Copenhagen challenges

The Danish capital will host from today and for two weeks a UN summit to tackle some action on carbon emissions. A total of 192 countries will attend a meeting that rises as much hope and expectations as doubts and questions.

With Kyoto protocol formally dead for everyone -some because consider it too few; some because never even started working on it- Copenhagen looks like the perfect opportunity to encourage a new green deal worldwide. But the meeting comes just after a conference in Barcelona that didn’t resolve anything. To that we need to add the questions rose following the leak of several email correspondence between some investigators that undermined the results of the global warming studies -and therefore, the whole thing around it.

But hope comes by the hand of the main actors -including Obama. Brazil, the US, China and India have promised each important CO2 emission cuts from now to 2020. Australia, Russia, Japan, Canada and other developed countries have followed them. Europe is the A student, ahead of everyone else, and has promised a further reduction by 30%.

But all those promises are worthless without action, as Kyoto has shown. Only Europe has achieved the agreed goals, and with internal differences. Italy, Spain and, surprisingly, the host country of this summit, Denmark, have struggled to meet the requirements and are not likely to do it in a near future.

In general, developed countries offer cuts between an 8% and 14% of the CO2 emissions. Even that is not enough. Most scientists claim for a need to meet a reduction of a 25% to 40% in the developed countries to avoid any serious problems by half this century. And those weak compromises not only are not enough, but also will be difficult to agree.

Everyone seems to agree on major issues. Maldives’ cabinet, an archipelago nation seriously endangered by the rise of sea levels, held a meeting under the sea in October to illustrate the urgency of the matter. Last week, the Nepalese government did the same in Mount Everest, helped with winter clothes and oxygen, to rise awareness over the glacial meltdown.

But it is something to agree on the obvious and something different to act in deep to avoid it. When the details about what to do appear is when discrepancies come to the surface too. The countries of the so called Umbrella group (USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Russia) are asking for more compromises from the developing countries, something the latter and the EU oppose to.

Even in the way of controlling the emissions are disagreements. Some countries, like the US, want a carbon market where countries or even companies can trade over a fixed total of allowed emissions. This way, if a country -or company- doesn’t pollute as much as it’s allowed to do, it could sell that extra allowance to another country in need to pollute more; never over passing the total already fixed. For the EU, however, this is too complex and difficult to control and regulate, so they are opting for a carbon tax.

But as if only with internal disputes wasn’t enough, there are also some countries that don’t even agree to cut the dependency from fossil fuels. Not at least for free. The OPEC countries -oil producers- are asking for a compensation for the revenues they will lose if a new green deal is reached to cut carbon emissions. Some may say it is selfish to think that way, but for many of the OPEC countries, oil is the biggest contributor to their GDP, counting as much as for half of it -or even more- in some cases.

Anyway, whatever happens in the end in Copenhagen, leaders meeting there should have something clear in their minds: as Kyoto teached us, promises are nothing without action. Whatever they agree to do must be done, doesn’t matter how few it is. The world cannot afford another failed protocol.




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