Officials from Japan and other parts of the world are meeting in Bonn, Germany, until June 12 for more negotiations on a new set of global arrangements to prevent runaway climate change. The deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012, is supposed to be clinched at a climate summit convened by the United Nations in Copenhagen in December.

Concluding an effective agreement by then will be tough. But even as they defend national interests, negotiators need to bear in mind the latest evidence of the continuing buildup of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere despite the economic slump, and the projections for a further massive rise as growth resumes, particularly in Asia.

The top U.S. energy forecaster reported recently that without new national policies and a binding international agreement to cut global warming pollution, world CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels (coal, oil and natural gas) will rise from 29 billion metric tons in 2006, to just over 33 billion tons in 2015 and 40.4 billion tons in 2030.