DURBAN, South Africa (AP) – A U.N. climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement Sunday on a complex and far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change for the coming decades.

Currently, only industrial countries have legally binding emissions targets under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Those commitments expire next year, but they will be extended for another five years under the accord adopted Sunday — a key demand by developing countries seeking to preserve the only existing treaty regulating carbon emissions.

Yes, it’s good news that the world’s nations have agreed to a deal on greenhouse gas emissions. But the outcome of the Durban Conference is hardly cause for exuberance. Scientific evidence of the threat posed by global climate change is mounting faster than the glaciers are melting, and the overwhelming consensus is that humanity — not just America, China and India, but all of us, everywhere — has less than five years to act decisively before environmental tipping points are passed, propelling us into a far less friendly future.

The Durban agreement will come into effect at the beginning of the next decade — several years too late. Climatologists have been telling us for decades about the dangers of a runaway greenhouse effect; we cannot say we weren’t warned. If we fail to act dramatically and quickly, the old cliche, “hindsight is always 2020” will acquire a new and grimmer meaning.

Warren Senders

The main aim of the United Nations Climate Change Conference at Durban, which began on November 28 and finishes on December 9, is to produce an agreement about target emissions levels by developed countries and longer-term targets from developing countries. But, with sudden switches in energy policies, environmental regulations, increasing financial fragility and accidents such as Fukushima, national governments are increasingly aware how policy in these areas impacts on everyone’s lives as well as the economy.

Decision-makers have a great responsibility and a very difficult task to pursue long-term objectives at the same time as short-term solutions, especially when it comes to climate change. The key question is how best to do this and whether this involve only national, regional and city-level policies, or are binding global agreements also necessary?
Governments have become more cautious about signing up to new long-lasting and tightly-defined transnational agreements that might affect their flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. Moreover, a global deal on climate change may be less effective than regional, national and city level initiatives because global treaties are sometimes perceived as insensitive to the different technologies and time scales for emission reduction in varying countries.

Climate change is a planetary threat which manifests in unpredictable ways in different regions and localities. As such, it makes sense that efforts to reduce the impact of a runaway greenhouse effect should take different forms depending on the economic and environmental requirements of different areas. Approaches to the problem must operate at multiple levels of scale, from the individual to the global.

It is up to ordinary men and women to maintain pressure on their politicians to bring about the needed policy changes — but an engaged citizenry’s efforts may still be fruitless if their governments are dominated by interests which rank profits above people. Humanity’s struggle against climate change is gravely hindered by the political and economic influence of multinational corporations which are reluctant to relinquish even a scintilla of their revenue stream — even to ensure the long-term survival of their customers. Extinction is bad for business.

Warren Senders

December 2: Talks at the climate change conference have predictably bogged down over funding and over the insistence of the first world countries that emerging economies like India and China also commit to legally binding and higher reduction of carbon emission.

Government delegates from 194 countries have gathered in Durban to agree to the next steps to combat climate change. The talks have been bogged down by disagreements on the kind of actions that need to be taken by developed and developing nations.

So the United States and its allies demand that developing nations agree to extensive carbon reduction protocols before they’ll start reducing their own? It is amusing to speculate as to what would happen if India or China called their bluff and pre-emptively proposed drastic cuts in greenhouse emissions.

Is anyone gullible enough to believe that the powers pulling America’s political strings would actually agree to anything that might have the slightest negative impact on their quarterly profit margins? Were India to announce its own stringent emissions regime, there can be no doubt that the developed world’s diplomats would (after a few hasty telephone calls) discover that hitherto unrevealed criteria needed to be met before the planet’s biggest polluters would sign even the most toothless and ineffectual carbon treaty.

As the temperatures rise, it is indisputable: multinational corporations are blocking the environmental initiatives upon which our collective survival may well depend.

Warren Senders