The world unites against global warming

What happened

After two weeks of arduous, emotional negotiations, 187 countries, including the U.S., agreed to negotiate a treaty on cutting greenhouse-gas emissions over the next two years. The framework agreement, made at the U.N. climate conference in Bali, Indonesia, commits the countries to producing a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The Bali agreement contains two key concessions to the U.S.: It drops the Europeans’ call for developed countries to make cuts in emissions of at least 25 percent, requiring instead unspecified “deep cuts.” And, unlike Kyoto, it also requires rapidly developing countries such as China and India to take “verifiable steps” to limit their emissions. The treaty is to be signed in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009.

Tensions were high as the deadline for an agreement approached with no movement from the main holdouts, China and the U.S. The U.S. delegation was frequently booed. At one point, Chinese delegates launched a tirade at conference chairman Yvo de Boer of the Netherlands, whom they accused of trying to exclude them from a meeting. De Boer broke down in tears and had to be escorted from the podium. The final agreement was reached only after an unscheduled extra day of talks, during which the U.S. won its concessions and agreed to the two-year framework.

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What the editorials said

How disappointing, said The New York Times. If the U.S. had provided “the leadership the world needs,” the Bali conference “could have brought important progress on climate change.” Instead, the obstructionist Bush administration delegates did little but agree to further talks—and it took “enormous effort” to pry even that tiny concession out of them.

Still, the U.S. has “come a long way in a short space of time,” said the Financial Times. As the only developed nation that never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the U.S. was expected to trash this deal, too. Yet at Bali, it showed it had “accepted that scientific evidence for global warming is unequivocal.” Agreeing to start talks on a new treaty may not sound that impressive, “given the urgency” of the planetary crisis. But the Bali framework gives negotiators plenty of leeway; when a new U.S. president comes on board, in 2009, there will still be time to mandate deep cuts in emissions.

The U.S. has nothing to apologize for, said National Review. Even without being bound by Kyoto, the U.S. has already done more than nearly any other industrialized nation to limit its greenhouse-gas emissions. Yet this is the country that gets booed? “If hypocrisy were a clean energy source, the U.N. could solve the problem of climate change instantly.”

What the columnists said

The world expects more from the U.S., said Thomas Friedman in The New York Times, and it is right to do so. The fact is, without bold American action, we’re left with the sort of uninspiring, “incrementalist” plan that emerged in Bali, which calls on 187 countries to somehow forge a global regime for reducing carbon emissions. Good luck with that. Having a meaningful impact on global warming requires “massive innovation in clean power”—the sort of innovation that America, at its best, is capable of. Maybe some day.

In truth, “meaningful U.S. action on climate change may be years away,” said Joe Nation in the San Francisco Chronicle. So if Americans are to do their share, it’s up to grass-roots “climate junkies” to take the lead. That’s already happening. California has mandated a 25 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020. More than 700 U.S. cities have voluntarily signed up to meet similar targets. “This bottom-up approach is already creating a de facto U.S. climate change policy.”

What next?

Negotiators will meet at least four times next year to start hammering out details of what emissions cuts and technology transfers will be mandated in the 2009 Copenhagen treaty. Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Senate next month is expected to take up the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which would impose a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. The bill would also create a “cap-and-trade” system under which manufacturers and energy companies could buy and trade allowances for the right to pollute. If enacted, the act would cut U.S. emissions by 70 percent by 2050.