“We cannot rob our children of their future”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had urged the 10,000 delegates gathered in Bali from 190 countries to act fast. "This is the moral challenge of our generation," he noted. "Not only are the eyes of the world upon us. More important, succeeding generations depend on us. We cannot rob our children of their future." Ban said an agreement limiting emissions should be comprehensive, and should enlist the participation of both poor and wealthy nations. "Our atmosphere can't tell the difference between emissions from an Asian factory, the exhaust from a North American SUV, or deforestation in South America or Africa," he said.

Discussions over the aims and timing of a new global climate change treaty have wrapped up in Bali after two weeks of often turbulent bargaining. The next step will be two years of negotiations over the new treaty itself, which will become a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

The so-called "road map" that came out of the Bali conference was deliberately vague on both questions, leaving hard work ahead for the negotiators. In order to reach that goal, countries and environmentalists led by the European Union wanted the road map to specify sharp reductions in emissions: by the year 2020, they wanted emissions to be 25 to 40 percent lower than they were in 1990. The road map does call for global man-made emissions to peak in the next 15 years, and for emission levels recorded in 2000 to be cut in half by 2050. It also promotes a plan enabling wealthy countries to pay poor countries to keep remaining forests intact.

At last what can we say whether the two-week long United Nations Climate Change Conference at Bali, was a success or a failure? There is no easy answer. To the extent that after years of squabbling and finger-pointing, there is now a global consensus on, one, the reality of global warming and, two, the need to do something about it.