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If you pinned your hopes on some sort of grand bargain coming out of Copenhagen, you might want to sit down. It's been a bad day. The European Union finance ministers can't or won't come up with the money to help the developing nations cope with climate change. The developed countries don't want to accept mandatory emissions cuts unless the developing world does the same, which India flat out refuses to do. Not that it matters because the most the U.S. will agree to is the promise of 80 percent reductions by 2050.
But wait, there's good news. The developed nations may let the developing nations off the hook and let everyone use non-binding targets for emissions reductions. Of course they may reward themselves for their generosity by graciously agreeing to lower the bar to 50 percent emissions reductions by 2050.
Once again, the politics of the next election outweighs the needs of the next generation. And have you noticed how politicians love to postpone the pain as far off into the future as possible, hopefully to a time when they are either out of office or dead? I'd say 2050 ought to about do it.
Even a perennial optimist like UN chief climate negotiator Yvo de Boer seems to have thrown in the towel: "There isn't sufficient time to get the whole thing done. But I hope it will go well beyond simply a declaration of principles. The form I would like it to take is the groundwork for a ratifiable agreement next year."
Nigel Purvis (love the name), a former climate negotiator under the Bush administration pretty much says what I have been saying all along: "The most likely form any agreement will take will be a political declaration. It could be a statement by senior leaders, or it could be adopted by the parties as a formal decision. That does not make it legally binding, but it sends a signal to the world of the direction the negotiations are going and give guidance to negotiators as they continue their work."
Yeah, it sends a signal all right. One that I am reading loud and clear: Half-hearted half measures, too little, too late.
This article first appeard in PlanetRestart.org
