The Long and the Short of It - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 348

which is our unabated cumulative GHG emissions. This is called mitigation . The Kyoto
Protocol was an attempt to organise global mitigation commitments. However, history
will show that even as I write, humankind has not perceived global warming to the point
that it is prepared to work cooperatively to undertake what really needs to be done. No
globally coherent plan is being implemented to meaningfully reduce total global GHG
emissions towards a goal of carbon neutrality over a time frame of at least the next 100
years. Instead, following the virtual abandonment of the Kyoto Protocol, we wait un-
til a meeting scheduled for 2015 to see if a more workable agreement can provide ro-
bust arrangements to achieve the global reduction in GHG emission that is required. In
the meantime, although some countries are clearly trying very hard to reduce their total
GHG emissions, others are just as clearly clouding their inaction with obfuscation.
In the studies undertaken by Jared Diamond, historical societies that collapsed were those
that failed to anticipate or failed to perceive (notice) or failed to act sufficiently to counter-
act the circumstances that led to their end. Why are so many governments not reacting to
the biblical writing on the wall? When we analyse the situation more carefully, it is going
to sound as if I am targeting the United States. This is far from my intent. The United States
and U.S. government agencies have made the largest contributions to understanding cli-
mate science. I could have told the tale equally well from the perspective of any one of the
countries that sits in the upper part of the list of per capita emissions of CO 2 . However, the
United States is still the world's economic powerhouse. A global cooperative plan to ad-
dress climate change is very unlikely to be effective without leadership from Washington,
DC.
Can we expect such leadership? In2011,the House ofRepresentatives voted in favour
of a bill to amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit the administrator of the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) from promulgating any regulation related to or taking into con-
sideration the emission of a GHG to address climate change. It excluded GHGs from the
definition of “air pollutant” for purposes of addressing climate change. This bill passed the
House. If this does not sound incredible, there is more to come. During debate on the bill,