After almost a decade of negotiations, the international communitystill hasn’t reached an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne Elston says it’s timewe looked someplace else for leadership:
Transcript
After almost a decade of negotiations, the international community
still hasn’t reached an agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne Elston says it’s
time we looked someplace else for leadership.
Let’s face it – if talking could solve the global warming problem, it
would have been taken care of a long time ago.
There is scientific consensus that human activity is altering the
planet’s climate. Nine years ago, world officials meeting at the
Earth Summit in Rio began to try and do something about it. So they
talked without much success. So four years later, in Kyoto Japan,
they talked some more, and came up with something called the Kyoto
protocol. This agreement requires developed nations to reduce their
greenhouse gas emissions – the primary cause of climate change. A
few countries have ratified the protocol, but the U.S. and Canada
have not. So everybody’s decided to do some more talking.
In November 7,000 representatives from 182 countries gathered in The
Hague to talk about greenhouse gas emissions. That’s a lot of hot air
and a lot of jet fuel. But after two weeks of debate they failed to
reach an agreement. A subsequent meeting in Ottawa was also a
failure. So now the pressure’s on the next international meeting
scheduled for October in Marrakesh. But President George Bush doesn’t
support the Kyoto protocol, so this meeting may be doomed to fail
before it starts.
While the leaders of the world are racking up air miles flogging a
toothless international treaty, corporations are beginning to view
climate change as a business opportunity. Increasing energy prices
are forcing companies to look at ways to cut consumption. And new
energy technologies are promising to open up business markets for
innovative companies.
What’s interesting about all this is that the companies traditionally
viewed as the bad guys of climate change are the ones making some
small steps in the right direction. Car giants Toyota and Honda have
invested heavily in producing hybrid cars that will significantly
reduce greenhouse gas emissions – if enough consumers buy them. And
at the recent North American International Auto Show in Detroit, the
president of Toyota Motor Corporation said that the auto industry
must limit the car’s impact on the earth. Impressive talk from the
head of the world’s third largest car manufacturer.
Oil companies are starting to get the message, too. BP has become the
world’s largest manufacturer of solar electric panels and systems.
Suncor, another major oil company, has invested $ 100 million in
renewable energy technologies. Other business giants like IBM,
Johnson & Johnson and DuPont have all pledged to voluntarily reduce
their greenhouse gas emissions.
Granted these are small steps – but even these small steps represent
a lot more than our collective governments are doing. They’re
continuing to bicker over last century’s failures, while the
corporate world is beginning – ever so slowly – to get the message.