International Climate Change Conference Bonn, Germany July 21st 2001
Briefing papers: the United Nations Climate Committee

You are from the United Nations Climate Committee, which does research on climate change, and called this conference, as it did the one in Kyoto, to try to get an international agreement on cutting down greenhouse gas emissions so as to prevent global warming and climate change.

Because the UN is democratic, you have strong representation from the poorer countries and you listen to what they have to say. They are allowed to observe this conference but not allowed to speak at it. You have recently published a report which says that it is the world's poorest countries who will suffer the most from climate change.

You know that the United States will be arguing against the Kyoto agreement because they say that cutting greenhouse gas emissions will be bad for the economy. However, according to the research that your economists have been doing, climate change could cost the world $300 billion a year if action is not taken now to cut emissions from burning coal, oil and gas. So to say that the Kyoto targets are bad for the economy is a very short-term argument because in the long run, climate change will be much worse for the economy, and cost us a lot more. Exxon-Mobil, the oil company, last year made a profit of $16.9 billion, but even this huge profit is nothing compared to the cost of the damage from climate change (which the oil industry has done so much to create).

You are also very concerned for all your member states who have a lot of heavily populated coastline which would be likely to flood if global warming carries on as it is. The poorest countries in the world are the least able to cope with the extreme weather which will probably be one of the worst effects of global warming. You may try to represent the views of some of these countries as they cannot speak for themselves.

Your aim at this conference is to get the rich countries (including the USA if possible) to agree to as much of a cut in greenhouse gas emissions as possible.