14 DAY TRIAL // The Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, in the United States released four proposals for next week's international climate conference, scheduled to take place in Poznan, Poland. One of these suggestions said that developing countries, including China and India, should be allowed to continue emitting dangerous carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases (GHG) for now, whereas developed countries should start reducing the amounts they emit by as much as possible over the coming years.
Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements professor, Robert Stavins, summarized it best "The new agreement should be scientifically sound, economically rational and politically pragmatic." What he actually meant was that, under no conditions, would China, for example, accept international plans of reducing its emissions, considering the ascending economic trend the nation has been registering over the past decades.
Any outside limitations would be perceived as a sign of weakness in Beijing, and the Communist authorities fear that. However, while underdeveloped countries will be able to "maintain their business-as-usual emissions in the first decades," according to the new proposal, they will "over the longer term agree to binding targets that ultimately reduce emissions below business as usual," Stavnis said.
"The agreement should be cost-effective and consistent with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change," he added. In fact, that's the main problem that stands in the way of the entire world coming to an agreement on climate change – the fact that economics usually get in the way. This is especially true now, when the world crisis deepens, and any engagement in fighting global warming can very quickly become too expensive, even for the largest states.
"Global efforts to address climate change may be on a 'collision course' with the World Trade Organization, as nations that have agreed to put a price on carbon look for ways to keep their companies competitive globally," concluded the report, which summarizes the research of more than 28 scientific teams worldwide.