United Nations officials and environment ministers from 70 countries painted the brightest gloss they could to characterise the outcome of the 12th UN Climate Change Conference last Friday night. True, some progress was made in laying down a tentative timetable for negotiating a successor to the Kyoto Protocol and agreeing on the framework for an "adaptation fund" to help poorer countries cope with the consequences of global warming.
But the fact that more than 100 countries participating in the two-week gathering in Nairobi were represented by diplomats or officials showed that even calling it a "summit" is something of a misnomer. More alarmingly, this lowly level of representation is a measure of the extent to which the grave threat of climate change is not taken sufficiently seriously by some.
The EU, which was there in force, wants to see a root-and-branch examination of Kyoto's minimalist targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions carried out urgently. Scientific evidence is hardening all the time and it will become even more compelling with the publication early next year of the Fourth Assessment Report of the UN's Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change. This is expected to show that global temperatures have risen to levels not seen in at least 12,000 years, that Greenland's ice-sheet is melting at a "dramatic" rate and that sea levels are rising inexorably.
Every nation must play its part in the battle to prevent global warming - including the US, which is responsible for 22 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, and China, which already accounts for nearly 18 per cent and now looks set to overtake the US within five years. But the Bush administration spurned Kyoto in 2001 while China only agreed in Nairobi to a review of the protocol in 2008 after being assured that it and other developing countries would remain exempt from mandatory emission reduction targets in the near future. However, as EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said: "There is no time to waste. We must cut global emissions by 50 per cent by the middle of the century."
Ireland's contribution to global warming is relatively small, but this does not mean that we can belittle our responsibility. With our emissions up by 23 per cent on 1990 levels, we will have a tough task in complying with Kyoto. The magnitude of the problem clearly requires the active engagement of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, who is an agnostic on climate change.
Mr Ahern needs to develop a similarly strong conviction that this is the most serious threat that humanity has faced and, as Sir Nicholas Stern recently pointed out, it would make economic sense to start dealing with it now rather than to try to fix the problem in decades to come. The "green" measures to be included in next month's Budget will tell a lot about whether Mr Ahern and Minister for Finance Brian Cowen have heeded Stern's message.