The goal of the Copenhagen summit was to come to a legally binding worldwide agreement that would tackle climate change by mandating the reduction in carbon emissions by developed nations and require financial assistance to developing countries to curb increasing emissions.  More specifically the goal was to get developed and poorer nations to agree to a 50 percent emissions cut by 2050, as compared to 2000 levels.   However, I did learn that it became clear very early on in the summit that there was no way this kind of agreement would be made.

I read that the summit was being described as everything from “lacking” to “chaotic”  and that the Prime Minister of India may have gotten up and abruptly headed for the airport. There are also rumors that China single handedly twarted a binding agreement among the participatns.  But regardless of what is and isn’t true about the whole ordeal, I think we can agree that the output of the summit was very lackluster.

So what did come out of this worldly meeting of the minds in Denmark? Well, in a last ditch effort to make the summit productive, the Copenhagen Accord was agreed upon among the countries of the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa.  The Accord does not dictate any mandatory reduction of emissions or requirements for financial assistance to developing countries.  Basically they agreed that climate change is a problem and that increased cooperation is required to curb global pollution emissions.  There are a number of goals in the agreement, but there is certainly no legal requirement for anybody to reach these goals.  It is pretty much a “step” toward reaching a binding agreement at next year’s climate summit in Mexico City. 

Hopefully, the next decade will bring a little more cooperation.

But seriously, forget about all the benefits of climate change mitigation and think about the potential effects of global warming, they could totally ruin us.  So basically, the risk of not doing anything is huge and the risk of doing something is, well, nothing.  I really have a lot of difficultly listening to flat Earthers cry about some hoax or conspiracy.  If we don’t curb climate change and the potential effects that come with it, we’re going to have more problems than Tiger Woods’ marriage.

In fact, a few extramarital transgressions will be the least of our problems because the greatest transgression of all will be too great to reverse – the pollution of the planet.  The bottom line is that the Earth is warming.  And while you could claim that this is some natural cycle of global temperature, you should first consider that the Earth’s average temperature is 14 degrees Celsius and it has gone up 1 degree Celsius over the past 150 years.  That’s a 7% increase – and this is in only 150 years!  Geologically speaking, 10,000 years is a nano second and 150 is a negligible amount of time.

The following excerpt was taken from the website of the COP15 conference:

At present the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere is about 385 ppm (parts per million). Before industrialization it was about 280 ppm. Analyses of air contained in ice from the Antarctic ice cap show that there is far more CO₂ in the air today than at any time in the last 650,000 years.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference which is being held in Copenhagen, Denmark.  Many are hoping for the conference to result in an ambitious agreement to reduce carbon emissions involving all countries of the World.  In the very least it is a refreshing opportunity for leaders of the World to discuss a threat for which a unified effort is necessary.

I’m personally not going to listen to any nay-sayers of the green movement or efforts to curb climate change because there is very little detrimental results that could come for any approach at reversing climate change – the risk of doing nothing is just far too great.