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Climate meeting is a ray of hope
It would be easy to dismiss the climate change summit at the United Nations.
- Gulf News
- Published: 00:22 September 25, 2007
It would be easy to dismiss the climate change summit at the United Nations. There have been so many conferences, meetings, discussions and still the planet gets warmer. It would be easy to ignore the summit as just another photo-opportunity. Easy but wrong.
The UN is taking a leading role in climate change and demanding tougher action to combat it. True, not before time, but at least the organisation is trying to galvanise world leaders to help tackle the threat to the planet. And there is a goal to the meeting.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon organised the summit to build political momentum towards launching negotiations later this year for deep cutbacks in emissions of carbon dioxide and other man-made gases blamed for global warming. This summit looks ahead to December's annual climate treaty conference in Bali, Indonesia, when the Europeans, Japanese and others hope to initiate talks for an emissions reduction agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol in 2012.
Some scientists believe that by 2012 it could be too late, past the tipping point. More than any other single topic, climate change will dominate this century. This summit may be brief but its message will have implications long into the future.
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