Dec. 04--Our planet's health is endangered by climate change. Temperatures are rising. But we also see a slight decline in hot air emanating from world leaders.
That first measurement is scientific (NASA says the planet's at its hottest since record-keeping began in 1880). The second is an impression from the UN global warming conference in Paris: The 150-plus nations attending are fighting less about who is responsible for protecting the environment.
Does that get us anywhere? We'll know in time, but it's a sign of progress that leaders no longer spout off about how global warming is strictly someone else's problem. That's true for leaders of the industrialized nations, which have been polluting the longest. For the developing nations like China, where the air (cough, cough) keeps worsening. And it's true for the vulnerable states like tiny Kiribati, which plans to evacuate everyone to Fiji (no, seriously) if the Pacific Ocean overwhelms them.
The negotiations, which continue for another week, are centering on what each country is willing to do to clean the atmosphere we share. Since most countries submitted their pollution reduction plans in advance, many of the conversations in Paris are about money. The U.S., Europe and other wealthy nations have pledged $100 billion annually starting in 2020 in government assistance, private donations and investment to help poorer countries become greener. But there's a lot of fuzziness over who will provide the investment and how recipient countries will spend it.
That leaves room for the conference to fail, but the outlook for international cooperation over the long haul is improving. The biggest previous effort -- hatched at the 1997 Kyoto global warming conference -- collapsed because of the defiance of developing countries. They said they weren't responsible for centuries of belching factories and wouldn't be held back from catching up economically. The U.S. Senate declined to take up that flawed treaty while the smokestacks of Beijing and New Delhi continued to spew.
This time, conference leaders are taking an easier path. Targets set by each country for reducing the greenhouse gases that cause global warming will be voluntary, not legally binding commitments. But it looks like every country will sign on.
President Barack Obama put the U.S. chips on the table last year: a cut in emissions of up to 28 percent from 2005 levels, by reducing carbon pollutants from power plants and vehicle tailpipes. That U.S. pledge isn't fully supported in Congress. Moving to undercut Obama's message in Paris, House Republicans engineered passage this week of two resolutions, also passed in the Senate, that would block the EPA's carbon dioxide reductions for power plants. Obama will veto the legislation, which is sure to resurface as a presidential campaign issue.
The biggest change since Kyoto is China's participation. Last year, President Xi Jinping committed for the first time to capping Chinese emissions. The time frame's a long one (a cap before 2030), which weakens the significance, but the fight against global warming has to be global to be credible. It's not hard to see why China came around: The country's skies are brown with soot. On the first day of the Paris conference, the air quality in Beijing was so bad it was literally off the charts. But China's also burning more coal than last year, showing how hard it is to break the cycle.
India, another major polluter, also presents a challenge. Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Paris having made minimal promises to increase India's use of renewable fuels like solar power, limit the use of hydrofluorocarbons and cut the "intensity" of its greenhouse gas emissions relative to GDP. In other words, India, a country where 300 million people still don't have electricity, will keep burning coal with abandon until the lights go on everywhere.
Conference negotiators will try to coax a bigger commitment from Modi, and the place that is most likely to happen is over the financial bargaining table. That's why Bill Gates was in Paris to unveil an international plan, backed by the U.S. and India, to boost investment in clean-energy research. The more money India sees, the more likely it is to increase its commitment to fight climate change.
The threat from global warming is extreme: melting ice, rising seas, distorted weather patterns. The dangers will unfold over a long period of time: more droughts and famines, animal and plant species at risk. Pledges made in Paris might get headlines, but the conference will matter only if leaders act with more urgency after they get home.
