Global warming conference

I was reading about the global warming discussions at the UN yesterday, and I couldn't help but wonder, why on earth does this meeting matter? The major nations aren't interested in doing anything real, and in particular the US still has over a year left of an administration that's allergic to environmental progress.

Fortunately, Mark Goldberg helpfully explains the relevance and the context:

[T]he significance of today's meetings needs to be understood in the longer term. In 2015, Kyoto will expire. As the thinking goes, it will take two years to negotiate a successor to Kyoto, then another four years for member states to actually ratify the treaty.

In December, the process of negotiating a successor to Kyoto will kick off with a meeting in Bali. This meeting will be largely technical in nature, i.e. what sort of carbon emissions targets should be achieved and how to set up a global carbon credit market. The purpose of today's meetings was not to talk about those technical issues, but to inject some desperately needed political will into the Bali meeting.

So it's going to take a while to get this thing rolling, and even longer to get ratification, and it's important to start building toward that all now despite apparent intransigence. Well, then. That does make sense.