Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
negotiations because there are too many voices there. It
would have been far better if my group of
fifteen coun-
tries that included the largest emitters in both the indus-
trialized and the developing nations had come to some
sort of preliminary agreement on general principles.
President Bush started such discussions but I do not think
they got very far before he left of
ce. President Obama is
continuing them, though there seems to be little progress.
I hope we will see some sensible policies and programs
emerge, but time is short. The next meeting on what
comes after Kyoto is scheduled for
. Designing a
system that is in the economic interest of the developing
world as well as the environmental interests of all of the
nations of the world is going to be no easy task.
As of now (early
) I see little progress toward a new
agreement. In the United States there is no sign of any
real action at the national level, though the states continue
to innovate. If there is no national US action, there is no
way that the developing nations are going to agree to
serious actions of their own. After all, the United States
emits
tonnes of greenhouse gases per person while
China and India emit
tonnes, respectively.
Perhaps a different approach might be considered.
Now the focus is on legally binding commitments, but
governments are very reluctant to sign such agreements
when they do not know how to accomplish the agreed
goals. It is much easier to get all to act when each sees a
solution. The Montreal Protocol to phase out the mater-
ial that was destroying the ozone hole worked because a
substitute was found and getting an agreement to phase
out the bad for the better was not dif
and
cult. I have repeat-
edly said in this topic that the industrialized nations have
