Growing Global Warming and Expectations From Obama

A report released by the Australian Parliament two days ago warned that global warming, which has resulted in a rise in sea levels and frequent heavy rains would threaten homes along its thousands of kilometers of its coastline. Among them, the greatest threat is Queensland because 250,000 houses there may be covered with water. This is followed by New South Wales, with 200,000 houses along its coastline under threat. At present, coastal floods and coastal erosion in New South Wales have already resulted in the state suffering from great economic losses every year.
Impact of Climate Change
As compared with Australia, the threat posed by rising sea level in other smaller islands or island states are even more serious; and some islands may even face the fate of being drowned by the sea eventually. The United Nations Special Committee on Climate Change predicts that before the year 2100, global sea level could rise by 80 cm.
To this end, the Maldivian Government recently held an "underwater cabinet meeting" in order to bring attention to all countries of the world the importance to treat the impact of climate change seriously. Action taken by the Maldives is sufficient enough to show that island states are particularly worried about the issue relating to rising sea level.
Of course, the impact of global warming will affect beyond the islands and island states. Global warming will cause imbalance in global ecological environment leading to the environment of the Earth that the mankind depends on heavily be destroyed eventually. Scientists predict that, if the world nations do not immediately reduce substantial amount of carbon dioxide and other industrial waste gas emissions by 2060, average global temperatures will rise by 4 to 6 degrees. This is an extremely grim and terrible picture to think about.
Ozone Layer in Atmosphere
Carbon dioxide can destroy the ozone layer in the atmosphere and allow direct sunlight to shine on the Earth's surface. At the same time, the destruction of ozone layer will also prevent the heat on the Earth to reflect back to the atmosphere resulting in the greenhouse global warming effect.
Because of the understanding of this phenomenon and the cause of it, scientists and governments across the world have long reached a consensus. As such they want to put the focus to resolve global warming on the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions.
Kyoto Protocol
In 1992, the Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed at the United Nations Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro. This Framework pointed out that the international community has "common yet different" responsibility toward global climate impact. In other words, this Framework stipulated that developed and developing countries will have to bear their respective responsibility to stop the process of global warming. This principle was incorporated in the "Kyoto Protocol" signed by respective countries in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol makes it a requirement for developed countries to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide emission level by 2012, but for developing countries the Protocol does not define clear requirement. In 2001, the US Administration announced its withdrawal from the treaty, resulting in other countries not willing to comply with the requirement of the Kyoto Protocol.
UN Climate Change Conference
This brings to the importance of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen at the end of the year. At this UN Copenhagen Conference to discuss climate change, countries of the world will again make another effort to curb the speed of global warming. More than 190 head of states will attend this conference. The decision for countries of the world to achieve a legally binding treaty at this round of the UN conference will have direct impact on whether world community can really take practical action to slow down the global warming trend as early as possible. In this based on current situation, respective countries of the world have made some encouraging progress.
First, there is this responsibility sharing issue. Since the Rio Summit, held in 1992, China, India, and other countries as well the EU nations had already carried out long period of debate on this issue. But, by now, there is not much difference on this responsibility share issue among these countries. At the UN Climate Change Summit, held in September, Chinese President Hu Jintao has made impressive commitments. China's commitments include substantial reduction of China's industrial waste emissions before 2020. At an academic meeting held in Copenhagen in early October, the Indian minister for the environment has also in principle, made a commitment to reduce energy consumption.
Second, the EU has the intention to, according to the need of developing countries; provide developing countries with an environmental protection fund. China and India have proposed for developed countries to set aside 1 percent of their GDP to help poor countries improve their environmental management. But there is no positive response toward such a proposal coming from developed countries. But more recently, the EU has demonstrated a positive attitude toward such a proposal. Although the amount of environmental funds provided by developed countries might not meet the need of developing nations that need help to improve their countries' environmental condition, if there is any forthcoming action toward such a proposal, it should nevertheless be a welcome gesture.
Despite the fact that there are some positive developments to enable the Copenhagen Summit to attain a certain degree of optimism, but the key to success of this UN conference lies in the United States. Since the change of the national leadership in the United States, the Obama administration has already abandoned the former Bush government's negative stance on the climate change issue. The Osama administration has also submitted to the Congress a climate change policy bill.
However, as the Obama administration's health reform program is a priority issue to the Americans, this climate bill has also been stuck in the Senate. If within the next few weeks, this US climate bill cannot be passed, President Obama will travel to Copenhagen empty-handed. In the end, the Copenhagen Conference aimed to discuss global climate change might also end up not having any concrete results achieved.
Demand of Situation
At present, the United Nations and all world governments are making a final effort to make this Copenhagen Conference that they have spent long period to prepare can come out with some consensus as anticipated. Recently, the head of states between China and the United States have again expressed their respective political will toward environmental effort through telephones.
More recently, China and India have also signed some environmental cooperation agreement. All these developments show that major powers have taken a more positive attitude to deal with the global warming issue. This is a very important and indispensable ingredient for the prevention of global warming to take effect. But time is indeed running out as the date for the UN Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen is approaching. If actions taken by relevant key world players remain less forthcoming than we expect, it will still be a big question mark to gauge if the coming UN Climate Change Conference can reach the desired consensus.