Adjusting to climate change

Adjusting to climate change

Cleveland Plain Dealer: It says something about the global consensus on climate change that experts and diplomats are now at work at their 17th annual conference since a 1992 U.N. pact was signed. The meeting began last week in South Africa, and concludes this Friday.

More than 190 nations are involved in these joint efforts to understand the scope, dangers, challenges and most effective ways to slow human-caused planetary warming.

The need is evident. What’s lacking is even a shard of agreement on who will do what, when — or how costs can be managed in a rocky global economy.

What comes next?

The Kyoto Protocol that held most older industrialized nations to emissions limits — although not the United States, which refused to sign because China, India, Brazil and other emerging economic powers weren’t restricted — will expire next year with no clear template for what comes next.

But doing nothing is not an option. Given the long time spans required to rebalance greenhouse gases, all emitting nations need to accept responsibility for reducing their share of emissions while helping the most vulnerable impoverished populations around the world cope with climate-change-related disruptions.

Climate change is not about bogus science. It is about doing what humans do best: Recognizing reality, and adjusting to it.