The U.S. delegation, the outsiders, slipped away quietly into the Nairobi drizzle on Friday as the annual U.N. climate conference wrapped up two weeks of talks on combating global warming.
NAIROBI, Kenya — The U.S. delegation, the outsiders, slipped away quietly into the Nairobi drizzle on Friday as the annual U.N. climate conference wrapped up two weeks of talks on combating global warming.
In the coming months, however, the world will hear a lot from Washington about joining the insiders _ the Europeans and other industrial countries committed to reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases. The weight of science, economics and politics is pushing the world's biggest emitter in that direction.
The science will grab headlines in February, when an authoritative U.N. network of 2,000 scientists issues its first detailed update in six years of the state of climate research. It will present "much stronger evidence" that manmade emissions are changing the climate, says chief scientist Rajendra K. Pachauri.
That's not surprising: The atmosphere's accumulation of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, spewed skyward by industry, transportation and agriculture, climbed to record levels again last year.
The economics made news just before the Nairobi conference, when Britain issued a detailed, high-level report making the case that cutting emissions now is much cheaper than suffering extensive global economic damage later from rising seas and other effects of climate change.
Political pressure built in the United States in September when California imposed state-level reductions on greenhouse gases. But the real shift occurred Nov. 7, when voters put the Democrats, largely in favor of mandatory U.S. caps on emissions, back in power in Congress.
They have Republican allies on the issue, including Arizona Sen. John McCain, a prospective 2008 presidential candidate. And opinion polls show the U.S. public rallying around the idea of more forceful action on climate change.
A week after the elections, three new Senate committee chairmen put President Bush on notice that they would push for "caps" legislation. "We urge you to work with us," they said in a letter.
In Nairobi the next day, the U.S. delegation chief was asked in an Associated Press interview about this changed political climate.
"We look forward to an innovative discussion on the most effective approaches," Paula J. Dobriansky replied.
The Kyoto Protocol is one current approach. The 1997 pact requires 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming gases by an average 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
Bush rejected Kyoto in 2001, contending that it would slow the U.S. economy intolerably and that it should have required reductions by poorer but fast-growing nations, such as China and India.
It's too late for the United States to join the Kyoto regime, since U.S. emissions have swelled by 16 percent between 1990 and 2004. But the Kyoto countries hope that, under Bush or the next president, Washington will begin setting firm limits on greenhouse gases, in a separate "Kyoto" that would reassure others that America is in the game.
But what about China, India and others exempted under Kyoto because they didn't cause the greenhouse-warming problem and they need swift growth to lift their people out of poverty?
A procedural decision in Nairobi may have opened the way toward making insiders of more of these outsiders.
The conference decided to launch a review of the workings of the Kyoto Protocol, taking stock of the current science and of what carbon-dioxide cutbacks will be needed. Many hope this review will set the stage for talks, in 2008 or 2009, to broaden the approaches to include "sectoral" targets for developing nations in the post-2012 period.
China, for example, might be held accountable to meet energy-efficiency standards in its power plants _ without committing to blanket, nationwide cutbacks in emissions.
Such issues may come into focus at the 2007 U.N. climate conference in Bali, Indonesia. "Strong leadership will be required at the next climate talks," said the environmental group Friends of the Earth International.
That role may fall to politically conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel, next year's leader of the G-8 industrial nations and an advocate of climate action.
More insiders and strong leadership will be required for decades to come, in fact, if the world's nations are to accomplish what experts say is needed: Emissions cuts of 50 percent or more by 2050, to head off the worst.
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Charles J. Hanley has reported on climate since 1997.
Source: Associated Press
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