RadioActive 7/29/10

Today we look at the status of international climate talks in between the Copenhagen and Cancun meetings of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

It has only been in the past couple of years that the acceptance of climate changes existence has entered mainstream vernacular in the United States. The scientific community, however, has long pointed to this looming global  problem and its ramifications.  The Intergovernmental panel on climate change reaffirmed in their 2007 4th Assessment Report, “Most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in green house gas concentrations… Discernable human influences now extend to other aspects of climate , including ocean warming, continental average temperatures, temperature extremes and wind patterns.”  Governmental policy and public pressure over the past decades, however, has not resulted in comprehensive actionable plans to restructure global systems to impact emissions.

The Climate Bill, which just died in Congress, and which claimed to take aim at climate change, still would have promoted nuclear power, more off shore drilling, and “clean coal”, which requires the yet untested injecting of carbon dioxide into the earth. It also emphasized carbon trading and carbon offsets. The offshore drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico helped de-popularize the bill, which still appeared to cater to big energy companies, re-advertising themselves as “greener” companies.

At the international level, countries have been moving to discuss possible solutions through the United nations Framework on Climate Change. The last, so called, Conference of Parties, or COP, meeting was held in Copenhagen this past December. COP 16 is scheduled this fall in Cancun, Mexico.