The U.S. climate change action plan: Challenges and prospects

In 1992, the United States and 154 other countries signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international accord outlining measures for dealing with the threat of global warming. The following year, the Clinton administration released its Climate Change Action Plan for meeting the convention's goal of stabilizing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at 1990 levels by the year 2000. Evaluation of the plan's prospects for success must necessarily be speculative at this point, but already several of the assumptions on which the plan is predicated appear questionable. Moreover, even if the emissions stabilization goal is met, the problem of global warming will persist. Therefore, the greatest contribution of the plan might be to raise consciousness about the need for sustained measures to address climate change and its attendant socioeconomic consequences