It is a start. That's the best assessment of the agreement produced by the 190-some governments at the United Nations climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, earlier this month. After an abrupt U-turn by the United States, delegates reached consensus on a new framework for tackling global warming.
Significantly, this deal requires both developed and developing nations to commit to measurable, verifiable action. If implemented, the agreement could slow and perhaps even stop global climate change. That is a big "if" and history is not encouraging.
It has been a decade since international negotiations produced the Kyoto Protocol to the International Framework Convention on Climate Change. That agreement was a first attempt to deal with global warming, but it proved ineffective. Several governments resisted implementation, arguing that they could not accept the limits to growth it would create, or that the exemption of rapidly developing states producing greenhouse gases was unfair. While the United States was generally castigated for being the chief offender, it was not alone in opposition to Kyoto.