No one can bring apocalyptic foreboding to the climate-change debate quite like Al Gore. Speaking on the last day of the two-week-long U.N. climate-change summit in Poznan, Poland, which concluded on Dec. 12, the Nobel laureate warned delegates from over 190 countries that the time for idle talk on global warming was over. "We now face a crisis that makes it abundantly clear that increased CO2 emissions anywhere are a threat to the integrity of this planet's climate balance everywhere," he said. "As a result the old divide between the North and South, between developed and developing countries, is a divide that must become obsolete."
Gore received warm applause from the crowd, but it's not clear his message really got through. Though expectations for the annual summit weren't high, thanks in part to a leadership vacuum in the U.S. and the nagging distraction of a worldwide financial meltdown, neither were its accomplishments. More optimistic observers pointed to pledges from individual developing nations to cut their carbon emissions; under the Kyoto Protocol, those countries aren't actually required to take any concrete action on climate change. Mexico should take a bow — America's significantly poorer neighbor promised to cut carbon emissions 50% below 2002 levels by 2050, far in excess of anything the U.S. has pledged.
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