The President of Iran is due to speak later this afternoon at Columbia University, just a few blocks away from where I study and work. I’ll have to keep this in mind and take an alternate route to campus for class tomorrow afternoon, in order to avoid the usual subway delays. On the one hand, I’m all for bringing together world leaders, global dialogue, and the annual convening of the United Nations General Assembly; on the other hand, as a harried New York commuter I just kind of wish they kept the festivities to the Upper East Side. Shallow, aren’t I?
Aside from the Ahmadinejad speech – which has received all the press coverage here – the ‘other’ big occasion on the slate is the U.N.’s High-Level Event on Climate Change. The HLE is intended as a kind of pre-game rally for the International Climate Change Convention that will be held later this year in Bali, Indonesia. As is par for the course for these kinds of events, expect more symbolism than substance: Al Gore will be speaking, but George Bush has already decided to given the speeches a pass and attend only the dinner instead. Bush will be holding his own meeting on climate change later this week at the White House, where he will, according to press reports, try to convince the major ‘carbon emitting’ countries to follow his lead and adopt voluntary rather than mandatory emission standards.
As the poster above indicates, the HLE is about the ‘leadership challenge of climate change’ and everyone knows what that’s about: how do we get Bush to budge? Despite Bush’s known opposition to the Kyoto Protocols and to international efforts to implement coordinated responses to global warming, I think it’s a matter of speculation if we will see a radical change in U.S. policy after a new President is elected in 2008. Perhaps, but perhaps not. The current U.S. policy isn’t, I think, only the result of obscurantism and intransigence on the part of a particular leader or administration. It may also be reflective of an institutional bias that’s been slowly cultivated within U.S. policy circles against submitting to international protocols and agreements that would constitute restrictions against the U.S.’s ability to act in a unilateral fashion. There are certain exceptions that prove the rule (e.g., NAFTA) but those who find U.S. global warming policy wanting may still be confronted with a ‘leadership challenge’ in 2009. We’ll see.
* By the way, does anyone know when ‘climate change’ became the standard way of referring to ‘global warming’ in policy circles?
I think “climate change” has become preferred since it suggests the broader effects on weather systems that warming will cause. The other factor is that “warming” may even sound pleasant—many people feel that some warmer weather might be enjoyable—so “climate change” attempts to highlight that this isn’t just about a few more warm days.—that’s my speculation, at least.
That certainly makes sense. Thanks!
They are saying climate change because it is broad when analyzed from the ‘worlds’ perspective and includes drought, floods, warming, extreme cold et al.
Thanks Jeff. I now realize I was asking kind of a painfully obvious question. It’s interesting though that global warming is still, I think, the common way of describing climate change in everyday conversation, media, etc. There’s a different kind of information processing or framing that goes on when we use even slightly different descriptors, and when and how that emerges is what I find worthwhile exploring.