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In-Depth Information
governmental bodies on notice. The Vienna-Montreal process— UNEP's
explicit model for a treaty on climate change— gave energy-industry lob-
byists and energy-hungry governments a rough outline of what to expect
when it came to global warming. Opponents of regulation of greenhouse
gases consequently were able to carve out their own niches alongside envi-
ronmental NGOs in the negotiation process, which tipped the strategic
playing field on climate change in their favor. Having watched Tolba and
his NGO supporters capitalize on the momentum generated through the
consensus process on ozone, leaders from energy-dependent and energy-
producing industries joined the Reagan and Bush administrations to
undercut talks on climate change every step of the way, both scientifically
and politically. Thus, while the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Pro-
tocol helped put atmospheric change on the international political agenda,
the very existence of these agreements upped the political ante on the cli-
mate problem. “Politics caught up with ozone,” noted one of Tolba's key
advisors during the effort to create a climate change treaty in the late 1980s,
but “climate was born in politics.”
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mechanisms of knoWledge
Nothing reflected the political limitations of the Vienna-Montreal process
as a model for climate change more clearly than the relationship between
science and policy that emerged during negotiations over the first inter-
national treaty on climate change, the U.N. Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC). As with ozone, developing an international
legal regime for climate change revolved around the production and vali-
dation of scientific knowledge. Initially, scientists sought consensus on
climate change through processes of scientific assessment similar to those
that had proved effective for ozone and acid rain. As scientists, environ-
mental NGOs, and American and U.N. environmental agencies soon
recognized, however, the form of independent scientific consensus that
fostered political action on ozone proved insufficient for international
regulation of CO
2
and other greenhouse gases. The governments of the
United States, the Soviet Union, and Saudi Arabia, among others, as well
as corporations like Exxon and Shell, understood that international scien-
tific consensus on climate change presaged international political action,
and they insisted on maintaining some control not just over the political
