Climate reality: Voluntary efforts not enough

In Brazil more rainforests are being saved, and in Chicago there's a voluntary carbon pollution trading system. People recycle, buy smaller and newer cars, and change lightbulbs.

But the impact of such piecemeal, voluntary efforts is small. Experts say it will never be enough without the kind of strong global agreement that eluded negotiators at the U.N. summit this past week in Copenhagen.

Emissions of greenhouse gases keep rising and so do global temperatures.

Dozens of countries — including the top two carbon polluters, China and the United States — came to the climate talks with proposals to ratchet down pollution levels.

But analysis by the United Nations and outside management systems experts show that those voluntary reductions will not keep temperatures from increasing by more than 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) compared with now. That's the level that scientists, the United Nations, the European Union and the Obama administration have said the world cannot afford.

Good intentions aren't enough. The deal forged by President Barack Obama with China and several other countries sets up the first major program of climate aid to poorer nations to help them deal with climate change. But it offers few specifics and goes no farther than emissions curbs already pledged. More negotiations are planned for next year.

"It just underlines the heroic effort here that the science says needs to be done; it's not easy," said Alden Meyer, policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "If it were easy, it would have been done. This is a daunting effort."

And no one knew that more than a weary Obama, who 14 hours after arriving in Copenhagen, unveiled the political agreement by saying "more aggressive" emission cuts were needed and so were still-unseen scientific breakthroughs.

"But this is going to be hard," Obama said in a news conference late Friday. "This is hard within countries; it's going to be even harder between countries."