Durban or Bust

This article by Tom Zeller, Jr. from the Huffington Post bemoans the results of the climate talks in Durban, South Africa.  The article quotes Alden Meyer of the Union of Concerned Scientists:  "We are in grave danger of locking in temperature increases well above two degrees Celsius, which would foreclose our ability to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."


The talks did manage to pull negotiations out of the fire at the last minute but delayed any real consequences of the agreements for almost a decade.  One great success was an agreement that all emitters (even those in developing countries like India and China) will be held to an agreed upon limit for greenhouse gas emissions.  What that limit will be will not need to be finally decided until 2015 - when the final document is due.  And how that limit will be enforced remains vague as the term "legally binding" was dropped from the agreement upon threat of total dissolution of negotiations.  


The agreement also "produced a path" toward providing "up to" 100 billion dollars annually to poorer countries (like our friends in Bangladesh) to produce green technology and to adapt to the changes that global warming will inflict upon them.  Sounds like great news - but what exactly does "produced a path" mean?  And the fact that no provisions for how such funding would be provided is also troubling.  This funding is particularly important alongside the agreement to hold all developed and developing countries to a standard.  The wealthier nations should have gotten on board with that standard years ago and the developing nations will have a much harder time complying with the standards than those with greater resources.  Still, without a global agreement - particularly with China surpassing the US in total emissions as of 2007 - the hope of achieving global climate change seems slim.  The uncomfortable truth is that the nations with deeper pockets are going to have to foot the bill.  And we're not really good at agreeing to pick up any tab - not even those that we've initiated.  


In essence, it seems that the talks ended with an agreement to come up with an agreement within the next decade.  With the waters already rising on Bangladesh, such a conclusion seems inadequate at best.