In “Slouching Toward Copenhagen“, HuffPo contributor Carl Pope observes, “What do we make of the prospects for global action on the climate crisis, given recent events both in the U.S. Congress and in the international conversations leading up to Copenhagen? Something very peculiar is going on.”
Most of the major players are moving in the right direction — toward making their economies less dependent on carbon dioxide. China is making massive investments in clean-energy technology, India has recognized that a carbon dependent development trajectory is bad news for a country that has relatively poor fossil-fuel reserves, South Korea has committed to an ambitious goal, Indonesia is practically begging for help solving its deforestation and peat-emission problems, Brazil is at least offering decent numbers, Russia has put forward a modest goal, Japan has upped the ante even though it already has the world’s most carbon-efficient economy, and Europe is hanging in there.
Even the United States, justifiably excoriated as an unwilling laggard, is actually decarbonizing its economy at a remarkable rate. Only three years ago, projections were that U.S. emissions of CO2 would increase from 6 billion tons to 7.5 billion tons by 2020. Instead of increasing, they flattened out and then fell. By year’s end we will be 8.5 percent below 2005, down to 5.5 billion. And the government estimates that, even with an economic recovery, we’ll only get back to 5.9 billion tons if we do nothing more at all. And getting the 20 percent in additional cuts that Congress is groaning about would in fact be almost trivially easy.
The U.S. could cut its CO2 emissions very fast, in a way that is very good for the overall economy,” asserts the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. This would be very bad for Big Carbon, what AG readers know as Emperor Fossil. “Senators and representatives from the coal belt and oil patch are afraid of passing a strong climate bill not because it will be hard to achieve ambitious goals, but because it will be easy. And once we kick our addiction to fossils, there will be no turning back from the future.”
Andreas Carlgren, the Swedish environment minister, expressed the hope that Mr. Obama would “come to the final days of negotiations in line with the Danish invitation to heads of states and governments.”
“It is obvious” that the United States was preparing to make a “significant emission reduction.” Even so, Mr. Carlgren expressed disappointment that Mr. Obama was not ready to pledge deeper cuts ahead of the Copenhagen meeting. “I regret that the level of reduction to 2020 is lower than what could be possible for the United States to achieve in connection to earlier estimations.”
Perhaps, as he walks along the carpeted corridor to address the world, a visualization might be helpful…
(Click)
No, no that one, this one…
“Climate change is likely to hit the water-starved Arab world harder than many other parts of the globe and threatens to slash agricultural output in the area,” U.N. and Arab League officials said.
In those few moments the steps taken are those of another world citizen, whose throat is dry, whose belly is empty, and whose spirit aches for his starving family and village, who goes to meet with others to ponder what can be done.
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Hussein, Hussein, did they have an answer?
Mr. President, they are ready for you now.
“At 18:50, when leaders of the BASIC countries were doing the final review of their common position, they heard a clamor of voices outside. The door was opened and there stood President Obama. Although the scheduled time for the second China-US meeting had passed, Obama’s presence at that moment and that place still came as a surprise to the people inside.”