Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Richard Benedick, who negotiated the Montreal Protocol (the international treaty that
phased out the use of certain ozone-depleting substances) on behalf of the United States,
warned that progress in limiting GHG emissions would be slow. Whereas the Montreal
Protocol was dramatically successful in preventing further ozone depletion, one of the
biggest environmental concerns of the 1980s, this was a far easier problem to solve
than man-made global warming. The global ban on the most aggressive ozone-depleting
substances (mostly chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, gases used in aerosols and refrigerators)
affected only a few industries, which quickly came up with less harmful replacements. By
contrast, almost every human activity currently involves the consumption of energy, and
the vast majority of our energy comes from carbon.
AsBenedickpredicted,notonlyhavewefailedtoreducecarbondioxideemissionssince
Rio;wehaveincreasedthepaceofemission.Humanspumped22.7billiontonnesofcarbon
This is not as bad news as it may at first seem. The world economy has been transformed
since 1990, as new economic giants, such as China, India and Brazil, have emerged. To
reflect the differences between the old and the new economic powers, the Kyoto treaty
introduced the concept of 'common but differentiated responsibilities'. This means that
wealthier countries, which have historically been responsible forthe largest share ofcarbon
dioxide emissions, should bear a greater responsibility for reducing their emissions. These
countriesasagroupareontracktoexceedtheKyotogoalwithanoverallreductionof7per
cent, but this is largely attributable to the demise of the Soviet Union and the more recent
financial crisis (Tollefson et al.
2012
).
The Rio Summit took place just two years after the end of the Cold War. It was a time
of great optimism, tinged perhaps with a certain naïveté, since no precedent yet existed
for truly global action towards a common long-term goal. On balance, the climate treaties
and structures that emerged from the Rio Summit, though not a dramatic success, have
achieved some important results. They encouraged investment in climate science, raised
globalawarenessofclimatechange,andspurredgovernmentstotakethefirststepstowards
dealing with specific problems, such as desertification, sustainable agriculture and tropical
deforestation, and to consider innovative solutions, such as carbon markets and transfers -
of money and technology - to poor countries.
Two decades after Rio, the problem is more acute and the solution as elusive as ever.
What progress there is, is slow and difficult to measure. In the words of David Victor,
director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the University of
California, San Diego, “Plausibly we are a little better off than if we didn't have all of this
