New Zealand now on board

New Zealand's climate change minister Nick Smith announced earlier today that his country will cut its greenhouse gas emissions 10 to 20 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2020. Although a commendable step forward, the target range still falls below the 25 to 40 per cent cut that the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said is needed from developed countries as a whole by 2020.

Here in the United States, Todd Stern is the special envoy on climate change. "Bottom line," he wrote in 2007, is to "set binding emissions targets for developed countries and as many advanced developing countries as possible. The targets should be long-term (relative to the five-year timeframe used in Kyoto) and grow tighter over time."

According to John Ashton, the special representative for climate change in the United Kingdom, “we now need to stop talking about talking and start deciding about doing.”