Although having been somewhat overshadowed by a bitter healthcare debate in the U.S., climate change affairs remain at the forefront of the international political scheme. Last December, Denmark hosted the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, where politicians from across the globe met to discuss possible agreements to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Many climate change scientists were disappointed with the results of the conference, mainly due to the fact that the participating countries failed to produce any sort of legally binding treaty. For the most part, negotiations at Copenhagen were not exactly brimming with efforts towards international cooperation. In particular, Chinese delegates made it clear that their country has no intention of allowing foreign officials to regulate its greenhouse gas emissions, much to the dismay of U.S.
Strategies for dealing with newly industrialized nations such as China, which has overtaken the U.S. as the world’s leading producer of CO2 emissions, have become a major concern for politicians from the Western world. In February of 2010, India announced that it will establish its own domestic panel to investigate the effects of climate change, which some saw as a slap in the face to the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Ironically, the IPCC is headed by India’s own leading climate change scientist, Rajendra Kumar Pachauri. The Indian government indicated that it had concerns over false information from the IPCC’s 2007 report, which erroneously claimed that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by the year 2035. In reality, leading climate change investigations indicate that the glaciers will not fully melt for at least another 300 years.
University of Michigan Professor Henry Pollack, a current advisor to the IPCC, believes India’s concerns over the reliability of IPCC information are unfounded. “The error about the Himalayan glaciers is five lines long in a volume that’s a thousand pages long which is one of three volumes each a thousand pages,” says Pollack. “To have an error in that volume of material does not surprise me at all.” Furthermore, Pollack asserts that the error “hardly changes any of the principle conclusions” involved in the 2007 report. “Climate science is an entity like a web hammock,” says Pollack. “If you cut one of the strands, the structure doesn’t immediately unravel; there are a zillion other strands of support for it.” Moreover, Pollack downplayed the political significance of India’s decision, claiming that the reason for the creation of the new panel probably has more to do with coordinating climate change policies within India itself than slighting the IPCC.
The U.S. also recently announced that it plans to develop a new climate change agency under the direction of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). However, the move has not been perceived as being in any way a response to questions over IPCC reliability. The action is one of several taken by the Obama administration to combat climate change despite a lack of assistance from the legislative branch. Although an emissions regulating cap-and-trade bill was passed in the House last summer, the same legislature has made little progress in the Senate. U-M Professor Barry Rabe, an expert on North American climate change policy, does not believe this sort of legislation has much hope of being signed into law. “I think that the chances are very minimal that any kind of a far reaching climate bill will be passed,” says Rabe. He did hint at the possibility of “a more modest bill,” and concluded that “we’re likely to see a major focus on renewable energy and energy activities that relate to economic development.”
Despite the difficulties involved, some climate change activists within the U.S., including a number of University students, are still hopeful that something will be done in response to growing scientific concerns over the effects of global warming. Chris Detjen, a 2008 U-M graduate who went to Copenhagen last December, is “optimistic” when it comes the chances of Congress passing some sort of climate change legislature in the spring of 2010. “This idea that climate change is a partisan issue can only continue for so long,” says Detjen. He describes global warming as “a fundamental moral problem” that needs to be addressed before it is too late.
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