The totality of the UN Climate Change Conferences in Copenhagen in December 2009 is getting mixed reviews.
Let’s concentrate on what items were accomplished:
1.An Accord, named the Copenhagen Accord, “a 12 paragraph document” was agreed to but no “legally binding treaty” or international agreement “requiring further cuts by richer nations” was arrived at as was hoped.
2.”Saturday’s decision supported a “goal” for a $100 billion annual fund by 2020 to help poor countries fight climate change, and recognized the scientific view of the importance of limiting warming to 2 degrees Celsius. There were no emissions cuts targets, however, and no commitment that all countries would one day sign up to a successor treaty to the Kyoto protocol.“
3. Barack said, ““We have made a meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough. For the first time in history, all of the major economies have come together to take action [on global warming],”
4. It is difficult to gather how the Chinese, the largest CO2 emitter, views the Accord but they were at the table with Barack and leaders from India, Brazil, and South Africa to set the tone for the Accord
5.”But Robert Stavins, who directs Harvard University’s Project on International Climate Agreements, told the Christian Science Monitor that the agreement marked the first time in any major international negotiations that heads of state “pushed the bureaucrats out of the way” to craft a deal, which “speaks volumes about the importance the leaders put on the issue”.
Let’s concentrate on the future:
1.There will be a UN climate conference in Mexico City in 2010
The main hang up in these negotiations was the fussing and a bit of historical angst by the poorer nations over the blame the larger polluting or richer nations should accept for their prior and current industrialization. But if anything is to get done perhaps it should be the richer more industrialized polluting nations who need to agree amongst themselves how to stop the CO2 release and IF they can agree and act on it then the poorer nations will benefit.
We will give a more in depth blog account of the conclusions to the Climate Conference soon.
We took text from 12-20-09 articles in the NYTimes, the FT, Reuters, the Orlando Sentinel, the official Copenhagen Climate conference website to complete this blog article
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