SCIENCE IN THE NEWS DAILY

Is There any Hope for Agreement at Copenhagen?

from Time

If you want to give a U.N. climate change negotiator indigestion, which isn't terribly hard to do these days, mention three letters: W-T-O. That stands for the World Trade Organization, the global body charged with supervising and liberalizing international commerce--and a whopper of a cautionary tale.

Back in November 2001, in Doha, Qatar, the WTO launched what is known as the Doha Development Round of negotiations, an effort to increase global trade by reducing trade barriers. Eight years later, the "round" is still ongoing, the talks riven by deep disagreements--especially over agriculture subsidies in the West--between developed and developing countries. There's no end in sight.

Now, global climate change negotiations appear headed toward the same aimless end. World governments will convene at the U.N. climate change summit in Copenhagen next month, a self-imposed deadline for producing a successor to the expiring Kyoto Protocol. But as diplomats in Barcelona today concluded the last round of official U.N. talks before the summit, it's becoming clear that any agreement between developed and developing countries on greenhouse gas emissions limits will be next to impossible by December.