Copenhagen summit fails

[mateykatie]

There is no legally binding agreement.

This was just a photo-call for the politicians. Climate change is a very serious problem, but these so-called leaders are more interested in narcissistic grandstanding.

I am particularly disappointed with Obama. I thought he was a genuine leader rather than just another politician, but he seems to be all rhetoric. What's the point of being persuasive if you're so timid when it comes to the crunch?

So much of the problem in selling these ideas is the fundamental lack of understanding of human psyschology. Forcing authoritarian targets and pain on people in the name of ideology isn't going to win much goodwill, especially when so many are so sceptical of climate change anyway.

How about some environmental policies that actually appeal to people? Carrots instead of sticks? Saving money on electricity bills by providing grants for insulation, instead of more and more tax? How about more renewables anyway, independent of what other countries do? Why do we need global targets, when becoming more self-sufficient is great for us anyway?

The worst thing about Copenhagen is the ridiculous ramping. Surely managing expectations is the most basic political skill? Sell results, not hopes.

Not to mention the obvious. The BBC news at 10 shows Obama's plane landing in a Copenhagen covered in snow. What idiot decided to hold a conference on global warming in such a cold place?

Pathetic, the lot of them.

I think people/governments are genuinely concerned. But given that the world's economy/businesses almost collapsed a year ago, I think leaders are finding it difficult to commit the sort of money required to make a real change.

Unfortunately, climate change is more of a problem 'on the horizon' than a 'fix it now' sort of thing. Unemployment, banks failing, job creation, etc are where the money is being directed.

IMO.

Earlybird, I think you're right. Which is why the approach in Copenhagen is the wrong one.

It just seems so distant. The connection between switching off lights when you leave the room, and global temperature targets and carbon trading schemes seems awfully tenuous unless you really care, especially when so many other things seem so much more immediate.

The politicians should spend less time talking to each other and more time coming up with workable, practical solutions. To go round screaming "it's an emergency, this is the most important issue in history" and then coming out with a last-minute nonsense of an agreement to save face makes them all look pretty stupid.

Why must they always chase the headlines, looking for international summits and conferences to try to look big on the world stage? What's wrong with boring, steady but genuine progress?

As far as I can tell, there wasn't a single president or prime minister on the planet who had the guts to say: this summit is a joke, a massive waste of resources. Better to save the CO2 emissions and talk by phone if we need to. We all know the real work is done by flunkeys and aides behind closed doors anyway.

Sorry, I forgot to put any links in. Here are some stories

Times

Guardian

Independent

FT

They should have held the summit in Tuvalu.

Yes people talk about climate change as something that will happen in 50years time- but it is happening now.

The problem is that the World economy is in the toilet and the cost of reducing emissions by building very expensive renewable technologies to generate electricty and replacing combustion engines in vehicles with battery tehnology simply is too high at the moment.

No politiican is going to go home and tell cash strapped consumers they will have to pay more tax, face higher energy bills or replace their car when they are facing job losses and falling wages.

The process has not moved forward since Kyoto and the UEA email scandal has only served to make people even more sceptical Global Warming is actually happening at all.

this is a massive opportunity for new low-carbon industries, but the old high-emmission industries are just too powerful and our politicians too weak.

fluffles - the problem is that low carbon technology is just incredibly expensive to build and operate compared to existing carbon technology. For example, the cost of generating electric with natural gas is much lower than with wind turbines. Of course wind is free but the cost of mainatining offshore turbines plus the initial capital cost per unit of generating capacity is really high.

A good initial step would be to replace all coal fired power stations with gas fired power stations that produce much less CO2 per unit of electricity.

Our 'greenest' Prime Minister was Margaret Thatcher who encouraged use of natural gas in power generation and many coal fired power plants shut down. During her period in office CO2 emissions actually fell but they have risen under Labour.

OP and Beta. Do keep up. Have you not noticed that we no longer talk of 'global warming' but 'climate change'? This is because the science shows that, erm, something is, err ...

nobid - yes yes you are absolutely right. I worked in the Energy Policy field 5 years ago when the Global Warming phrase began to subtley change to 'Climate Change'. Never got used to using it.

The thing was that the Global Warming campaigners realised that many people in the UK actually wanted it to be warmer so we could have Mediterranean weather here.

They had to change it to Climate Change to allow them to point to floods, snow, high wind and just about any kind of nasty weather (which people didn't want) as a symptom of increasing CO2 emissions.

