Check this article out from the NY Times:

My response:

This is, hopefully, going to be the most important issue in the near future. But here is my primary objection: how and what right does a group of 8 countries have to decide the fate of the developing world? Everybody is calling for leveling the playing field but we seem to forget the Western Industrial Revolution- and its role in raising the standard of living for Europe and the US. We cant realistically expect developing countries to simply halt production 20% in the next 4 decades. It is absurd, its is not going to happen. Developing countries are going to scoff at this agreement and declare it unfair.

Essentially, how do you raise standard of living of the Third World to the levels of Europe or the US yet lower greenhouse emissions when either the technology to accomplish said task is either not available or too expensive to be implemented?

Ponder on this quote by James Shikwati, directer of Kenya’s Inter-Regional Economic Network: “After talking numerous risks to reach their current economic and technological status, why do they [the developed world] tell poor countries to use no energy, and no agricultural or pest-control technologies that might pose some conceivable risk of environmental harm.”

This is only food for thought- I think there is a general consensus that we ought to preserve our environment- but I think there needs to be more creative and constructive methods than simply saying (and this is only talk) that the developing world needs to make a %20 cut.

Eugenio Suarez