Independent review

	THE GUARDIAN
	LEADER

Climate improves at Montreal

Monday December 12, 2005

The Montreal climate talks promised very little when they opened two weeks ago but, unlike almost every other international meeting of the past decade, they seem to have achieved a lot. Consider: the much-maligned Kyoto treaty is safe and well beyond 2012, despite the best efforts of the wreckers; rapidly-developing countries such as China and India now have the assurances they need that they will not be penalised for growing their economies, despite their genuine fears; and rich countries have agreed to implement deeper emission cuts, something that was very much in the balance before Montreal. This Kyoto deal not only clocked up what may be a record 40 international agreements, it set up future negotiations on legally binding targets and set in motion a wider review of the entire regime involving all countries. No wonder environment secretary Margaret Beckett - ironically returning from the snows of Montreal through the plume of Britain's largest petrol fire in a decade - was jubilant. Not only did the British and EU negotiators achieve what they set out to do, they stood up to the US and saw off the wrecking tactics of Russia, Saudi Arabia and others.

But the shaming of the US in Montreal was as much to do with world opinion as with the tactics of governments or green groups. When the American negotiators walked out in an attempt to collapse negotiations, the international reaction was swift and united. The US may be thick skinned when it comes to global negotiations but even dinosaurs have their weak spots. America's isolation from the world community was seen to be unacceptable from California to Cornwall, from New York to Nairobi. When the former president Bill Clinton then stood up on prime-time TV to say that the US economy would be hurt if the administration did not change its stance - and that the world's greatest emitter of greenhouse gases could easily meet and surpass the Kyoto targets in a way that would strengthen its economy - Washington was close to panic. The negotiators were sent back in and from then on, a deal was always probable. This US administration may never sign up to Kyoto and its targets and timetables, but it is still, just, in the fold. Bringing it to the climate table will be the challenge of the next decade.

But something else may have taken place in Montreal. There is now no longer any serious doubt in international circles that climate change is real, accelerating and caused by human activities. It has taken 25 years of hard science and serious debate to get to this point. Contrarians will, rightly, question how much of the greenhouse effect is due to natural causes but the world community is, for once, more or less united. Moreover, all governments, rich and poor, have committed themselves to rethinking how they use energy. Montreal sent a clear signal around the world that the future lies in cleaner, more sustainable technologies, and that the knock on effects of adopting and moving away from a carbon economy will be felt for generations.

In the drama of the moment, it is easy to believe that countries will now move urgently to achieve the emission cuts needed. Unfortunately, science is increasingly alarmed at the scale of what is necessary and the brief time that is left to adopt the measures needed. It has taken more than 12 years to get 36 countries to just cut their emissions by about 5%, and worldwide emissions are still rising steeply. The next negotiations will have to consider how to get countries to reduce their emissions not by a modest 5% but by 30-50% within a generation. For that to have any chance of happening will mean some of the most fraught negotiations ever conducted. Welcome to the new era of permanent climate change negotiations - and what will surely be the greatest challenge that the world community has ever had to face. Montreal is a big step forward.