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Copenhagen Fails: Unclear Commitment Leaves Global Climate Walking on the Brink
The XV International Climate Change Conference was held in mid-December in Copenhagen, Denmark. The event was attended by experts and representatives of 192 member countries of the United Nations, who had one sole goal: to find solutions to the threats suffered by the planet.
The chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Indian scientist Rajendra Pachauri, focused on the fact that all developed countries shall commit to reduce a certain percentage of gases by 2020.
China is the world's biggest polluter. In 2007 (the latest data available), this country released 1.800 million tons of CO2. The second and third places went to the United States with 1.585 million and the European Union with 1.036.
These three delegations attended the fifteenth summit with ambitious objectives of reducing CO2 emissions (not as a global goal) and uncertain about the role they must play to prevent global warming.
Industrialized countries have taken note and invited everybody to submit ambitious goals. The European Union expects a reduction of 20% by
2020, while the United States made a commitment, for the first time, to reduce emissions by 17% by 2020. That commitment, however, is not as encouraging since the percentage is calculated in compliance with data from 2005 and not 1990, a year in which the emissions were much higher. Moreover, this initiative still must be ratified by the U.S. Senate.
Participants at the Copenhagen summit reached a minimal agreement; however, representatives of several developing countries expressed their rejection to such a treaty, claiming that it cannot become a United Nations program meant to combat global warming. "We regret to inform you that Tuvalu cannot accept this document," said Ian Fry, a delegate from the Pacific island, who is concern about the potential disappearance of the island if the level of the oceans keeps rising.
Moreover, at the extraordinary session in Copenhagen, and after most of the leaders were already gone, Fry said that the document aims to limit global warming to a maximum of 2ºC, which is quite an unpretentious goal that could imply "the end of Tuvalu.”
Delegates from Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua were also against the agreements reached and said that they will not help curb global warming. They criticized the fact that some decisions were taken behind closed doors.
The representatives supporting the agreement acknowledged that the treaty is not perfect and that it does not meet the expectations generated at this summit. They agree on the fact that is signifies a turning point for pushing the world economy towards renewable energies.
For its part, Greenpeace decried the European Union's "inability" to save the Climate Change Summit from "failure." According to this organization, the declaration made by world leaders has only been an "image laundering," since it is nowhere close to keeping climate change "under control."
The historic climate conference barely escaped from being a total failure, as it accepted a political settlement that gives financial aid to the poorest countries, for them to face global warming; however, it does not include further cuts in the emission of greenhouse gases.
After two weeks of bitter arguments and a final 31-hour-long marathon of talks that made evident the profound differences between rich and poor countries, almost all of the 193 nations at the UN conference endorsed a treaty submitted by the United States, which aims at having further cuts in the emissions generated by rich countries, but does not impose any binding limits.
The frantic diplomacy of President Barack Obama in the snowy Danish capital, where a hundred heads of state or government had gathered, resulted in a document which promises that, within the next three years, rich countries will donate $30 billion in climatic aid to the less fortunate countries, and that such aid will eventually turn into $100 billion a year by 2020.
The agreement includes a method to verify the reduction of the emissions of CO2 and of other greenhouse gases by country, a key demand of Washington, since China has refused the international supervision of its voluntary measures.
UN Climate Chief, Yvo de Boer, told reporters in the final minutes of the conference that the Copenhagen agreement "is an awesome treaty, but it is not binding.” A treaty that requires deeper cuts by industrialized countries must await the continuation of these negotiations in 2010.
The conference did not take any action on a matter that was believed to be close to being achieved: a plan to protect the world's tropical forests, vital to the health of the climate, that would pay about 40 poor countries for the protection of their forests. Deforestation due to the logging industry, ranching, and agriculture has made Brazil and Indonesia the third and fourth largest carbon emitters in the world.
