The Copenhagen December 2009 Environmental Summit

Copenhagen – Get Your Pessimism In Early

First Published Date: Oct 24, 2009

In December this year, the Danish capital Copenhagen will play host to the most important environmental summit of the past decade, and the most intensely-awaited since the Kyoto summit of 1997. Kyoto has come in the eyes of many to symbolise the greatest missed opportunity to turn back the tides of environmental damage, as the protocol set down in the agreement which was signed at the end of the summit have failed to be adopted by some of its signatories, and even those who have adopted them have as yet failed to make all of the required adjustments. The hope is that Copenhagen will see the attending administrations make good on the essential failures of Kyoto – but already there is doubt as to how likely that is.

The signs are not good, if you believe the sounds being made after US President Barack Obama spoke at the UN to a one-day summit on Climate issues. Although he was strident in his words, and spoke like the born orator many believe him to be, something was lacking. He gave his commitment to push through cuts in emissions and called for focus from all leaders in trying to bring about a solution to climate change, but his speech was lacking in specifics. If Copenhagen is to achieve anything in terms of driving back climate change, there will need to be a broad consensus before the parties sit down to negotiate. Otherwise, all we can look forward to is “talks about talks” with the likely outcome that another convention will have to be summoned before 2010 is out.

Perhaps unfairly, there has been a lot of criticism directed towards the relatively new American administration in the aftermath of Obama’s speech. Yes, it was light on specifics beyond a reiterated commitment to his existing initiative to cap carbon emissions at a commercial level – but there has been precious little in the way of bright initiatives from anyone else at the same time. A recent, and bold, Australian government bill aimed at cutting emissions has failed to win parliamentary support, and with PM Kevin Rudd threatening to dissolve Parliament and call another election rather than moderate its terms, the picture is one where consensus is going to be hard to find in sole countries let alone worldwide.

It could be that all of this pessimism leads to something good, however. Although the prospects for success at Copenhagen are deemed to be poor, this pessimism may ironically drive the negotiations to be more searching and less posturing. A result from Copenhagen is not impossible until the final days of the conference, and if the leaders show goodwill between now and then a deal is not out of the question. However, the deal has to be right. If all we see is another fudge like Kyoto, we cannot afford to wait another twelve years before we sort that one out. There are two months to go before the politicians begin to sit down. Will they take the chance to work on something meaningful? We can only hope.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Thegreenlivingblog.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to A Dawn Journal. This article originally published on the above website on Oct 4, 2009