This is the final article in the five-part series Beyond Kyoto: A Broader Policy on Climate Change, which examines the history of the Kyoto Protocol and the challenges it has yet to address, in conjunction with the UN climate conference this week.

When the international climate talks in Bali conclude tomorrow, there will have been numerous firsts for the conference: the first Forest Day, the first inclusion of trade and finance ministers in negotiations, Australia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, even a move toward compromise by China, which has historically been staunchly opposed to emissions limits. But what is not markedly different since the 1997 dealings is the U.S.'s position, which if maintained through tomorrow will end the conference divisively--essentially, the U.S., Japan, and a few other countries against all others.

Going into the meetings, the two top U.S. representatives expressed in a press conference their hope for a "Bali road map" to emerge from the meeting, which would set a timetable for future discussions to craft a Kyoto-successor pact by 2009. This road map, they said, would address what have emerged as the four major pillars of any climate agreement:

• Mitigation- Eliminating or reducing carbon emissions, eg. alternative energy sources, better building design, increased efficiency, carbon capture and sequestration
• Adaptation- Helping nations adapt to the effects of climate change, including drought, flooding, food shortages, and migration (see earlier article in this series, "Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation")
• Technology- Encouraging research and development of new technologies, and addressing how these will be equitably shared with developing nations
• Financing- Using financial tools to facilitate all of the above, eg. subsidies and incentives, lowering barriers to international trade, paying countries to conserve forest (see earlier article, "The Role of Deforestation in Climate Change")

National prosperity and emissions limits

However, the rest of the press conference stressed technology and market forces over all else, and the U.S. actions thus far in Bali have been consistent with this narrow emphasis. The delegates spoke against an economy-wide cap and trade system in favor of "flexibility," which has meant opposition to international limits of any kind. Strict limits, they implied, were incompatible with sustained national prosperity; Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality James Connaughton justified this, saying "If you don't have wealthier, advancing societies--these technologies come at a cost, you need to be able to pay for them. And we know from history that in times of global recession or national recession, those are when countries make their lowest investments in natural resource stewardship and environmental progress. And so it's a precondition."

What Chairman Connaughton's comments fail to reflect, though, is that climate change isn't comparable to natural resource stewardship on many terms. Unlike the creation of national parks or investment in species protection, inaction on climate change has the possibility to greatly hurt U.S. businesses and the U.S. economy as a whole (see earlier article, "Increasing Corporate Support of Climate Action"). In fact, since the publication of the Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change, most governments now accept that the global cost of inaction on climate change is even greater than the cost of action. And continuing to think in terms of national economies doesn't work for a problem which threatens all countries and all people. As the UN’s most recent Human Development Report emphasizes, climate change is an environmental and political problem different from any the world has faced before, and as such we must change our ways of thinking.

EU threatens to boycott U.S. meetings

Still, Washington has sustained its opposition to limits, and delegates have refused to agree to a draft of a Bali road map created earlier this week because it included a statement that dangerous warming can be avoided only if industrialized countries reduce emissions to 25 to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2020. U.S. negotiators said such standards were premature, and should be worked out later in discussions, while representatives from other developed nations said targets were necessary to add direction and urgency to future negotiations. Today, the EU has threatened to boycott a U.S.-led climate talk in January if the U.S. doesn't accept a numerical target in this conference's final document. Those talks, called the Major Economies Meeting, were initiated this year and have held only one meeting, in September 2007. Sixteen nations were invited, including Europeans, Japan, China, and India, to discuss an agreement outside the Kyoto framework, whose targets would probably be nonbinding.

The EU's threat to remove itself from only the second meeting of the major economies is a forceful one, especially since these meetings foreground Washington's insistence that it is engaged in international action against climate change. Delegitimizing these meetings by the notable absence of key European countries would be a further blow to the image of the U.S. within climate negotiations.

It's still unclear what form the Bali road map will have when the conference ends tomorrow, though some document will undoubtedly emerge. However, even if U.S. negotiators meet this goal of theirs, it seems the broader promise--greater U.S. cooperation with other nations--will have made very little progress.

RELATED LINKS:

NPR: "China Softens Stance on Emissions at Bali Meeting"

The Associated Press: "Gore: US Blocking Climate Talks Progress"

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

OTHER ARTICLES IN THE SERIES
Beyond Kyoto: A Broader Policy on Climate Change:

Part IV: The Role of Deforestation in Climate Change

Part III: Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation

Part II: Increasing Corporate Support of Climate Action

Part I: The Future of the Kyoto Protocol

Top photo by DavidGardinerGarcia on Flickr