The Ministerial Conference on Atmospheric Pollution and Climate Change was the first major political climate conference that took place on 6 and 7 November 1989 at the Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. Attendees included ministers of 68 countries. The goal of the conference was creating a binding agreement on CO₂ emissions, which almost succeeded. The conference was organized by the Dutch environment minister Ed Nijpels and prepared by climatologist Pier Vellinga. The United States,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom did not want to make an agreement about the reduction of emissions. Even discussions about stabilizing emissions turned out to be difficult. The conference did not reach its initial goals. The United States sent the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

William K. Reilly William Kane Reilly (born January 26, 1940) was Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President George H. W. Bush. He has served as president of World Wildlife Fund, as a founder or advisor to several business ventures, and ...

and White House Chief of Staff John H. Sununu. According to Reilly, Sununu was nervous about him. Sununu made the science advisor to president

George H. W. Bush George Herbert Walker BushSince around 2000, he has been usually called George H. W. Bush, Bush Senior, Bush 41 or Bush the Elder to distinguish him from his eldest son, George W. Bush, who served as the 43rd president from 2001 to 2009; pr ...

D. Allan Bromley David Allan Bromley (May 4, 1926 – February 10, 2005) was a Canadian-American physicist, academic administrator and science advisor to American president George H. W. Bush. His field of research was the study of low-energy nuclear reactions an ...

, responsible. The science advisor was pressured by the climate sceptical Sununu to convince the other attendees to abandon the commitment to freeze emissions. In 2019, the conference attracted interest due to a publication in ''New York Times Magazine'' by Nathaniel Rich, who subsequently wrote the book '' Losing Earth'' as an extension of the article. According to Rich, this conference was the closest the world has ever been to a binding international agreement regarding greenhouse gas emissions.

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