Cross posted on The Daily Hurricane:
COP 15 is opening in Copenhagen on December 7. COP doesn't stand for Copenhagen; it stands for Conference of Parties, annual meetings that grew out of an international treaty, called United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), entered into by 192 countries and which came into force in 1994. More on COP 15 and the Kyoto Protocol below the jump:
Cross posted on The Daily Hurricane:
I thought I would take the next week or so to talk more about energy, energy supply, and climate change. We'll also talk about the politics surrounding these issues in the United States.
COP 15 is opening in Copenhagen on December 7. COP doesn't stand for Copenhagen; it stands for Conference of Parties, annual meetings that grew out of an international treaty, called United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), entered into by 192 countries and which came into force in 1994. The US signed and and the US Senate ratified the treaty under George HW Bush in 1992. The UNFCCC is described by the UN as:
The Convention on Climate Change sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change. It recognizes that the climate system is a shared resource whose stability can be affected by industrial and other emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
After the UNFCC came into force in 1994, COPs have been held annually around the world, the most famous being COP 3, held in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted by that conference, an agreement that provided for specific greenhouse gas emissions limits of participating countries based off of actual 1990 emissions in those countries. The US was an active participant in negotiations that established these limits.
In the Kyoto Protocol, countries are defined in three ways: Annex I, Annex II, and Developing Countries. In short, Annex I countries are industrialized countries, Annex II countries are a subset of Annex I, members of the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), and help pay the costs for developing nations to come into emissions compliance according to the Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol established mechanisms to limit emissions by country and was originally planned to be in effective from 2008-2012, with a new protocol expected to established to succeed Kyoto. The program was progressing well until George W. Bush killed the US' participation in March 2001, announcing that he would not submit it to the Senate for ratification. The US has been a mere observer in the ensuing COPs. President Obama has signalled a change to that policy by pushing climate change and energy policy on Capitol Hill and announcing that he will personally attend COP 15 himself.
We lost a valuable 8 years in fighting pollution of our air and water during the Bush administration, and actually went backwards in many areas. The Obama administration intends to change those policies, but there is a long way to go.
We'll talk more about COP 15, Kyoto, UNFCCC, and climate change legislation in coming days.