Today and tomorrow, the Bush administration is hosting a "Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change" at the East-West Center in Honolulu. It will include 16 countries that represent some 80 percent of the Earth's greenhouse gas pollution.

If the U.S. finally drops its blinders and agrees to dramatic cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions, this meeting could be a defining moment in history. Or this meeting could be another nonevent, or worse, a cynical diversion.

To date, the United States refuses to join the rest of the world and the United Nations to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions and rising global temperatures. The Bush administration fiddles while the globe burns.

Hawai'i is extremely vulnerable to impending sea-level rise and ocean acidification. We must demand urgent action from our country. We need this meeting to be a defining moment.

For seven years, the Bush administration has blocked and delayed action on mandatory, binding cuts in carbon emissions. Within those past seven years, the Arctic summer ice melt quadrupled, Katrina leveled one of America's favorite cities, and the Greenland and Antarctic ice melt accelerated beyond almost all estimates. 2007 was the second warmest year on record. The gathering storm clouds of catastrophic climate change grew much, much darker.

We will never get those seven years back.

But in the next two days, the U.S. could start to fix these problems and restore our relationship with the rest of the world. It begins with a commitment by our country to meet the challenge.

In Monday night's State of the Union address, Bush weakly suggested that we "complete an international agreement that has the potential to slow, stop and eventually reverse the growth of greenhouse gasses." That won't do it. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that global greenhouse gas emissions need to peak in the next 10 to 15 years and be reduced below 50 percent of the 2000 levels before 2050 to stabilize their concentrations in the atmosphere. Developed countries as a group must reduce emissions 25 percent to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 — standards that European countries now propose.

Any U.S. agreement short of that target means failure. We will lose the fight against climate change.

Hawai'i, as host to a major international meeting on climate change, has strong significance for three reasons.

First, our Islands have so much to lose. Sea-level rise alone will dramatically reshape our islands. University of Hawai'i experts estimate a conservative 1-meter rise would inundate much of Hawai'i's coastline, including our ports, many of our favorite beaches, all of Waikiki, Honolulu's reef runway, Hawai'i's wastewater treatment facilities, and many historic sites and populated areas up to one mile inland from the current shoreline.

Second, Hawai'i played a major role in the history of climate change science. For more than 50 years, researchers on Mauna Loa sampled the atmosphere to track the steady and foreboding annual increase in carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere. These greenhouse gas concentrations are now higher than they have been for 800,000 years.

Third, and most importantly, Hawai'i has been at the center of pivotal global events before. In 1941, the bombing of Pearl Harbor galvanized U.S. commitment to fight in the Second World War, leading to an all-consuming effort that stopped aggression and genocide and helped stabilize the world. The threat now before us, though silent and at times imperceptible, is no less far reaching. Hawai'i, once again, may be the catalyst for a universal struggle for stability in the world.

With Hawai'i's vast portfolio of indigenous, clean-energy options, we have the opportunity to be a global role model. Hawai'i is already leading by example by enacting an enforceable state-wide cap on our greenhouse gas emissions last year (Act 234). This law requires Hawai'i to reduce its nonaviation greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels before 2020. We have much more to do, but Hawai'i has taken that first step by committing to greenhouse gas reductions.

Now the United States must take its first step. This week's meeting at the East-West Center is the United States' opportunity for real action. Watch closely. Our clock is ticking.

Jeff Mikulina, director of the Sierra Club Hawai'i Chapter; Travis Idol, steering committee member of Interfaith Power and Light; and Charles P.M.K. Burrows, president of 'Ahahui Malama I Ka Lokahi wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.