This week in Durban, South Africa, delegates from 194 countries are meeting at the UN-sponsored World Climate Change Conference to discuss, again, combating climate change by reduction of carbon emissions, which may be a cause of global warming.
One topic on their agenda is the fate of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was meant to curb our carbon emissions and which expires in 2012.
Their object: to persuade America and other industrialized countries to sign up for another round of greenhouse gas reductions, and to set up a $100 billion fund to help developing countries reduce their emissions. Early indications are that the meeting will achieve little.
At Monday's opening, South Africa's International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, president of the conference, rolled out the usual boilerplate. She told the delegates that she was hoping for "a balanced, fair, and credible outcome, with multilateralism, environmental integrity, fairness, and common, but differential responsibility."
Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, followed her, declaring that "This meeting needs to take the next decisive steps in the global response to climate change."
Ms. Figueres lectured, "To be a success, Durban needs to address further commitments of developed countries under the Kyoto Protocol."
The Durban gathering is another effort to combat global warming by reducing carbon consumption, an approach that could dampen economic activity just when there is risk of a new European recession.
There is another way to address the potential problem: geoengineering. It would be less disruptive of business activity, less threatening to employment, and it promises to be relatively inexpensive.
Most important, it would reduce warming even if certain countries who shall remain nameless did not agree to reduce their emissions.
Recall that the Kyoto Protocol set limits on 37 industrialized countries' emissions of greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide. Signatory governments agreed to reduce their emissions by at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012.
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