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Sebastian Mallaby says:
Delegates from around the world will meet next month in Bali, supposedly to launch negotiations on a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. But there is no consensus on what these negotiations should accomplish. Should they aim to create some kind of global cap-and-trade system? Should they go for a series of narrower agreements on biofuels, forest conservation and so on? Should they help countries adapt to global warming, since some warming is inevitable, or emphasize efforts to stop the warming in its tracks? The first task in Bali will be to negotiate what to negotiate about.
This is no easy task! Just scanning the headlines about next week's meeting, you can already see a number of key countries staking tough-sounding positions on some of these questions. In fairly sharp terms, for example, the top Chinese climate change official all but dug in his heels against any emissions reduction cap for China and other developing countries. But all is not lost, for the senior official still holds out the prospect that a bargain may be struck should developed countries--which are responsible for most of the carbon in the atmosphere today--be willing to help China develop clean energy technologies for the future.
Meanwhile, the United States Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, one of the many small island states that bear the brunt of the effects of climate change, gives us a peak into US talking points in advance of the meeting. To be sure, the United States still opposes binding emissions reductions targets. But writing in the Trinidad and Tobago Express, the US Ambassador, for example, offers a litany of the administration's accomplishments on climate change and re-affirms American support for the promotion of clean energy technology. Technology development and deployment, it would seem, is becoming a key bargaining chip for the developed world to help coax the cooperation of rapidly developing economies like India and China.