By Paul Homewood

  Robin Guenier has a very informative essay on Harmless Sky,  about the history of international climate negotiations:

How developing countries took control of climate negotiations and what that means for emission reduction.

The main reason why, despite countless scientific warnings about dangerous consequences, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to increase is rarely mentioned. Yet it’s been obvious for several years – at least to anyone willing to see it. It’s this: most countries outside Western Europe, North America and Australasia are either unconcerned about the impact of GHGs on the climate or don’t regard the issue as a priority, focusing instead for example on economic growth. Yet these countries, comprising 84 percent of humanity, are today the source of 75 percent of emissions.^[1] Therefore, unless they change their policies radically – and there’s little evidence of their so doing – there’s no realistic prospect of the implementation of the urgent and substantial cuts in GHG emissions called for by many Western scientists.

To understand how this has happened, I believe it’s useful to review the history of environmental negotiation by referring in particular to five UN-sponsored conferences: Stockholm in 1972, Rio in 1992, Kyoto in 1997, Copenhagen in 2009 and Paris in 2015.

 The full article can be read here.

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July 6, 2020 at 04:30AM