Conference gases

Floods have recently visited large stretches of the world8217;s land mass. Britain, industrialised Britain, has just experienced its worst ever floods in 50 years, as Hampshire and West Sussex all but disappeared under vast sheets of water. Southeast Asia is currently suffering the heaviest rains in over a decade, and the death toll is 169 people at last count. India has just gone through a devastating drought-and-flood cycle and Bangladesh has, as usual, had to face its annual ritual of death by water. Does at least some of this have to do with human activity of the unthinking kind? The answer, it would seem, is yes. Some weeks ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change conclusively proved that the links between climate change and human activity are stronger than ever. In fact, it even projected that global temperatures could increase by anything from 1.5 to 6 degrees centigrade over the next century.

So what is the world doing about it? Well, squabbling would be a good word to describe the action. The must touted Sixth Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention to Climate Change, that ended at The Hague on Saturday after two weeks of negotiations, proved to be a complete fiasco. It was meant to work out ways to make the Kyoto Protocol, agreed by the world community in 1997, functional. Under the Kyoto Protocol, legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gases by an average of 5 per cent of 1990 emission levels by the year 2008-2012 had been arrived at. The recent conference at The Hague, therefore, had the potential of achieving a global consensus in a notoriously controversial but extremely important area. Unfortunately, that opportunity was squandered away, with most of the nations vociferously attempting to ensure that they did as little as possible to tackle the problem. As a grand finale, the world was treated to a great slanging match between the 15-nation European Union and the US overemission reduction targets. The US, which is incidentally responsible for 24 per cent of the global greenhouse gases, refused to undertake measures to set things right domestically, unless developing nations did the same. It also strongly argued for flexibility mechanisms, by which it can meet its targets for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions without actually cutting down on the use of fossil fuel by trading in credits with less polluting countries. The European Union, meanwhile, wanted the US to undertake more stringent domestic measures to curb its emissions.

None of these are new arguments. They had threatened the Kyoto conference three years ago and have all but torpedoed this one. Unfortunately, the world may not have the luxury to indulge in such mind games for much longer. This is a time to negotiate a fair and just international regime to control global warming and display some responsibility towards future generations. If global consensus continues to elude this vital issue, then perhaps the countries of the world should seriously think of investing in a Noah8217;s Ark to cope with the coming deluge. There seems no other way.