Cancun Climate Change Conference: Less Hype, Same Obstacles
Nicolas Loris /
International climate change talks kick off yesterday in Cancun, Mexico, and the expectations aren’t nearly as high as they were last year at the summit in Copenhagen, where no country committed to any legal binding agreement.
This year in Cancun, leaders from nearly 200 countries will come together at the 16th Conference of the Parties to be held under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. But the climate summit has much less hype than last year, because the reasons Copenhagen failed still apply this year: the economic costs of reducing carbon emissions, the intransigence of nations like China and India to commit to CO2 cuts, the disagreement on how much money developed nations should transfer to developing nations to cope with climate change, and the reality that proponents of binding carbon cuts overhyped the scientific realities of climate change. (more…)