In a NZ Herald two-page special report, Jamie Morten interviews three climate researchers from Victoria University Wellington about climate, change and the future. Prof David Frame, Prof James Renwick and Dr Simon Lamb share their insights in the feature, ‘Your future weather: A daunting forecast’ .
An excerpt (read in full here):
Professor David Frame – Developing nations critical
A leading climate scientist has taken aim at shortcomings of the Kyoto Protocol in his inaugural professorial lecture.
Professor David Frame, director of the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University, said the protocol only regulated a small and shrinking fraction of emissions – yet placed no obligations on the developing world.
Commenting on themes of his lecture in Wellington this month, Professor Frame told the Herald serious inroads could not be made into tackling climate change without the participation of developing nations.
Without climate policy, around 70 per cent of warming would come from the developing world by 2100.
“Rapid growth in emissions in the large emerging markets is bringing significant improvements in standards of living to people in cities in Brazil, China, and so on, but it actually forms a serious threat to those very poor people most at risk from climate change.”
He also criticised the Kyoto Protocol for lacking “any meaningful compliance mechanisms”.
“Basically, nothing much happens if someone agrees to a target and then fails to meet it, so the treaty struggles to push people to take on burdens beyond those they’d take on with no treaty at all.”