14 DAY TRIAL // The city of Cancun, Mexico, is currently the host of the 2010 UN Climate Change Conference, also known as Conference of the Parties (COP16). In attendance are representatives of more than 194 countries around the world, who arrived at the talks hoping to make progress on global warming.
In any other circumstances, the world should be thrilled that the meeting is taking place, but experts warn that enthusiasm may be unjustified this year. Since 2008, there has literally been no tangible progress in the talks, and only half-measures have been adopted.
Most people have lost their faith in the governments deciding the faith of the world at the gathering, simply because petty and short-term economic interests, most of the times those of lobby groups and private corporations, apparently take priority over the needs of the world.
Regardless of that, officials who are attending COP16 have begun making their usual statements about how well the conference will go. But the same pattern will undoubtedly emerge this year as well, when rich countries will not want to pay poor and developing ones for preserving biodiversity.
The interesting thing is that the decisions that will be made in Mexico this year – as well as the ones taken in Poland in 2008 and Denmark in 2009 – will have little to do with the scientific reasoning behind the matters at hand.
Over that past year alone, the evidence mounting to show we are responsible for global warming have been staggering. But these evidences do not serve political agendas, which means every politician in the room will be able to put their own spin on the issue.
Regardless, the European Space Agency (ESA) will for example participate with numerous satellite studies and researches it conducted to support the leading theory on climate change.
“Our climate is a complex system made up of many different parts, all interacting together. No one part can be understood in isolation. Instead, measurements of all individual climate variables need to be combined,” ESA officials say.
“The information is required by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) to support the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the scientific work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” they add.
The COP16 talks will take place between November 29 and December 10. Their main goal is theoretically to determine how carbon dioxide emission levels can be reduced in such a manner that global temperature rise is kept under 2 degrees Celsius.