Copenhagen Fail
Did you expect a new environmental consensus to come out of Copenhagen this year? Get ready for a disappointment. It looks like the conference has essentially broken down before achieving any sort of agreements, and the outlook for future cooperation is going to require some kind of shift in aims and goals.
The primary friction from the summit was the age-old pull between the haves and the have-nots.
Much like the Naval Power Agreements following WW1, the richest and most powerful nations were hoping to create a system that would perpetuate their positions and advantage by limiting the options of the poorest nations.
In the case of CO2, the goal was to set the emissions of already-developed nations at a higher limit than those that would be imposed on currently developing states. Quite simply: “We already have ours, and there isn’t enough for you to have some too.”
Luckily, no one from the developing world was ready to limit the economic opportunities of their descendants. The poor are not the ones over-consuming earth’s resources, and it should not be their responsibility to fix the mess. If anything, assistance by wealthy nations can improve the educational and reproductive options that lead to lower birth rates and more scientific progress for the species as a whole.
Instead, the rich saw an opportunity to sell intellectual property and create new loans backed by brutal government regimes and cheap labor.
So what is this CO2 thing really all about…?