“It is realistic to say that in Copenhagen we will not be able to conclude a treaty,” said Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany recently. She is right to be realistic. Should we be depressed by her pessimism? I do not think so. A climate change treaty concluded in the next few months would hardly be worth the paper upon which it will be written. The developed world is not yet ready for the changes and sacrifices that a meaningful treat would require. The developing world is still playing “catch up” and inte3nds to continue this game until it has caught up.
I shall now commit what many will regard as an environmental heresy; I think it is better for the negotiations at Copenhagen to fail than it is for them to cobble together a poor climate protection treaty. It is better not to conclude a treat at all than to conclude a treaty which does not work. If we conclude a treaty which has the same failings and omissions as the treaty and protocol concluded at Kyoto we shall be giving the world false confidence. A poor climate protection treaty will simply be a way of that the people of this planet can get false comfort from the delusion that something is happening about climate change when in reality it will be business as usual for that section of the world’s population that emits greenhouse gases without control.
On the other hand, failure at Copenhagen will possibly galvanise the leaders of the world into real action and may well cause them to look at the problem differently. Perhaps instead of using complicated mechanisms to protect the climate they can outlaw simple things, like building new coal fired power stations, vehicles emitting more than so much instead of creating targets which bear no relationship to actual greenhouse gas emission.
Filed under: United Nations Climate Change Conference, carbon dioxide, climate change, global warming, targets | Tagged: angela merkel, copenhagen climate conference
