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In-Depth Information
limit sea-level rise to between 20 and 50 millimeters per decade and global
mean temperature rise to 0.1ºC per decade. They stated flatly that limiting
global warming “could only be accomplished with significant reductions
in fossil fuel use,” and they weighed the costs of these reductions against
the potential costs of doing nothing.
33
Most forcefully, they emphasized
the immediate need for international regulatory mechanisms to limit
greenhouse gas emissions, particularly for “an agreement on a law of the
atmosphere as a global commons” or “a convention along the lines for that
developed for ozone.”
34
Bolin and the AGGG brought their activist momentum into the 1988
World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere, held in Toronto, Can-
ada, a mixed scientific and political meeting sponsored by former Cana-
dian Meteorological Service head Howard Ferguson that dealt with both
climate change and ozone depletion.
35
As they had in Villach and Bel-
lagio, the scientists involved in the Toronto conference again emphasized
the need for specific targets derived from past records of environmental
change, and again they called for an international legal framework in
which to secure these environmental goals. A group of energy experts at
the Toronto conference called for a 20 percent reduction of global CO
2
emissions from 1988 levels by 2005— a quantitative stance that the confer-
ence ultimately adopted.
36
For Bolin and the panoply of scientific and environmental NGOs pres-
ent in Toronto, the Villach conference in 1985 had offered an authoritative
consensus on the science of climate that could support the bold targets then
presented at Villach and Bellagio in 1987 and Toronto in 1988.
37
Mustafa
Tolba and his U.N. colleagues agreed, and with good reason. Participants
at the 1985 Villach conference had come from universities and scientific
organizations in twenty-nine countries, in both the developed and devel-
oping worlds, and their conclusions had reflected the state of the art in
climate science. The resulting report expressed plenty of uncertainties, but
then so had reports on ozone depletion in the fact-finding endeavors lead-
ing up to the 1985 Vienna Convention. By 1987, Tolba had already begun
planning an international convention for climate change— modeled after
the ozone convention— and he used the 1985 Villach conference as his sci-
entific support.
38
NGOs like the AGGG and U.N. agencies like UNEP had
little chance of implementing aggressive policies on energy and emissions
without government backing, but scientists and some U.N. leaders thought
