Climate Change Conference in Nairobi Failing to Clarify the Future

A report by Reuters on the happenings at the Climate Change conference in Nairobi, Kenya confirms what might have been expected, the rich and poor countries disagree on how to proceed and a number of countries are simply waiting until the U.S. has a new president in 2009. Whether the global warming problem is ever properly addressed at all seems to be boiling down to one question: will the United States provide strong leadership in 2009 or not? Obviously, the answer at this point is far from clear. From today’s perspective it seems uncertain whether global warming will be a major election issue in 2008. It is unclear what it would take to give global warming more visibility on the U.S. political map. Except in California, it was basically invisible as an issue during the recent election campaigns. For whatever reason, in the U.S. global warming has not achieved the status it deserves as a political issue. Time is unfortunately growing short to change that.