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Non-Tech : Climate Change, Global Warming, Weather Derivatives, Investi

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From: Sam Citron	6/8/2007 4:16:09 PM
	of 442

A big step forward on climate change [FT Opinion] Published: June 8 2007 19:09 \| Last updated: June 8 2007 19:09 Angela Merkel has good reason to be pleased with the outcome of the meeting of the Group of Eight leading countries she chaired this week. Her reputation as an effective conciliator and a determined negotiator has gained in lustre. Under her guidance, the G8 summit marks a turning point on tackling climate change. Whether George W. Bush meant what he signed is unclear. But this meeting marks the end of the beginning of the global debate. The US is now at last engaged. The communiqué’s salient point is that the G8 agreed to begin talks this year on a successor to the Kyoto treaty, due to expire in 2012. Any such successor will be negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations. It will also surely have objectives for emissions of greenhouse gases, along with measures to achieve them. In both respects this marks a transformation for US policy. Mr Bush has abandoned the positions on which his administration stood: Kyoto is buried and forgotten; and man-made climate change is a myth or, if no myth, requires no global limits on emissions. Now we discover that climate change is not a myth, after all; limits are indeed to be on the table; and a successor to Kyoto is to be negotiated. This truly is a Damascene conversion. It is right to be suspicious. Mr Bush may not mean what he has said. But that itself tells us something extremely important. If even this administration feels it needs to become engaged in global negotiations, it must believe that the domestic mood has shifted massively. If so, a bipartisan consensus in the US is now quite plausible. Such a shift by the US is a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition for progress towards an effective global regime for mitigating climate change. It will force the Europeans and Japanese to negotiate seriously. It will also make it far more difficult for the Chinese, Indians and other significant emerging countries to stand on the sidelines. Needless to say, this agreement is just the very beginning. Agreement on an effective and workable regime is going to prove very hard indeed. There are many technical difficulties to overcome. Political obstacles to effective policies will prove huge, as well. Particularly fraught will be discussions over the distribution of the costs of mitigation among countries that are at very different levels of development and have very different degrees of responsibility for the emissions that created the current problem. It is right then to be sceptical over the sincerity of the US conversion, over the commitment of the world’s governments to needed policies and so over the world’s ability to do something effective. Experience hitherto fully justifies that scepticism. But scepticism can be taken too far. The G8 summit has opened the door to negotiations. That is itself a big step. The world’s leaders must now pass through it.

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