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With less than a year to go before the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development takes place in Brazil – the so-called Earth
Summit – battle lines are being drawn up in earnest. Major skirmishes have
already occurred over moves to persuade all participants to agree on firm
targets for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide. But before too much blood
is spilt over the issue, we should ask whether the pursuit of consensus
over targets is, in fact, the best tactic for reaching a goal that all now
share: to reduce man-made global warming.

Certainly there are important lessons to be learnt from current experience
in Europe. In a fit of political zeal, the member states of the European
Community have committed themselves jointly to two goals: stabilising carbon
dioxide emissions by the end of the decade, and achieving a ‘substantial’
reduction thereafter.

So far, however, words speak louder than actions. As we report in this
issue, achieving such goals is technically feasible (See ‘Europe’s hot air
over carbon cuts’). But there will be political costs, since doing so will
require governments to take steps in conflict with other priorities: for
example, restricting rather than encouraging the growth of road transport.
To date, few governments have been willing to pay the necessary price.

Europe’s experience highlights the dilemma facing scientists, diplomats
and politicians around the world as they prepare for the Brazil meeting.
Even if consensus on targets is achieved – and, with the US still refusing
to make any type of commitment, that is still uncertain – will they be worth
any more than the paper they are written on?

The omens are not good. Take, for example, efforts to protect the ozone
layer. Last year in London, rich countries promised to spend $240 million
to buy poor countries ozone-safe technology. India alone estimates that
it will need $1.2 billion to comply with the ozone treaty. So far, however,
even the agreed pittance has been too much for rich countries to cough up:
the fund contains a paltry $9 million.

Those with longer memories will remember the ill-fated United Nations
Conference on Science and Technology for Development, held in Vienna in
1979. Here ‘consensus’ took the form of a commitment to a $250 million
fund to help the Third World. But less than a third of this sum materialised.

Surely we can do better. As long as they are wedded to public consensus,
those meeting in Brazil next year may well end up with words so banal that
everyone – even John Sununu, the White House chief of staff who doesn’t
believe climate change is a problem – can agree to them.

Perhaps the West should stop thinking of itself as a family that must
always agree. Perhaps those willing to set targets to cut greenhouse gases
should go forward with an international agreement and concentrate on achieving
their goals, without worrying whether everyone tags along.

Then it would be question, firstly, of devising strategies to persuade
recalcitrant nations to join the bandwagon, perhaps modelled on the safeguards
in the ozone treaty specifying no trade with non-joiners. And secondly,
of building a solid behind-the-scenes agreement that, whatever rhetoric
individual governments wish to use, there can no longer be ‘business as
usual’ on energy and resource policy.

There are, of course, dangers in this approach. Many will argue that
allowing major carbon dioxide producers – in particular the US, but also
some Third World countries too – to avoid a firm commitment to reduction
targets will let them off the hook. But this need not necessarily be the
case. And after all, the most important thing for any climate treaty agreed
in Brazil will not be whether it impresses voters back home, but whether
it works.