By John Leschak

The University’s climate change symposium focused on the political, in addition to the scientific. One lecture featured University Associate professor Julian Ku, from the School of Law, and professor David Flynn, from the Zarb School of Business.

Ku discussed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was an amendment to the UN Convention. The Framework Convention was signed by many members of the UN, including the United States. Although it called for signatories to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, it did not require any action by signatory nations, Ku said.

The Kyoto Protocol amended the Convention to establish binding limits on GHG emissions. Ku said Kyoto has not been effective. Even countries who passionately supported the Protocol, like Canada, have been unable to meet the strict GHG reduction goals that Kyoto required. The United States did not sign on Kyoto because it did not change the Convention’s system of differentiated responsibility, which established different standards for developed (First World) countries and underdeveloped (Third World) countries.

Under Kyoto, developed countries are required to reduce their GHG emissions, but underdeveloped countries are not. However, it is rapidly developing countries like China who pose the greatest dangers to the global climate, Flynn said.

“Although this is good for the Chinese,” Flynn said, “it is bad for the world because China has failed to adequately regulate industrial pollution.”

Flynn is an expert on development in China. He researched Chinese economic growth since 1987 and has visited China over 30 times. More than 750,000 people die from pollution caused illnesses in China every year, Flynn said. The biggest environmental problem facing China right now is the lack of clean drinking water.

Mehmet Uvey, a business graduate student at the University, thought that the moral of the lecture was that any effort to fight global climate change cannot succeed without holding countries like China to the same standards as the United States.