Yes lets have some more dramatic action like Kyoto....its not very dramatic and should be easily achievable, most countries missed their targets.....by a lot. Good luck Ban Ki-moon.

Today, 174 countries have ratified, accepted, approved or acceded to the Protocol, except most notably, the US, Kazakhstan and of course, Australia. The Protocol was designed as a 1st step to tackle the problems of Global Warming. Australia "meets" its targets because we are allowed to exceed our GHG emmissions to 108% of our 1990 levels!

At least the others are cutting their emissions and have in fact made commitments themselves to 2020. It's not just about adaptation, it's also about mitigation.

The Protocol has issues, but because it is a dynamic treaty, they are being addressed continually. As we speak, negotiations are being had to move the protocol to the next stage, that after 2008 - 2012. Ban ki-Moon would like Australia to be part of that.

As late as a couple of months ago, Australia’s Prime Minister went on record as saying he is a climate change sceptic. From February, it seems Mr Howard is a born-again climate change believer. WHY?
I would like to think that Mr Howard now believes what all other signatories to the UNFCCC believe, and what the vast majority of experts are saying. I prefer not to think that his conversion is due to political expediency.

Canada is doing more, New Zealand is doing more, England and the European Union are doing more, even China and India are doing more. All signatories to the Convention are doing more. We have to ask … Where have we been? What planet do we live on? Indeed, where has the anonymous sceptic been these last 10 years?

We have the UN for a reason; it is not good enough for a major UN signatory to take the ball home if they don’t like how the other players play the game. It happened with the war in Iraq, it is happening again with the war on climate change.

We had a chance to demonstrate true leadership qualities, our responsibilities to global citizenship. Have we missed the boat?

We need to look at the underlying cause of climate change and that is the fact that the whole world population is using too much energy and the basic reason for that is that there are too many of us. This is particularly so, now that the developed nations feel that they need to do something to raise the standard of living of the poor nations.

Unfortunately for everyone, this is only exacerbating the problem and while we have organisations like the Catholic Church still preaching their gospel of "Go forth and Multiply" and our hair brained treasurer saying "One for dad, one for mum and one for the country" there will never be a solution to this over population problem which is the root cause of the situation in which we now find ourselves.

Summits like Kyoto do absolutely nothing to fix the problem, they are just feel good talkfests. The only thing that will solve the problem now is nature, and that may happen much sooner than anyone realises.

Whether or not you believe in the scaremongering theory of global warming, it is (if it exists) not caused by human activity, and there is nothing that humans can do to affect change.

The likely result of the current hysteria is that we will be paying a lot more for everything we need for no good reason.

The underlying cause of climate change since about 1800 is human activity (defined as Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), the symptoms are increased GHG emissions. This has been proved in many ways but is often best demonstrated by C12 & C13 isotope ratio analysis in fossil fuels, atmosphere, ocean and terrestrial biosphere.

The science is there for all to see if they care to look if not listen. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the time or the resources and even if we did, it can be boring or too technical for the average person to understand – scientists really do have a PR problem, notwithstanding they just want to tell it like it really is. For others, they just don’t want to face the prospects of the problem; they put their head in the sand or want to deny that a problem even exists.

It is not that there are too many of us; we are just not focussing on Sustainable Development – sustaining economic growth that is essential for poverty reduction while using natural resources in a prudent fashion.

Sustainable Development also implies ensuring greater equity, both within and between societies and generations – achieving a stable relationship between human activities and the natural world that does not diminish the prospects for future generations to enjoy a quality of life at least as good as our own.

What’s driving economic development or standard of living in China? – the already developed world – where we can buy a kilo of imported Chinese prawns for $10 as opposed to $20 for good old Aussie ones, not to mention the rest of the things (and packaging) on our shopping lists – we are greedy, people.

Summits like Kyoto can help address the problem look at the Montreal Protocol and the Ozone problem – but we have to be part of the process.

BTW, educated (developed) people tend to have fewer children – think about it and then tell me why.

The author says:
“climate change is an enormous challenge demanding dramatic action. The UN secretary-general should be commended for thinking big. And the international community - and the United States - should support him by helping him follow through.”
“Thinking big”??
It doesn’t make for big horizons when the viewing platform has been lowered. The reverse of Newton’s circumstance: he gave benefit to world scientific and social advancement by seeing further than others; due, he said, to standing on the shoulders of giants.
How can the UN secretary general expand horizons and think big when his organisation is entrapped, constrained like a dog on a leash in a dungeon. That rather than having benefit from rational thought and knowledge already accessible. UN members will not permit any straying outside the kennel and into the world of the big picture. No matter how strong those roaming urges might be.
The glimmer of climate change has, in spite of the dog-handler, filtered into the kennel.
And the alarm has been barked – that there is need for something to be done about it. At last, maybe some positive action will be taken to alleviate it – but how long will those actions last?
Human society can, without a doubt, improve our climate-unfriendly habits by a few per cent. But, human population increases by about 1.3 per cent - not once, but each and every year.
In order to “think big” on a scale large enough to be effective, the thinking needs to cogitate on the ever-continuing rate of improvement which needs to match, without a stumble, the rate of population increase which again multiplies the rate of increase of material consumption by the human race.
It is about time for some loud barking about the demonstrably finite nature of this planet, and the never-ending urgings for human increase by fundamentalist bigots of the economic and religious fraternities.

I call for a five year moratorium on all talk of climate change. By five years the appropriate scientists should have checked out their models and determined how far their climate predictions depart from reality.

Meanwhile the rest of us can prepare for the next wave of millennium hysteria. My bet is that we will have to steal ourselves against “a return of the Treffids.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_of_the_Triffids

As usual, most commentators (posters) agree that human activity is causing much climate change, and a few point to science showing that natural cycles account for most of it.
There could be merits in either conclusion, based upon evidence. But either way we should be doing all we can to stop industrial emissions.
Long before the climate change and global warming debate became popular I have felt that industry and vehicle air pollution is a disaster for human health, and environment health that must be stopped. There are many other pollutants other than CO2 in emissions that cause damage. Farm animals and humans have been been getting badly effected by fluoride gases, sulpur and nitrogen oxides, benzenes and a host of other pollutants for far too long.
If global warming concerns, valid or not, can be the catalyst for curtailing rampant global industrial pollution, then good for the global warming scare.

Response to Ironer:

In your opening sentence you said something quite bizarre. Most commentators point to the scientific evidence or summaries of this evidence to show that human activity is responsible for the rapid climate change we are experiencing.

Those that think otherwise point to blogs and their views are not backed up by any scientific evidence. If there was any suggestion that natural cycles are responsible for rapid climate change, it would be included in scientific and government reports - especially those of conservative governments.

I brake my own suggested moratorium and refer to a paper by Robert M Carter on the Lavoisier web site
http://www.lavoisier.com.au/

Professor Carter in this paper discusses questions of McCarthyism, intimidation, press bias, censorship, policy-advice corruption and propaganda in respect to global warming.

I comment further that there are scientific papers too on the Lavoisier site that argue the case against the anthropogenic carbon dioxide hypothesis.

Now I know this is a site supported by industry. However, before I hear the usual sterile environmentalist complaint that anything supported by industry is biased and untrue. I raise the question that the same or similar criticisms can be levelled at left inclined Green groups.

It is even possible that university research has its sponsors or sources of grants and/or endowments and these too may be a source of bias.

David Latimer - nothing too "bizarre" about the fact that both sides of the debate can summon at least some science to their argument.
But my central point was that there are umpteen good reasons for severely limiting industrial and vehicle emissions anyway, for human and environmental health, regardless of whether the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is totally proven at this stage or not.