2nd Conference of the Parties (COP-2) to the UNFCCC

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Some GCI members at the 2nd Conference of Parties [COP] to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC] in Geneva 1996. Contraction and Convergence (C&C) was formally tabled at that event that year. As shown in this picture, we defended it at rates consistent with a 350 ppmv atmospheric stabilisation target. Greenpeace, who also called for that ppmv value inexplicably led an NGO campaign against C&C.



One could also ask where was Jim Hansen, now of 350 ppmv, at this time and indeed for the next ten years?

Starting in 1989, GCI proposed the thesis of Equity & Survival to the UN 1990-92. Through 1993-94 we countered its economic antithesis of Efficiency with No-Regrets as the Economics of Genocide. From 1995 onwards GCI has formally tabled the Synthesis of Contraction & Convergence [C&C] at the UN, since when it has become the most widely cited, and arguably widely supported methodology in the process. The Paper here was presented to the ZEW conference in Mannheim Germany in June 1997. We tried to continue the defence of 350 ppmv.

When finally published by ZEW through Springer Verlag in an updated form, this 350 defence was edited out.
GCI C&C Paper for ZEW 1996 Conference Mannheim after COP-2, UNFCCC Bonn June 1996.
For the original GCI paper see here
For the version eventually published see here



Later poster of C&C used after COP-2
This got taken up and used all over the world. Comments like an Australian who said at COP-4, that says it all, or sitting in the US State Department with Climate Policy Guru Raef Pomerance before COP-3 in Kyoto in 1997, that is the best damn f******* graphic of what to about climate change I have ever seen.