Move Over Kyoto — Here Comes a ‘Copenhagen Protocol’

December 15, 2007, 8:56 am

So agreement was finally reached in Bali. After an hours-long public standoff Saturday in which the unthinkable happened — boos and hisses at a treaty conference — the world’s nations adopted a common two-year “road map” leading to the first comprehensive update to the ailing 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The last update, the Kyoto Protocol, only binds three dozen industrialized countries to cut emissions, and many of the adherents are not on track to hit their targets by 2012, when its terms expire. The new agreement will likely lead to a future set of limits allowing Kyoto parties to keep on capping greenhouse-gas emissions and trading carbon credits.

For those not affected by Kyoto’s limits, including the two giants in the global greenhouse — the United States and China — the timetable does not lock in any binding steps to cut emissions.

But it does move everyone a little further down the decades-long road to diverting from unfettered burning of fossil fuels and forests. That is significant, given the scope of the task in a world more than 80-percent dependent on coal and oil and with a (likely) tripled energy appetite by mid-century.

By Andrew C. Revkin (excerpt)