From the Washington Post,
“Worse than we thought.” The headline in the British Guardian newspaper on Saturday was almost gloating about the bad news. The tone of the article that followed was no different: In Paris, a U.N.-sponsored panel, consisting of hundreds of scientists from all over the world, had just declared that average global temperatures will probably rise 4 degrees Celsius over the next century. If so, catastrophic flooding, famine and water shortages may follow, along with the extinction of up to half of existing animal species. Malaria and other tropical diseases may spread. Among the coastal cities threatened by the higher ocean levels caused by melting ice caps, the paper noted — not without a degree of satisfaction — are London, New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong…
The much-vaunted treaty creates a complicated and unenforceable system of international targets for carbon emissions reduction, based on measurements taken in 1990. Critics of the American president have condemned him for failing to sign it, conveniently forgetting that the Senate rejected it 95 to 0 in 1997, a margin that reflects broad bipartisan opposition. At the same time, few of the Asian and European signatories are actually on track to meet their goals; those that will meet the targets, such as Britain, can do so because their economies rely less on industry than they once did. Canada and Japan aren’t even close to compliance; China and India, whose emissions rates are growing most rapidly, are exempt altogether as “developing” countries — which, given their economic strength, is absurd.
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