November as he released technical reports prepared by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change. “Today, the time for doubt has passed. [We have] unequivocally affirmed the
warming of our climate system, and linked it directly to human activity.”
To make sure there was no doubting his message, the chairman of the IPCC added that “slowing or even
reversing the existing trend of global warming is the defining challenge of our age.” According to Pachauri,
global warming will lead to melting icecaps and rising sea levels, the drowning of some island nations, the
extinction of species, desertification of tropical forests, and more frequent and deadlier storms.
The world’s media soon became focused as never before on greenhouse gases (GHG), the emissions (mainly carbon dioxide and methane) of which cause the Earth to warm and its climates to
change. The occasion was a United Nations conference meant to negotiate national targets for
reducing greenhouse gases. The venue was the Indonesian resort island of Bali.
The United States, Canada, and Japan were quickly anointed villains in the piece as they argued that
the targets of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol were unrealistic. To live up to that agreement would have required
Canada, for example, to cut its GHG emissions by perhaps 50 per cent during the next 12 years. The three
villains complained that Kyoto required nothing from emerging economies like China and India, which are
big polluters.
