An interesting discussion broke out today at the UN climate change talks in Bangkok (yes, every so often it happens). It involved how the Kyoto Protocol could be strengthened by including greenhouse gases or emitting sectors that had previously been excluded. Much of the discussion focused on emissions from international aviation and international shipping, what people here call "bunker fuels."

Both of these sectors are significant contributors to global warming. If either were countries, they’d be in the top 5 or 6 globally in terms of their contribution to polluting the atmosphere. More importantly, emissions from both sectors are rising fast, faster in fact than any other sector. Emissions from international flights, for example, have nearly doubled since 1990.

When the Kyoto Protocol was being negotiated back in 1997, the technical issues surrounding how to allocate the emissions were deemed too complicated. For example, when a ship or plane leaves one country, arrives in another, and maybe refuels in a third along the way, which country is responsible for the emissions? Nobody had easy answers, so the industry associations—the International Civil Aviation Association (ICAO) and the International Marine Organization (IMO)—were formally given the mandate of figuring out how to address their own emissions.

Ten years later, guess what's happened? Nothing. ICAO gave a presentation at the UN today whose message was essentially, "It’s really still too complicated." Many countries, including the EU-27 and Norway, have made the point that the barriers are political, not technical. Today, they made concrete suggestions. For example, emissions from international flights could be assigned to where planes refuel. Wow, that doesn't seem complicated at all.

The EU's message was pretty clear: Enough is enough. If the industries don’t want to come up with solutions, we should. So let's set up a working group to decide this at the UN.

Seems reasonable, after so much time. As expected, there was opposition from countries that serve as international shipping hubs (Panama) and aviation hubs (Singapore), who would probably prefer no regulation at all. Unfortunately, however, Canada also opposed having a UN discussion, though we did say we wanted these emissions addressed. Apparently, the Canadian government thinks the industries need just a little more time to figure things out.