IT was 25 years ago today that the world really began the fight against global warming when the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) took effect.
By far the world’s biggest international environmental treaty in terms of signatory countries had been adopted by the UN on May 9, 1992, and was opened for signature at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro the following month – June 1992. The global treaty came into force on March 21, 1994, after a sufficient number of countries had ratified it.
WHAT’S THE UNFCCC AND HOW DID IT COME ABOUT?
IN short the UNFCCC is a treaty which, when it was signed, was an international agreement for all the countries in the UN to tackle the problem of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere which scientists had identified as the cause of global warming.
Scientific research had established that temperatures across the planet had risen since the coming of the industrial revolution, a societal change that started in the UK and particularly in Scotland.
The burning of carbon-based fossil fuels such as oil was shown to be affecting the climate, and other greenhouse gases such as Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were seriously affecting the ozone layer which protects the Earth from dangerous radiations.
CFCs were proven to be destroying the ozone layer by a British research team in the Antarctic in the early 1980s, and the gas, which was widely used in aerosols and refrigerators, was eventually banned from use. That ban provided the impetus for the UN to act on other greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
Meteorologists had shown that global warming was happening with temperatures rising and weather patterns changing. The predicted effects varied from country to country and from continent to continent but it was claimed that anthropogenic (man made) global warming could cause disastrous changes to the climate of many areas around the globe.
By the early 1990s, rising sea levels and accelerating melting of the polar ice caps were predicted along with more and greater extreme weather events. These predictions have come true.
HAS THE UNFCCC WORKED?
FRANKLY it is too early to say. The UNFCCC secretariat based in Bonn in Germany has worked tirelessly to bring about other treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 and the Paris Agreement of 2015. Both of these treaties commit member nations to cutting the emission of greenhouse gases in a bid to limit global warming to two degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels. That’s very much a work in progress and some countries such as the US and Canada have pulled out of these treaties because they damage their own industries.
WHO STILL DENIES CLIMATE CHANGE?
WHILE they may not outrightly deny climate change, many politicians – mostly but not all right wingers – are known for their views that anthropogenic global warming is a fiction. President Donald Trump says it was all invented by the Chinese to damage American car manufacturing, his vice-president concurs, and in this country Lord Nigel Lawson is the most prominent denier. US Senator James Inhofe infamously brought a snowball into the House of Congress to “disprove” global warming. Oil companies gave him plenty dollars..
It is estimated that more than 97% of all scientists who have studied the subject say climate change is real and happening now.
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