Research

Korea may have an opportunity to exercise historic leadership, when it chairs the G-20 meeting in Seoul, November 11-12.    This will be the first time that a non-G-7 country has hosted the G-20 since the larger, more inclusive, group supplanted the smaller rich-country group in April of last year as the premier steering committee for the world economy.  With large emerging market and developing countries playing such expanded economic roles, the G-7 had lost legitimacy.  It was high time to make the membership more representative.

Many observers judged as a failure the December meeting in Copenhagen of the Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But then the usual way of judging such meetings is to look for a communiqué that voices sweeping aspirations, such as the proclamations of Bali (2007) and L’Aquila (2009) to limit global warming to 2 degrees centigrade. In reality, without any evidence of countries agreeing what is each one’s share of the burden, such proclamations are worthless.

 So both the Democratic and Republicans have officially nominated their candidates.  Remarkably — from the vantage point of just a few years ago – both Senators McCain and Obama are on record as supporting strong action for aggressive cuts in US emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).   In June 2008, the floor manager’s version of the Lieberman-Warner bill  – S. 2192: America’s Climate Security Act of 2007, which would cut emissions more than 50% by 2050 — came close to passing the Senate.