Editorial: Climate change is a major driversfor video conferencing, it is appropriate that TP&VC Insight should cover the outcome of the UN’s Durban Climate Change Conference.

This time around the world’s three biggest polluters America, China and India accepted for the first time that they should be bound by law to cut carbon emissions. However the new treaty which will bind all 194 nations will not come into force until the year 2020. The United Nations called it an historic breakthrough, however scientists warned that it was too little too late.

There has not yet been any discussion of how far or fast emissions should be cut and it is almost inevitable that we will see global temperature rises greater than 2 degrees, which is the point at which scientists fear damage will be irreversible.

In a major breakthrough the developing nations, including South Korea, Saudi Arabia, India and China which were not committed to any carbon cuts under the 1997 Kyoto protocol, even though they were responsible for 58% of all the emissions, have now, under the Durban agreement, bound themselves to mitigate pollution from 2020. In return the European Union, led in this instance by Britain’s determination to have a positive impact, has promised 20 percent cut by then as well.

It is considered to be a substantial achievement that the “Durban platform” includes China, India and the USA, countries that had previously rejected Kyoto and which together account for nearly half of all CO2 emissions.

Conspicuous by its lack of accord was Canada, whose conservative government previously said it would not sign on for a second Kyoto commitment period, partly because of its strong support for extracting the heavily polluting, but lucrative, tar sand oil of northern Alberta. There was indirect fall out from this in the Canadian Parliament, with one opposition MP using unparliamentarily language in an outburst directed at the environment minister.

In a debate over Canada's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol a mere day after the conference ended, environment minister Peter Kent attacked the opposition's environment critic, Megan Leslie, for not attending the Durban summit. It is reported that Kent had, in fact, effectively banned all opposition MPs from Canada's delegation to the climate summit, breaking with usual practice. Liberal MP Justin Trudeau was incensed by Kent's comments to Leslie, reportedly shouting to him: “Oh, you piece of shit!"

Whilst the Kyoto agreement was seen as a move in the right direction, albeit one that some major nations declined to adopt, the Copenhagen talks two years ago were seen as a failure, with the decisions on climate change issues potentially reverting to voluntary commitments and subject to the political whims of changeable national governments. Now, with some broad areas of accord, Durban has re-established the principal that climate change should be tackled through international law, ensuring that commitments outlast governments.

If travel in 2012, whether domestic or international, gets any cheaper or easier, or less susceptible to industrial action, storms and ash clouds, it will surely be just a blip. The trend will be for cost and inconvenience to increase, which can only be good for video based collaboration. With that in mind may I wish you an enjoyable holiday, if you are about to have one, Merry Christmas if that is what you observe, but above all, a happy and prosperous 2012.

Keith Warburton