For all this talk, still we head steadfastly for catastrophe

This week’s summit on climate change will achieve nothing if rich countries don’t finally show some leadership

If talking could cut greenhouse gas emissions, then this would be a good week for international action on climate change. It opened with more than 80 speeches from governments at a special session on the issue at the UN, and will close with a two-day “summit” in the White House bringing together all the world’s major emitters. The bad news is that we are still heading steadfastly in the direction of an avoidable climate catastrophe.
The special session was a bold effort by the secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, to instill urgency into climate negotiations. His aim: to prepare the ground for an international treaty with real, enforceable limits on greenhouse gas emissions. That means a more ambitious, and inclusive, successor to the Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012. Negotiations begin in earnest in December at a summit in Bali – or they might if governments can bring themselves to stop dithering and start acting.

It’s hard to exaggerate the importance of Bali. There is still a window of opportunity for avoiding the worst effects of climate change – but that window is closing. Most governments broadly accept the need to restrict average temperature increases to less than 2C above pre-industrial levels. Business-as-usual will take us over twice that level by the end of the century, so every year of delay will make it more difficult to achieve the target.

Climate change threatens to cause unprecedented reversals in human progress in our lifetime. Increased exposure to droughts, floods, storms and climatic uncertainties will reinforce the poverty trap affecting millions of the world’s most vulnerable people. Future generations will have to live with potentially catastrophic ecological risks.

The Guardian (London)