It took two weeks of talks in Copenhagen, after two years of preliminary talks and in the end, to much fanfare we got….
A big, fat nothing.
Here is how The New York Times describes the so-called Copenhagen Accord:
The plan does not firmly commit the industrialized nations or the developing nations to firm targets for midterm or long-term greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The accord is nonetheless significant in that it codifies the commitments of individual nations to act on their own to tackle global warming.
The accord provides a system for monitoring and reporting progress toward those national pollution-reduction goals, a compromise on an issue over which China bargained hard. It calls for hundreds of billions of dollars to flow from wealthy nations to those countries most vulnerable to a changing climate. And it sets a goal of limiting the global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2050, implying deep cuts in climate-altering emissions over the next four decades.
But it was an equivocal agreement that was, to many, a disappointing conclusion to a two-year process that had the goal of producing a comprehensive and enforceable action plan for addressing dangerous changes to the global climate. The messy compromise mirrored the chaotic nature of the conference, which virtually all participants said had been badly organized and run.
The accord sets no goal for concluding a binding international treaty, which leaves the implementation of its provisions uncertain. It is likely to undergo many months, perhaps years, of additional negotiations before it emerges in any internationally enforceable form.
Goal-setting is nice, but we have moved well beyond the time when we can just set some goals and hope for the best. We still use too much oil, still burn too much carbon and we have done nothing to protect the poor, low-lying nations who will bear the brunt of the bad stuff — and there remain few if any incentives to keep developing nations from doing what we did to build our economies.
Why should China and India make serious efforts to address the issue, when we have shown an unwillingness to do the same?
The cautious optimism proffered by some environmental groups is really nothing more than face-saving given that, in reality, we are in no better of a position on climate change than we were before these talks began.
