Copenhagen Conference Opens, with 192 Nations in Attendance
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The Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change opened today, with 192 nations in attendance, making it the most significant event ever staged to bring governments together to fashion a global response to climate destabilization. 15,000 participants representing governments and the fields of science, economics and public policy research, are gathered to try to reach agreement on the first true global protocol for curbing emissions and countering the threat of comprehensive climate destabilization.
Denmark’s prime minister Lokke Rasmussen told those gathered that a deal was “within our reach”, urging delegates to recognize that “The world is depositing hope with you for a short while in the history of mankind”. Rasmussen also noted that 110 world leaders, including the US president Barack Obama, would attend a summit at the end of the meetings in order to agree to a global framework response to climate destabilization.
Rasmussen said the involvement of so many heads of government “reflects an unprecedented mobilization of political determination to combat climate change. It represents a huge opportunity. An opportunity the world cannot afford to miss”. One of the key issues that has persistently blocked progress on emissions reduction is the perceived divide in interests between the industrialized world and major developing economies, which want to the right to further expand their carbon emissions, as they industrialize.
That question of fair and equitable emissions restrictions, both from an historic industrialization standpoint and with regard to the future stability of the human habitat, will be instrumental in deciding whether or not the 192 nations at Copenhagen will be able to reach agreement on a binding climate treaty.
MSNBC is reporting that “The aim for Copenhagen is a politically binding deal and a new deadline in 2010 for legal details”, and with so many world leaders planning to attend, there is renewed hope that something close to a final deal can be reached during the conference. The idea of reaching agreement on the overall framework, including targets and timetables, while leaving the specific legal mechanisms for next year, could be the kind of procedural compromise that allows this conference to achieve the aim of establishing a global climate protocol.
Britain’s prime minister Gordon Brown who early on called for heads of government to attend the climate negotiations at Copenhagen, writing in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, warned that:
Today we face a global challenge whose solution, for decades until now, has appeared beyond our reach – impossible, unaffordable and unworkable.
But catastrophic climate change is no more a matter of untameable fate than slavery, women’s oppression, mass unemployment or nuclear war. And over the next two weeks we have the chance to come together, as a truly global community, to take the first decisive action needed to change its course.
Brown laid out three key points he believes will be instrumental to achieving diplomatic consensus on how best to respond to the climate-destabilization threat: 1) “all countries need to reach for high level ambition in their commitments to reduce their emissions and their emissions growth”, with cuts not dependent on what other nations will do; 2) “a financing agreement that enables developing countries to tackle climate change”, so that growth by carbon-emission is not the only way to progress; 3) “a “transparency mechanism” by which all countries can see clearly what is happening, not only in their own countries but in others”.
Brown suggested that while nations must commit to ambitious targets because it’s the right policy approach, there has to be a building up of confidence among competing markets, so that emissions-reduction and energy overhauls are seen as mutually beneficial endeavors. He added that “If by the end of next week we have not got an ambitious agreement, it will be an indictment of our generation that our children will not forgive.”
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