ABSTRACT
In this chapter we review some of the suggestions that might flesh out the bare bones of the FC, particularly through the detail in potential protocols. Because it is a template, the important details have to be added during the protocol process. The FC is not fundamentally an agreement about scientific data or predictions, though the FC presents the best available evidence and allows for the inclusion of new material. It is essentially part of the political-economic diplomacy; this type of negotiation deals with the costs of impacts and responses, burden sharing, and ways of achieving sustainable development in general. In an address at the 1993 World Climate Programme meeting, M. Zammit Cutajar, the Executive Secretary of the INC, said, “In plain language the bottom line of the convention is not climate change but what to do about it, when and at what cost.” There is a substantial measure of consensus on the desirability of sustainable development even if some critics have argued that sustainable development is a myth (Galtung, 1993). The doubts and debate are on target levels, funding, and equity. The key question of whether the North should maintain its high energy-consuming lifestyles and the South aspire to mimetic growth may be ruled out ab initio since present levels of energy use inflated by current population increases are already in excess of atmospheric carrying capacity. Cuts then in the main greenhouse gas, CO2, are needed in the North, and a number of countries have put forward plans of reductions of around 20 percent on existing emissions. Here the Montreal Protocol on ozone is not a very helpful analogy since it is impossible to completely outlaw CO2 emissions (some occur naturally), and because substitution is not a ready remedy as it was for CFCs and halons.