I left the field in despair at the damage that was being done to UK energy policy by the obsessionn with renewable energy and especially wind energy.

Let's face it "Global Warming" sounds kind of nice doesn't it?

Getting so many different cultures to agree on something was never going to happen.

Does anyone else wonder how much it cost to organise and stage it and be left without any real binding deal on the table?

All the bloody carbon miles or whatever they are called that the travel generated and the PCs that were used etc etc it's just mad!

And then they want us to give out shit loads of money to developing nations when the world's economy is down the toilet - it is just not a big disaster yet for people to understand that this needs to be done (maybe) and when it gets to disaster stage I feel it will probably be too late - but I will probably be long dead in the ground by then!

But your grandchildren won't.

I reckon they probably will.

Preventing climate change costs money, and there's not a lot of that around at the moment. tbh I think we're fucked anyway. With the population of the world growing as it is, it's only a matter of time [fatalistic emoticon]

InMyLittleHead - there have always been 'End of the World' predictions usually precipitated by some religious cult or other. TBH watching the 'opening ceremony' of Copenhagen Climate Summit was like a fundamnetalist religious ceremony of believers. There was so much weeping and wailing it was pathetic. Nothing like a serious scientific and economic conference at all in my view.

Thinking rationally we really are not running out of any natural resources at all and not likely to for the far forseeable future. We just need to waste less and we will be fine.

I don't think it'll be soon, particularly, and I'm certainly not weeping and wailing about it. Either it will happen or it won't, but I don't expect that governments will make the changes necessary to prevent it, if it is possible to prevent it.

On Climate change this planet, mother earth, has a long history and we mankind will be a tiny blink on it. It's a bit domineering to suggest man as a species is so superior and wonderful for the planet that we should extend the life of man on it. Surely there's no moral harm in humans being here 0.0001% of the history of the planet rather than 0.001% of the time the planet is around so I don't really get the climate change debate at all. the sooner man kind of blasted off here by aseroids, normal temperature change, God, nature or man surely the better for the planet? Aren't therefore environmentalists rather arrogant in thinking there is some desirability say of man or even orchids over say amorphous burning dust? What is the moral good in the preservation of mankind on this planet for a few more years than might otherwise be the case?

Well put, InMyLittleHead, ABeta and Xenia!

I don't think there's anything we can do to prevent any such drastic change, tbh.

I think most of it is being used as excuse to extract more money from people.

It certainly is. I look at consumer behaviour and laugh at their gullibility and how they are led around like sheep. It is such an industry too. The Conhagen debacle is such fun - all those lining their own nests with carbon offset trading etc. flummoxed.

Actually the economics of dealing with climate change are very clearly laid out in the Stern report.

We can spend 2% of our GDP now to mitigate it, or it will cost in the order of 20% of GDP to deal with the consequences in 50 to 100 years time. Well within the lifetimes of probably our children and certainly our grandchildren.

If only most consumers would take the threat seriously. In the west we all consume far too much. Xenia, who exactly do you think are 'lining their own nests with carbon offset trading'?

Why the talks failed according to one man in the room writing in the Graun.

"It's a bit domineering to suggest man as a species is so superior and wonderful for the planet that we should extend the life of man on it. Surely there's no moral harm in humans being here 0.0001% of the history of the planet rather than 0.001% of the time the planet is around so I don't really get the climate change debate "

how do you arrive at the conclusion that is a moral question or one of superiority? Surely from a purely natural perspective we are doing what every species would do and is biologically programmed to do,protect our existence and further our species.
Nothing superior or inferior about,nothing moral or amoral or value judgments. just back to primal basics of self-preservation like every other animal on the planet

But to protect our species we must think it's great and the best and yet surely in general each time something has come which is better than the one before - dinosaurs better than amoebae, neanderthals better than dinosaurs etc.

Indedd we might find 1 billion of us surive and have better lives on this planet better than 6 billion and that the utilitation species preservation plan might involve 5 in 6 of us being killed off. These climate change issues are not as morally straight forward as those who lead the populace like lamb's to slaughter (or rather lamb's to the supposed promised land) seem to think

I don't see why we must think it's great. Surely we just want it to survive from the purely selfish motivation that drives on every species of self-preservation.
I'd attach no value judgment or moral dilemma to an aligators attempts to prolong it's species existence on this planet or attribute some form of superiority complex to them because they want to hang around a bit longer so therefore they must think they're the bees knees and morally superior.
Just as i would not with humans. a primitive survivalist desire to survive and spawn off-spring who will have a chance of survival.