Mixed Reactions After Copenhagen

The new draft proposal on global warming that was adopted at the 2009 UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen last week is now generally being acknowledged as weak. Countries say that the direct body of pieces of evidence to support immediate actions is mounting as more and more scientific studies come out, and that the general public is for such measures to be taken. However, governments do not appear to be respecting the will of their respective peoples. This was also made apparent by the small sums of money rich nations promised poorer ones, in order to help them mitigate the effects of climate change.

The multilateral political agreement that was signed last week is a non-binding framework for reducing emissions and pollution. Countries that wish to do so can join, but they will not be forced by international law to do anything. The United States, China, India, Brazil and South Africa are the main states behind the new Copenhagen accord, and US President, Barack Obama, even dared call the agreement “meaningful and unprecedented.” What's so meaningful about a document that sets no clear guidelines for emission reductions, and provides little support for the developing world is anyone's guess, analysts say, quoted by Nature News.

In the new document, reduction targets that have already been made public on record will be surveyed. This means that certain countries will just have the terrible, difficult task of sticking to the goals they themselves set for their economies. Experts rightfully pointed out that the document basically didn't force anyone to do anything. Under the new guidelines, recent computer models have shown, the global temperature will increase by around 3.9 degrees Celsius by 2100. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), temperature rise needs to be kept under two degrees Celsius over the next 90 years, in order to avoid disastrous consequences to the environment.

Even with the new agreement, it remains a major goal of the UN to draft out a successor to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which will also include developed countries such as the United States. The nation has never ratified the Protocol, and was therefore not forced to comply with it. Developing nations are pushing for this treaty to be augmented, whereas most of the developed world wants to create a new treaty. Future UN summits remain to create a new proposal, but it seems unlikely that a deal will be hammered out in time until the Protocol ends its legal effects, in 2012.