Bookmark in Connotea
Climate change and media, science and policy: is time on our side?
Posted by Olive Heffernan on behalf of Maxwell T. Boykoff
The climate talks at the G8 summit (see Olive Heffernan’s post on the G8 climate talks) have spurred a recent increase in media attention. At the center of this coverage is discussion of cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. Over the past week, proposals ranged from binding emissions cuts across all G8+5 countries by mid-century to ‘aspirational goals’ of cuts, decided on a country-by-country basis through talks over the next two years.
As these rival ‘visions’ of international policy action to combat anthropogenic climate change have been negotiated, the June 7 ‘agreement’ within the G8 put forward a simple plan: 50% emissions cuts by 2050. While this pronouncement has the makings of progress, one of the key yet unresolved facets of the agreements is that of time-scale. While Japan and the EU have pushed for 1990 as the baseline for the metric of 50% emissions, the US has proposed 2007 as the baseline. This tweaking of time scales has a real impact on the actual volume of greenhouse gas emissions that will be removed from the atmosphere, and/or prevented from being emitted.
Continue reading "Climate change and media, science and policy: is time on our side?" »
