conference was critical for establishing new ones. Auspiciously, a new accord (called the "Durban Platform") was reached, but its requirements are a mixed bag.

Wisely, the distinction between "developed" and "developing" nations has been largely eliminated. And all nations will have to establish legally binding emissions targets by the end of 2015, which will be incorporated in a comprehensive, global treaty that countries would need to ratify and institute by 2020.

Additionally by 2020, the world's wealthier nations would be required to create a "Green Climate Fund" that would contribute $100 billion a year to poor countries to fund their efforts toward clean energy.

Ultimately, however, this is simply an agreement to continue talking about climate change.

And the elongated time line for action lacks any relationship to the urgency of slowing greenhouse gas releases.

Given the dangerous levels of CO2 already in the air, the need for a shift from fossil fuels to clean sources can be called — without any hyperbole — an emergency.

As global temperatures rise steadily, with concomitant adverse effects on weather, forests, coral reefs, soil, ice sheets and ecosystems generally, mankind risks pushing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere past a threshold that will ensure irreversible and catastrophic climatic effects and ecological breakdowns.

Humans have a hard time responding to things that they can't see, and CO2 is both invisible and odorless.

Furthermore, reducing carbon pollution requires some high initial costs to build the equipment and infrastructures needed to support clean energy generation. We've designed just about everything around coal and petroleum, after all.

And then there's the politics of the endeavor. Add to the Wall Street almost every major corporate sector in the world and you've got an accurate picture of the anti-green lobby.

So, Durban Platform notwithstanding, get used to more of this: Tar sands oil excavations; offshore deepwater drilling; arctic oil exploration; hydraulic fracturing for gas; and increased energy conflicts globally.

There's no way to put this gently: As we damage the ecosphere, our silly, distracted, near-sighted civilization defines as "normal" what is increasingly, absolutely insane.

• • •

Brian T. Watson is a regular Salem News columnist. Contact him at watson@nii.net.

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