Copenhagen was a disappointment but to those that have taken a practical view of climate change and climate politics it came as no surprise. In the hands of the UN, climate change politics has always been about aid, not climate. National positions have always been taken and targets set against the demands for compensation or if you like aid. The assumptions that put Kyoto in place, no longer apply, simply because the world has changed since Kyoto. The population and immigration have increased, pollution has increased and the balance of power has moved away from the developed world. The real threat to the environment is in the developing world, not the developed world because it is there that there is the pressure of populltion, corruption (yes a big intangible contributor) and lack of measurement and infrastruture to commit to clean energy projects. As the climate knows no boundaries, so any international agreement should show no lnational boundaries and this idea that one nation has a right to pollute and the other a greater right to pollute because of its past is a nonsense.
So too is nonsense is the idea of emission trading schemes that will seemlessly transition the world to a low carbon economy. The fact is that if we are serious about the environment, then we need to change the way we think and live. This is the debate politicians don't want to have.
Copenhagen had the wrong agenda and it was attended by the wrong well meaning people. Many of the politicans that attended and hit the headlines have poor environmental records. Brazil's Lulu was applauded but his government has done little to stop deforestation; the UK's Blair and Brown have been in Government for over a decade and done very little except create government funded climate quangos in the UK; Australia's Rudd preaches to the world but can't face up to the disaster that is the Murray Darling River system. We do not need preaching from these people.
The agenda at Copenhagen should have been about:
- energy security for the world;
- the use and deployment of renewable energy;
- the reduction in the use of energy;
- the preservation of and payment for carbon sinks;
- the commitment to assist and resettled imhabitants of countries affected by rising sea levels;
Climate change should not and is not about increased aid. It is about changing attitudes to the way we live and our views of our rights as we live. If Copenhagen had agreed targets for national energy security and renewable energy, commitments to the conversion of cars to hybrid/ electric, commitments to local grids, commitments to the production of durable goods, commitments to support and grow existing and future carbon sinks, and a plan to resttle those affected by rising sea levels, then there would have been progess.
The current framework for an agreement is hopeless and worse if it did succeed, it wouldn't work. Afterall you can't set targets and create a value for a commodity that many countries don't know how to measure. Time to think again but with the political leadership and media that reports it, this won't happen.
