What’s all the fuss about?
Here, for policy groupies, is the actual agreement (only 12 paragraphs). And for the rest of us, here’s the outstanding BBC reportage.
If you think climate change is a serious threat to the environmental health of the planet, to our capacity to produce 70% more food for 9 billion people by 2050, and to the morality of continuing to use fossil fuels wantonly, then read the agreement and weep.
It’s enough to convince you that an “age of science doesn’t necessarily translate into an age of reason” as one pundit put it.
John Key does have it right when he observes that the present negotiating process sucks (not exactly his words, but definitely his meaning).
193 nations were represented at the Copenhagen talks. However, about 30 nations account for 90% of greenhouse gas emissions. Those thirty guilty parties must carry the ball over the goal line in the next year. That’s undemocratic, unfair to the victims in the other 163 nations, non-participatory and all the rest … but it’s also the harsh reality of managing the politics of a global energy-use transition that carries urgency for all. If those thirty nations fail us, we all go down together.
So, does Copenhagen amount to much?
Well, by 2020 the rich countries will have borrowed another $130 billion from each other (and future generations) to help the poor countries cope with a problem virtually no country has the political will to address seriously today.
Maybe that’s too cynical. By February, each country is expected to indicate exactly how it will achieve reduction in greenhouse emissions (of any amount) by 2020. Maybe we’ll begin to see then who the serious players are.
Meantime, once again, BayBuzz urges MP Craig Foss to agree to meet with his constituents for a public exchange on Government’s climate change policy. Agriculture’s role in mitigating climate change was perhaps the one bright spot in the Copenhagen discussions. That would be an area of special interest to constituents in Hawke’s Bay. January is an open book, Mr MP.
Tom Belford
And so it goes on – and on – while none, Al Gore included, have shown a proven/demonstrable link between Man Made CO2 and Global Temperature increase. Surely all this nattering on CO2 is the greatest source of Hot Air.