The document states that carbon gas emissions must be reduced to the point of keeping the increase in average global temperatures below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), above pre-industrial levels. Average temperatures have already risen 0.7 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
Some of the most vulnerable nations to climate change, including low-lying islands, believe that the limit should be held at not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
The chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Indian scientist Rajendra Pachauri, focused on the fact that all developed countries shall commit to reduce a certain percentage of gases by 2020.
China is the world's biggest polluter. In 2007 (the latest data available), this country released 1.800 million tons of CO2. The second and third places went to the United States with 1.585 million and the European Union with 1.036.
These three delegations attended the fifteenth summit with ambitious objectives of reducing CO2 emissions (not as a global goal) and uncertain about the role they must play to prevent global warming.
Industrialized countries have taken note and invited everybody to submit ambitious goals. The European Union expects a reduction of 20% by
2020, while the United States made a commitment, for the first time, to reduce emissions by 17% by 2020. That commitment, however, is not as encouraging since the percentage is calculated in compliance with data from 2005 and not 1990, a year in which the emissions were much higher. Moreover, this initiative still must be ratified by the U.S. Senate.
Participants at the Copenhagen summit reached a minimal agreement; however, representatives of several developing countries expressed their rejection to such a treaty, claiming that it cannot become a United Nations program meant to combat global warming. "We regret to inform you that Tuvalu cannot accept this document," said Ian Fry, a delegate from the Pacific island, who is concern about the potential disappearance of the island if the level of the oceans keeps rising.
Moreover, at the extraordinary session in Copenhagen, and after most of the leaders were already gone, Fry said that the document aims to limit global warming to a maximum of 2ºC, which is quite an unpretentious goal that could imply "the end of Tuvalu.”
Delegates from Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua were also against the agreements reached and said that they will not help curb global warming. They criticized the fact that some decisions were taken behind closed doors.
The representatives supporting the agreement acknowledged that the treaty is not perfect and that it does not meet the expectations generated at this summit. They agree on the fact that is signifies a turning point for pushing the world economy towards renewable energies.
For its part, Greenpeace decried the European Union's "inability" to save the Climate Change Summit from "failure." According to this organization, the declaration made by world leaders has only been an "image laundering," since it is nowhere close to keeping climate change "under control."
The historic climate conference barely escaped from being a total failure, as it accepted a political settlement that gives financial aid to the poorest countries, for them to face global warming; however, it does not include further cuts in the emission of greenhouse gases.
After two weeks of bitter arguments and a final 31-hour-long marathon of talks that made evident the profound differences between rich and poor countries, almost all of the 193 nations at the UN conference endorsed a treaty submitted by the United States, which aims at having further cuts in the emissions generated by rich countries, but does not impose any binding limits.
The frantic diplomacy of President Barack Obama in the snowy Danish capital, where a hundred heads of state or government had gathered, resulted in a document which promises that, within the next three years, rich countries will donate $30 billion in climatic aid to the less fortunate countries, and that such aid will eventually turn into $100 billion a year by 2020.
The agreement includes a method to verify the reduction of the emissions of CO2 and of other greenhouse gases by country, a key demand of Washington, since China has refused the international supervision of its voluntary measures.
UN Climate Chief, Yvo de Boer, told reporters in the final minutes of the conference that the Copenhagen agreement "is an awesome treaty, but it is not binding.” A treaty that requires deeper cuts by industrialized countries must await the continuation of these negotiations in 2010.
The conference did not take any action on a matter that was believed to be close to being achieved: a plan to protect the world's tropical forests, vital to the health of the climate, that would pay about 40 poor countries for the protection of their forests. Deforestation due to the logging industry, ranching, and agriculture has made Brazil and Indonesia the third and fourth largest carbon emitters in the world.
The document states that carbon gas emissions must be reduced to the point of keeping the increase in average global temperatures below two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), above pre-industrial levels. Average temperatures have already risen 0.7 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
Some of the most vulnerable nations to climate change, including low-lying islands, believe that the limit should be held at not more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
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