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Believe it or not, the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), focused on international policy, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), focused on scientific assessments in support of the FCCC, use different definitions of climate change. The two definitions are not compatible, certainly not politically and perhaps not even scientifically. This lack of coherence has contributed to the current international stalemate on climate policy, a stalemate that matters because climate change is real and actions are needed to improve energy policies and to reduce the vulnerability of people and ecosystems to climate effects.
The latest attempt to move climate policy forward was the Ninth Conference of Parties to the FCCC, held December 1 to 12, 2003, in Milan, Italy, which took place amid uncertainty about whether the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated under the FCCC in 1997, would ever come into force. The protocol requires ratification from countries whose 1990 greenhouse gas emissions total 55 percent of the global total. This level will not be reached as long as countries with significant emissions (including the United States and, thus far, Russia) refuse to ratify the protocol. Not surprisingly, climate policy experts have begun to look beyond the Kyoto Protocol to the next stage of international climate policy.
Looking beyond Kyoto, if climate policy is to move past the present stalemate, leaders of the FCCC and IPCC must address their differing definitions of climate change. The FCCC defines climate change as "a change of climate that is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity, that alters the composition of the global atmosphere, and that is in addition to natural climate variability over comparable time periods." By contrast, the IPCC defines climate change broadly as "any change in climate over time whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activity." These different definitions have practical implications for decisions about policy responses such as adaptation. They also set the stage for endless politicized debate.
For decades, the options available to deal with climate change have been clear: We can act to mitigate the future effects of climate change by addressing the factors that cause changes in climate, and we can adapt to changes in climate by addressing the factors that make society and the environment...