Climate of hope.

• Author: Flavin, Christopher
• Position: International agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions - Editorial

When the Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, it seemed as if the world had finally taken responsibility for limiting the billions of, tons of greenhouse gases that are now being added to the earth's atmosphere each year.

Over the past four years, however, it has become dear that the convention is little more than an empty vessel: worldwide carbon emissions, atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and global average temperatures all reached record highs last year. All ten of the warmest years since record keeping began 130 years ago have occurred since 1980.

Meeting in Geneva this past July, governments took an important step toward filling the empty vessel of the climate convention with specific emission targets and policies. The statement issued at the Second Conference of the Parties to the Convention called for accelerated negotiations on a legally binding protocol that would limit emissions of greenhouse gases. That protocol is to be adopted at the Third Conference of the Parties in Kyoto, Japan in December 1997.

The United States, which had dragged its heels in negotiations just a year earlier, surprised the other delegations in Geneva by issuing a clarion call for legally binding limits on emissions of greenhouse gases - in effect echoing the position taken by the European Union a month earlier. Undersecretary of State Tim Wirth said, "The science calls on us to take urgent action . . . It seems to us that a voluntary approach doesn't do it."

Still, working out the specifics will not be easy. How tough will the new emissions targets be? Will policies such as energy taxes or standards be required? Will a global emissions trading system (favored by the U.S. administration) be set up? And what role, if any, will developing countries play in the next round of emissions limits?

Such questions raise immense...