newsroom

TODAY Tuesday 9 September 1997 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Climate Change Changes

This morning's New York Times features an instructive and judicious report by William K. Stevens entitled "Experts on Climate Change Ponder: How Urgent Is It?." The answer: pretty urgent, probably.

In a sense, the most important thing about the article is its prominence, occupying two-thirds of the first page of the Science Times section and one-half of the second. There are bold, helpful icons for the text-wary, with compressed messages: temperatures are rising; sea levels are rising; there will be more rain and more storms, especially winter storms. The overall, implicit message is the key, though: The New York Times and the sober, earnest, but bottom-line-conscious class of people who run it and whose good opinion it most covets believe that the time has come to tackle this climate issue maturely.

This is not to say that the text of Mr. Stevens was pre-determined in some board room, or that its careful, on-the-one-hand tone reflects any reportorial skittishness. The very strength of the article derives from its mission: to summarize for people not obsessed with the topic the key points of debate about the science of climate change and the appropriate public policy responses which that science should provoke. It also symbolizes a larger, even global, momentum that is building for "something" to come out of the big international climate meeting in Kyoto this December.

The Times article is one of the more prominent recent signs that the establishments of the industrial world are groping for some kind of Grand Compromise. The Clinton Administration tells American newspapers that climate change is for real but tells Tony Blair and the European Union that no way will the US mandate greenhouse gas reductions before 2010. The Canadians (lots of oil) and the Australians (lots of coal) are signaling that their reputations as well-behaved internationalists won't prevent them from fighting against tough new emission ceilings. The Japanese agree with the Americans that the European proposals are too radical and agree with the Germans that explicit targets must be set by somebody other than the White House. The Chinese and Indians and Indonesians and Brazilians and Nigerians are holding their cards for the moment, united only on the proposition that rich countries must a) go first; and b) help pay any bills. They know that the American Senate won't ratify a treaty that doesn't oblige them as it obliges the North, but they're not about to concede too much too soon.

Commercial interests are making their own accommodations. There is still a huge gap between the green wings of natural gas companies and the diehards of the coal industry, but you can read between the lines of the frequent Mobil ads to see that the oil companies (who are fast buying out the natural gas companies anyway) will probably sign on to some kind of "reasonable" compromise. The editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal may thunder about the lack of scientific credibility behind global warming theories, but the news pages tell stories of businesses having to cope with aberrant weather patterns (there were two separate stories about El Nin~o in yesterday's edition). The momentum of respectability is moving in the direction of agreeing on "something" in Kyoto.

Alas, the something may not be much. As this morning's Stevens article makes clear, none of the major plans for reducing emissions will stop the process of climate change; even the most stringent proposal with any chance at Kyoto will only ameliorate it somewhat. And it looks now as if the major players are lining up behind an agreement that will impose ceilings on emissions, but relatively high ceilings, to take effect mainly in the middle-to-distant future. With luck, it appears, the nations of the world may negotiate a treaty whose prime achievement will be the mere fact that it was agreed to. The heavy lifting will be borne by the next generation.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE:

New edition of The Grove -- our peerless newsletter. Subscribe today (it's free) and catch up with the doings of Donella Meadows and compatriots as they brave the upper reaches of the perilous Connecticut River to establish a co-housing experiment amongst the fierce dairy farmers and antique hunters of east central Vermont.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

9/08: More or Less Voluntary Simplicity
9/05: Man Bites Cougar
9/04: Logging
9/03: Fishing
9/02: Our Biodiversity Problems
8/29: Babies
8/28: MegaSheep and SuperCow
8/27: East Asia / Southeast Asia
8/26: No Drama on the Rhine
8/25: The End of Nature Again

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.