G8+5 Climate Forum

I received an invitation (from London, no less!) to attend the legislators’ forum for climate change in Washington, and went there in mid-February 2007. The two-day meeting was held in the same U.S. Senate Caucus room which held the Watergate and Army/McCarthy hearings, and an illustrious list of Senators participated – McCain, Lieberman, Kerry, Boxer, Bingaman, etc. The mood in Washington seems to have changed considerably, and the Senators were rather upbeat about the potential for future legislative action — although more than one noted that that same Caucus Room also held the hearings about the Titanic. Sir Nicolas Stern, who recently issued a UK review about the economics of global climate change, served warning about the signicant costs of inaction, and the resulting Washington Statement proposes steps for the post-2012 Kyoto Protocol period.