Climate of pessimism in Cancún

The prospects for success, at the beginning of the Climate Change Conference in Cancún in Mexico, are rather depressing. After the failure of the Copenhagen meeting last year, all indications point toward a similar conclusion this time. Some of the most important emerging countries - in terms of population, volume of emissions and growth forecasts - are opposed to any binding agreement that would substitute the Kyoto Protocol. But the fundamental reason that no progress has taken place is none other than the lack of will in the United States to subject the country to any such limitation; and in this case, the proposition is not an easy one to defend.

The United States is the world's principal emitter of carbon gases, per capita or by unit of gross product. The country has a very energy-intensive economy, and an electric power generation industry that is still essentially based on coal (no less than half of all the electricity produced in the United States comes from coal, the most polluting of all fossil fuels).

However, if it was already difficult to reach an agreement when there were Democratic majorities in the US Congress and Senate, it is reasonable to suppose that it will be even harder now, when this majority has changed in favor of the Republican Party, which has always been reticent about any limitation that might have effects on the American economy, and is disinclined to take on board environmental considerations. Indeed, the number of "climate skeptics," who openly doubt the seriousness or even the reality of the climate change problem, has been rising in the United States.

It is likely that the discussion in Cancún will tend in the direction of an enlargement of the Montreal Protocol, which had some success in the elimination of the CFC compounds that damage the ozone layer; and also towards the inclusion, among substances to be eliminated, of HFC compounds, which have substituted the former, and are also greenhouse gases.

But the crucial consideration in the prevention of climate change has to do with the fact that the world's energy supply depends almost entirely on fossil fuels, and that the combustion of these fuels generates some 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, progressively altering the composition of the Earth's atmosphere.

It would be unacceptable if attention were to be distracted from the need to modify our basic patterns of energy use, at the industrial and even the household level - which is the only really effective remedy, though of course one that entails enormous difficulties. It is for this reason that the problem cannot be effectively addressed by the various countries on an individual basis, and that a global agreement on emissions control is necessary - an agreement that, unfortunately, seems unlikely to be reached at next month's conclusion of the Cancún meeting.