Up in the Air

By Bill Polits

With the current flurry of climate change activity from the legislative branch to the international stage, I thought it might be a good idea to step back a bit and look at the role of the main international body governing climate change mitigation strategies, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The UNFCCC is an environmental treaty put together during the “Earth Summit” (formally known as the UN Conference on the Environment) in Rio de Janeiro, June 1992. The treaty, having attained the minimum number of countries (50) as signatories, went into effect in March, 1994. The goal of the treaty is to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the atmosphere at levels below that which would cause dangerous man-made interference in the climate system.

By December, 1997 the parties to the UNFCCC had adopted an agreement known as the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. Whereas the UNFCCC treaty encourages member parties to stabilize GHG emissions, the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol commits them to do so. The agreement went into force in February, 2005, and as of October 2009, 184 countries had ratified the treaty. The United States is the only major industrial country to have not ratified the treaty.

The end of the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol arrives in 2012. The 15^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 15) will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark, December 7^th – 18^th, 2009. The goal of the meeting is to the bring together all parties to the UNFCCC together to negotiate and ratify a treaty that will allow all parties to meet the stringent emissions reductions set forth by the Kyoto Protocol and the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

As the Copenhagen meeting in December will be the seed that will grow into the successor of the Kyoto Protocol, and evidence of the role of human activity in global warming and climate change mounts, there is a yearning for a stable, clear map forward from the centers of power in the business and political worlds with respect to what action will be taken on climate change. This is source of all the energy, argument and focus on the energy and climate legislation in the US Congress recently, and why so many voices (including this one) are speaking out about this topic.

The Impact on Fire Safety

HFCs and PFCs are widely used as fire suppression agents. They also have a high global warming potential. They are, therefore, subject to being regulated under national rules and international agreements because of their ability to affect climate change. It is safe to say that whether through international treaty or domestic governmental action, access to these fire-fighting chemicals will be affected in the long term by the actions being taken now. The climate change is by definition an international phenomenon and the UNFCCC is the main international body assembled to address the situation, it pays to keep a close eye on what is going on with the UNFCCC.

Stay tuned to Up in the Air - we’ll help you keep your ear to the ground and to smell change in the wind.