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Climate change

Global conference must yield commitments along with innovation

The world leaders that are gathering near Paris for two weeks of discussion about how to address climate change have an opportunity to commit to meaningful policies that will curb – and reverse – the greenhouse gas emissions that have destabilized the world’s environment. Indeed, they have an obligation to do so, and President Barack Obama’s remarks on Monday taking ownership for the United States’ contribution to the problem are an important example of the accountability required for consequential action.

In the days that follow in France, Obama and his colleagues at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change must dedicate themselves to enacting policies that will address the coming climate crisis, and forestall its worst effects. Doing so will require market-based innovation as well as stringent commitments from nations around the planet.

This worldwide effort has been under way since 1992, and famously produced the Kyoto Protocol – which the United States declined to join – intended to reduce greenhouse gas production between 2008-2012. The discussion has continued and gained momentum as the evidence and implications of climate change have become irrefutable.

Now, 150 heads of state are gathering to affirm their individual and collective efforts to avoid the predicted 3 degree Celsius increase in global temperatures by 2030, if current trends continue. The goal of the climate change convention is to enact policies that will keep that increase to no more than 2 degrees Celsius.

Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which will require states to curb their greenhouse gas emissions primarily by replacing or retrofitting coal-fired power plants is a major domestic step in the right direction – to the extent that the plan is implemented.

Underlying the Paris conversations – and all the action steps that flow from it – must be a recognition that carbon-based energy production cannot endure as the primary means of fueling the planet. That mind set fuels the innovation component of the conversation, and provides a global opportunity to discover, create and invest in clean energy alternatives. It will also demand a worldwide spine of steel to endure the challenge of such a fundamental shift from traditional energy sources. Public policy must underlie this shift, but patience is a critical component as well.

As a global leader in the carbon emissions that are compromising environmental and human health – as well as economies around the world – the United States, as Obama said Monday, must be a leader in countering the troubling trend. There will be significant pushback from traditional energy sectors as well as those who are committed to uncertainty about climate change’s existence – let alone its cause – but that cannot deter Obama and his cohort of global leaders in committing to solving the problem. As Obama said Monday, “In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., that there is such a thing as being too late. And when it comes to climate change, that hour is almost upon us.”

Given the stakes, it should be no surprise that the ante is high. The climate conference in Paris must produce results to live by. The world must then respond with the political stamina to deliver.



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