Nations seek a climate deal in Copenhagen

What happened

Delegates from nearly 200 nations convened at the U.N. conference on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark, this week, hoping to forge a new treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Scientists and political leaders who believe climate change poses a serious threat to humanity are hoping that the conference will produce a meaningful consensus on emissions reductions, forming the basis for a binding treaty to be ratified at another conference next year. But they face serious obstacles: deep divisions between rich and poor nations, which want billions in subsidies to reduce their own reliance on fossil fuels; resistance to binding emissions limits in the wake of a global economic slowdown; and skepticism heightened by the “climate­gate” e-mail scandal. “This is our chance,” said conference president Connie Hedegaard of Denmark. “If we miss it, it could take years before we got a new and better one.”

China, Brazil, India, and the U.S. all announced independent, nonbinding climate goals in advance of the meeting, with the U.S. proposing to reduce its 2005 emissions levels 30 percent by

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2025 and 80 percent by 2050. This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant, giving the Obama administration leverage to order reductions in emissions.

What the editorials said

We face “a profound emergency,” said The Miami Herald in an editorial published in 56 newspapers in 46 countries. Of the past 14 years, 11 were among “the warmest on record.” Without prompt action, global temperatures will rise 3 or 4 degrees Celsius, enough to “parch continents, turning farmland into desert.” Humanity can prevent this disaster, but it will take the kind of concerted effort—and “the triumph of optimism over pessimism”—that put men on the moon and split the atom. Fortunately, the U.S. is no longer an obstacle to action, said the Financial Times. In Kyoto in 1997, the U.S.’s failure to embrace emissions reductions “seriously undermined” a global climate accord. This time, Obama wants to make a serious pledge.

Obama’s “extravagant pledges are only possible when everyone knows they won’t happen,” said The Wall Street Journal. There is no consensus in the U.S.—or globally—for taking extreme and costly actions on the basis of uncertain scientific projections. “So what exactly is the point of Copenhagen?”

What the columnists said

Swiftly weaning the world from fossil fuels will present the most difficult task in history, said Bill McKibben in the Los Angeles Times. Copenhagen will represent a real start toward this goal if it serves “as a full-on educational seminar,” led by poor nations that simply won’t exist in a few decades because of severe drought or rising seas. The engine behind these negotiations is simply “survival.”

Spoken like a true member of a “doomsday cult,” said Rich Lowry in the New York Post. The jury is still out on climate science, and the rest of us needn’t humor the cult members’ madness. Especially since the cost of reducing emissions will be literally trillions of dollars, said Steve Huntley in the Chicago Sun-Times. “Call me a pessimist, but I don’t believe a world unable to stop immediate catastrophes like genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur is going to summon the resolve for a 100-year campaign to reverse warming.”

Skeptics made the same dire predictions about the campaign to stop acid rain, said Paul Krugman in The New York Times. They said it wasn’t possible without inflicting “grievous economic harm.” Yet when we instituted a cap-and-trade system for sulfur dioxide, it worked—and at “lower-than-predicted cost.” Yes, curbing greenhouse gases will be more complicated and costly. But it will also launch a wave of innovation and investment in new energy technologies, which, incidentally, is a pretty good way to climb out of the economic doldrums.