GLOBAL WARMING
New laws in key nations vital to climate deal
- Published: 12 Dec 2012 at 00.00
- Newspaper section: News
With the Doha summit now concluded, with only very modest achievement, there is growing consensus that a faster response to climate change is desperately needed. This is especially so when the science and physical impacts of global warming are telling us that the urgency to act is increasing.
To be sure, formal international negotiations, especially the UNFCC process, remain vital. However, creeping forward at a snail's pace (witness the difficulty in Doha, for instance, of formalising the decision to agree a second period of the Kyoto Protocol, which was agreed last year Durban) is no longer enough.
Tellingly, it was Christiana Figueres, UNFCC Executive Secretary, who re-asserted at Doha that national and sub-national government policy is key to the accelerated response to climate change that is needed. As is increasingly recognised, it is only by implementing such national and sub-national frameworks that the political conditions for a comprehensive global agreement in 2015 will be created.
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