It is a seemingly undeniable fact that the US has been one of the most difficult players to get on board with carbon emission reduction. As one of the only nations that refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, I have consistently found myself wondering over this past year: could something like this happen again at COP-15?  Is it possible that we argue about the issue again until we lose interest and start playing a few more rounds of the China blame game?

The fear is legitimate but, then again, I’ve often found that actions taken entirely out of fear are usually not the most effective, especially with regard to global climate change.  So, I thought I would kick off this blog with a few of the hopeful things I’ve noticed over the past few years in the US that make me think this Summit (or at least the few years following it) could be a real turning point:

1)      New Administration:  Unlike the previous administration, president Obama and his advisors have at least recognized that the climate issue is in serious need of attention.  While the extent to which real action will be taken is still unclear, it is certain that the present authorities are willing to discuss and advocate.

2)      Scientific Consensus: At the time of the Kyoto Protocol’s inception, the US, to me at least, seemed filled with “skeptics” in a way that was blown out of proportion by those who found it hard to accept that action must be taken.  This notion has not gone away, of course, as evidenced by the suggestions that pop up in Youtube  when you type “global warming” into the search bar (4 out of the first 7 still describe it as a hoax).  However, the establishment of a firm agreement among the scientific community that action must be taken is making its way through our media and is a huge benefit going into this next summit.

3)      The Return of the City Center:

Population of New York City (taken from census figures)

(note: the vertical scale is population in millions of people)
Black – entire city population
Colors – each of New York’s 5 boroughs

As evidenced in the graph above, my home city of New York underwent a bit of a dark age starting around the 60’s, reaching a low point just around the time of the first Kyoto Protocol talks.  A lot of American cities have the same story to tell as many city-dwellers moved out to the suburbs and the fringes of car-dominated cities such as Las Vegas and Miami around this time.  There are multiple reasons why city centers seem to have lead the way in American sustainability over the past few years (just look at the US cities that ratified the Kyoto Protocol when our federal government did not).  The fact that these city centers are growing again is a good sign in my book.

4) The Climate Issue Entering Mainstream Discussion: Especially in the last few years, I’ve witnessed the issue of changing climate rapidly start to splinter off of the vague and peripheral domain of the many issues we classify under “the environment.”  Many people in my nation are starting to see the issue of rapid global climate change as separate from the more radical cries such as those to save manatees and pandas.  The mere proliferation of the term sustainability suggests that climate change is not just an issue of “being nice to the earth” but is more a question of our economy’s, our government’s and society’s ability to persist.  The days of my youth that I passed watching the global warming episode of the cartoon show Captain Planet are over and I now see documentaries and news articles seriously singling out the issue.