Climate Talks Echo 50-Year Bretton Woods Process

It took decades for negotiators to write treaties that curb nuclear warheads and settle trade disputes between nations, and by that measure, efforts to limit global warming may just be getting started.

United Nations climate talks starting in Mexico next week will resemble “sitting in Bretton Woods in 1944,” said Harvard University Environmental Economics Director Robert Stavins, referring to meetings that devised a new world financial system and envisioned an agency governing international trade.