Progress Toward Addressing Climate Change Fails Again

Are we really committed to combating climate change? We talk a great game. We seem to recognize that something must be done. But when it comes right down to it, there is very little action.

Industrialized and developing countries get together periodically to discuss the problem and toss around ideas on how to deal with it, but in the end any solution is so watered down that it becomes ineffective.

Money is made available for developing countries, through a 2% levy on carbon trading under the UN Clean Development Mechanism, but everyone agrees that the amount raised ($80 million) is far below what is needed to build the necessary flood defenses, to develop much needed drought-resistant crops, and to produce storm warnings. This fund represents the human side of climate change, something that tends to be lost when discussing how much pollution should be cut back by industrialized nations.

The biggest polluters are of course industrialized nations, such as China, India, America, and Japan, who raise the loudest objections to pay more into the fund and consistently fail to reach agreements to make deeper emissions cuts. Understandably, developing nations are disappointed at their position and stubbornness. Everyone is paving a road of good intentions, but good intentions never get anything done.

U.N. projections are that poor nations will need tens of billions of dollars a year by 2030 to cope with climate change. Poland spent 24 million euros ($31.84 million) just to host the Dec. 1-12 conference and the only concrete result was to streamline access by developing nations to the fund while rich nations secured controls to ensure cash was properly spent.

This summit represented the halfway point between Bali in 2007 and Copenhagen in 2009. It was scheduled to reach an agreement to expand the Kyoto Protocol committing industrialized countries to make deeper emission cuts in the short-term and to produce a longer-term agreement encompassing all countries. No discernable progress was made.

EU leaders in Brussels agreed a pact on Friday to cut greenhouse gases by 20% below 1990 levels by 2020 -- after making costly concessions to east European countries. Is this going to be another disappointment of more talk and less action?

Cutting greenhouse gas emissions was never expected to be cheap or easy. It requires drastic changes in lifestyles for all of us, rich and poor alike. Everyone knew this before agreeing to get together to create an action plan to overcome our past mistakes. Time passes, pollution levels remain unaltered. The time has come to actually commit to a plan. Industrialized nations, being the biggest polluters should bear the largest financial burden to ease the rest of world of their disproportionate suffering.

This could be our last best chance to make a difference. Let’s make it effective.