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Carbon Sinks Sink Greenhouse Gas Consensus The Sixth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change concluded in the Hague, Netherlands, on November 26 with no progress toward implementing a global "greenhouse gas" agreement. Although it is hard to imagine how delegates representing 184 national interests could ever sort out the differences between advancing industrial interests and saving the world, even on the basis of sounder science than currently supports the global warming hypothesis, the Hague convention seems to have shipwrecked primarily on two issues: the admissibility of "carbon credit trading" (allowing a plant which is under its allowable emissions quota to sell its unused quota to another plant) and the use of forests and crops as "carbon sinks." The "carbon sink" concept touches directly on forest policy, working to the advantage of countries which have a large area of forest (and agricultural land) in proportion to their total population, or to their total industrial emissions-countries like Canada, Australia, Russia, and the United States. It would, of course, work to the disadvantage of densely populated Central Europe, in terms of flexibility in meeting total carbon dioxide emissions reduction goals. Because the "carbon sink" concept places European manufacturing at a competitive disadvantage, it proved unacceptable to European delegates, even after U.S. negotiators proposed discounting the value of carbon-sink credits by two thirds. The Sixth Conference is due to reconvene for another try in May 2001. Back to "News" Forest Resources Association
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