Global Warming & Climate Change (Doha Talks, 2012)

Updated: Dec. 2, 2012

Source for Article : http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html#

Global warming has become perhaps the most complicated issue facing world leaders. Warnings from the scientific community are becoming louder, as an increasing body of science points to rising dangers from the ongoing buildup of human-related greenhouse gases — produced mainly by the burning of fossil fuels and forests.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide were at a record high in 2011 and were likely to take a similar jump in 2012, scientists reported in early December 2012 — the latest indication that efforts to limit such emissions are failing.

Over all, global emissions jumped 3 percent in 2011 and are expected to jump another 2.6 percent in 2012, researchers reported.

The new figures show that emissions are falling, slowly, in some of the most advanced countries, including the United States. That apparently reflects a combination of economic weakness, the transfer of some manufacturing to developing countries and conscious efforts to limit emissions, like the renewable power targets that many American states have set. The boom in the natural gas supply from hydraulic fracturing is also a factor, since natural gas is supplanting coal at many power stations, leading to lower emissions.
But the decline of emissions in the developed countries is more than matched by continued growth in developing countries like China and India, the new figures show. Coal, the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is growing fastest, with coal-related emissions leaping more than 5 percent in 2011, compared with the previous year.

Emissions continue to grow so rapidly that an international goal of limiting the ultimate warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees, established three years ago, is on the verge of becoming unattainable, said researchers affiliated with the Global Carbon Project, a network of scientists that tracks emissions.

Yet nations around the world, despite a formal treaty pledging to limit warming — and 20 years of negotiations aimed at putting it into effect — have shown little appetite for the kinds of controls required to accomplish that goal.

For almost two decades, the United Nations has sponsored annual global talks, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international treaty signed nearly 200 countries to cooperatively discuss global climate change and its impact. The conferences operate on the principle of consensus, meaning that any of the participating nations can hold up an agreement.

The conflicts and controversies discussed are monotonously familiar: the differing obligations of industrialized and developing nations, the question of who will pay to help poor nations adapt, the urgency of protecting tropical forests and the need to rapidly develop and deploy clean energy technology.

At the 2012 meeting in Doha, Qatar, the agenda is modest, with no new emissions targets and little progress expected on a protocol that is supposed to be concluded in 2015 and take effect in 2020.

Previous sessions held in Durban, South Africa, in 2011; Cancún, Mexico, in 2010; and Copenhagen in 2009 produced much chaos and last-minute drama, but many environmental advocates were disillusioned by what they saw as meager progress.

Nevertheless, negotiators at the sessions achieved a number of significant steps, including pledges by most major countries to reduce their emissions of climate-altering gases, a promise by rich nations to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 to help more vulnerable states adapt to climate change, a system for verifying emissions cuts and programs to help slow deforestation.

The 2012 Doha Round
Delegates gathered in Doha, Qatar, in late November 2012 for a two-week session. As it began, many of them expressed hope that they would be able to firm up these earlier promises and create the concrete means to fulfill them.

The week before the Doha meeting, the U.N. Environment Program said the world was unlikely to meet the United Nations’ stated goal of keeping global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit). The group said the current pledges were too weak and the rise in heat-trapping emissions was so fast that the world risked falling further behind without swift and ambitious new action.

To many observers, the success of the talks would hinge on the approach of the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters and most vibrant economies, the United States and China.

China has led the world in adoption of low-carbon energy sources, but also consumes growing quantities of dirty-burning coal every year. Its new leadership has given few signals on how it intends to approach the U.N. climate process, but previous Chinese leaders have resisted any international regime that they perceive as limiting China’s economic growth.

As for the United States, environmentalists said they that the re-elected Obama administration would commit to a new international regime with a renewed strategy and a commitment to take domestic action consistent with its international pledges and its support of the two degree target.

A Non-Issue in Presidential Campaign
During the 2012 presidential campaign, neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney, his Republican challenger, spoke much about climate change, despite the fact that both men agree that the world is warming and that humans are at least partly to blame. None of the moderators of the four general-election debates asked about climate change, nor did any of the candidates broach the topic.

Throughout the campaign, Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney have seemed most intent on trying to outdo each other as lovers of coal, oil and natural gas — the very fuels most responsible for rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Mr. Obama has supported broad climate change legislation, financed extensive clean energy projects and pushed new regulations to reduce global warming emissions from cars and power plants. But neither he nor Mr. Romney laid out during the campaign a legislative or regulatory program to address the fundamental questions arising from one of the most vexing economic, environmental, political and humanitarian issues to face the planet.

Background
Scientists learned long ago that the earth’s climate has powerfully shaped the history of the human species — biologically, culturally and geographically. But only in the last few decades has research revealed that humans can be a powerful influence on the climate, as well.