Mitigation and adaptation

摘要

For 12 days last December, government representatives from 190 nations came together in Denmark to participate in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The convention, according to its official site, "sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change. It recognizes that the climate system is a shared resource whose stability can be affected by industrial and other emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases."rnThe end product of the meeting was to be known as the Copenhagen Protocol, supplanting the Kyoto Protocol that has been ratified by 184 parties but is due to expire in 2012. Squabbling arose over targets, and politics often drove the debate, but while no party attending the meetings argued about the need for greenhouse gas mitigation, the final outcome was far from certain.