Whether you believe recent reports that global climate change is on course for worst-case scenarios, or you believe hacked emails from the University of East Anglia prove it's all a big hoax, one thing is undeniable: international negotiations on climate change have brought us to a critical juncture in world history.
The international community will soon agree to a common path for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, or abandon the idea altogether, return to our respective corners and wait to see what happens.
Following two years of laborious negotiations, world leaders are meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, Dec. 7-18, in an effort to reach final agreement on emissions targets for the year 2020 and funding for poor nations--two obstacles that have thus far proven insurmountable. These elements would be the core of a protocol to take effect in 2012 when the current Kyoto Protocol comes to an end.
The Kyoto Protocol, which was devised as a test period for global greenhouse gas reduction strategies, is already widely considered a failure. This is largely because the United States chose not to participate, thereby undermining the protocol's economic and political effectiveness.
President Obama has pledged to the world that the United States will participate in the next round by cutting its emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020--a modest goal, but possibly enough to appease developing nations like India and China, who want to see leadership from industrialized countries. However, because the U.S. political system does not guarantee legislative support to the head of state, Obama cannot guarantee anything to the world. Having already been burned in this exact manner on the Kyoto Protocol, our global neighbors won't commit to another legally binding protocol unless U.S. climate change legislation is in place. That's why, despite any announcements of "political" or "aspirational" agreements in Copenhagen, no binding legal commitments will be made this year, if at all.
James Inhofe, the U.S. Senate's unapologetic Republican climate change denier, says the "Climategate" email scandal--which purportedly reveals a collusive effort to suppress dissenting views on climate change--puts the final nails in the coffin of U.S. climate change legislation, and he may be right. The House passed a bill last summer that matches Obama's 17 percent pledge. But Senate Democrats this fall struggled to find enough party-line votes to do the same. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he will try to pass legislation in the spring, but his blue-dog colleagues will be even less supportive in a mid-term election year, and now they can blame their reluctance on disingenuous British scientists.
With a split electorate struggling through a deep economic recession, an exhausting media battle over health care, and real battles underway in Afghanistan, it's likely the United States will return to its isolationist habits and deny cooperation to the world.
If this happens, it will kill the United Nations treaty on climate change (also known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC). And it may very well mark the beginning of the end for the United Nations itself, which has a spotty 65-year history of preventing war and promoting human rights.
