At the Camp David meeting last week, G8 leaders agreed to act on climate change and air pollution by focusing on methane, black carbon (soot), and hydroflurocarbons (HFCs).
This is the logical follow up of a move in the same direction by the United States, China and other countries back to February. However, like the previous agreement, CO2 is still not mentioned.
The aforementioned greenhouse gases are much more potent but remain for much less time in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide
Since CO2 is the main pollution due to fossil fuels burning, it may take some time before it is addressed. We have seen however that more and more countries are willing to address it.
I am confident carbon taxes and other emissions trading schemes will keep on being implemented locally and that some significant agreement will be reached by 2015 (perhaps earlier). Let us all act in this direction!
The gases agreed upon last week are also responsible of more than two million premature deaths per year. This is thus a major air pollution issue.
In any case, this bodes well with the incoming Rio 20+ conference.
