Bonn: Perhaps the most revealing moment at this year's United Nations climate talks came on Wednesday, when Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany addressed the nearly 200 nations gathered here.
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| German Chancellor Angela Merkel, right, talks to Fiji prime minister and COP president Frank Bainimarama, second right, and Timoci Naulusala, a child from Fiji, with Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, left, and French President Emmanuel Macron |
After declaring that "climate change is an issue determining our destiny as mankind," Merkel acknowledged that Germany was likely to miss the goals it had set itself for cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 because of its continued reliance on coal power. While vowing to grapple with the issue, she said that phasing out coal use would require "tough discussions" with German policymakers in the weeks ahead.
On one level, it was a stark reminder that the real action on global warming does not unfold in international venues. The problem will largely be addressed by governments back home trying to adopt policies to shift away from fossil fuels, by businesses perfecting and deploying clean energy technologies, by city planners reworking their local transportation systems.
But Merkel's speech was an example of what diplomats are trying to achieve. As the two-week Bonn talks concluded on Saturday, negotiators said they had made headway on creating a formal process under the 2015 Paris agreement in which world leaders would regularly and publicly detail the efforts they are making to address climate change, pinpoint areas where they are falling short, and push each other to do more.
Read the story in today’s Melbourne Age by Brad Plumer - “At Bonn, the stakes got higher in our gamble on the planet's future.”
