Global Warming # 5

August 30, 2008

America finally blinked!

In a dramatic finish to a U.N. climate conference, world leaders adopted a breakthrough plan Saturday to broker a new pact by 2009 to battle global warming, after the United States backed down in a dispute with developing nations and Europe. Undersecretary of State, Paula Dobriansky reversed herself, allowing the adoption of the so-called Bali Roadmap. Is Bush softening?

Is a NEW EARTH possible, or at least a reinvigorated one?

The agreement, by consensus among some 190 nations, was hailed as a turning point in the worlds struggle to come to grips with rising global temperatures, which scientists say will lead to widespread drought, floods, higher sea levels and worsening storms. From now, the United Nations will embark on at least two years of talks to fashion a more effective and widely accepted successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The process could determine for years to come how well the world will cut emissions of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

This is a real breakthrough, a real opportunity for the international community to successfully fight climate change, said U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer. Parties have recognized the urgency of action on climate change.

Al Gore had been berating the U.S. for holding out and he savaged the US government’s “obstructing” attitude and urged delegates at the UN conference on climate change to ignore Washington if necessary to pursue the “moral imperative” of a new global regime. “My country is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali,” the former US vice-president told 2,000 of the 12,000 people attending the conference on Thursday. “[But] over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now.”

The U.N. climate change conference in Bali was filled with emotion and cliff-hanging anticipation on Saturday, an extra day added because of a failure to reach agreement during the scheduled sessions, but, the final result was a global warming pact that provides for negotiating rounds to conclude in 2009.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the pact a good beginning. This is just a beginning and not an ending, Ban said. Well have to engage in many complex, difficult and long negotiations.

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