SCIENCE
We Needed Copenhagen
Agreement was always going to be almost impossible. But it wasn’t a waste of time: it gave us a crash course eco-education
To Tell Us That This Was all True
By David Aaronovitch
22nd December 2009
My Copenhagen reverie stopped the moment that I heard a man with an Australian accent casting his vote against what the host Danes had done, on behalf of the Polynesian nation of Tuvalu. Tuvalu, as only stamp collectors and quiz masters know, is comprised of the Ellice part of the old Gilbert and Ellice islands and has a population of 11,000. This, for comparison’s sake, makes Tuvalu marginally more populous than Ardrossan and slightly less than Swanage.
Tuvalu, whatever its size, has a compelling interest in sea levels. But I suddenly realised that what was being demanded of Copenhagen was, at this moment, too great. There were 193 countries involved in the fortnight’s deliberations — from Tuvaluvian microstates to massive confederations — all of whom had rights to speak, object, agree, disagree or hold things up. At one point or another, 110 heads of state or heads of government were in Copenhagen, and that is a gigantic collation of collective and individual egos. You had Hugo Chávez and his Bolivarian groupies, the leaders of the ex-superpower of Russia, of the ex-solo superpower of the US, of the new superpower of China, of the new regional superpowers of India and Brazil, of the simultaneously separately and collectively represented European Union, of perpetual bad fairies and event-hexers such as the Sudan.
Suddenly there was the world, spread out in front of us, not like a bookcase full of travel guides, or even as represented in diplomatic simulacrum in New York by UN ambassadors, but in its own messy right.
The image that came to my mind was of some vast biblical trek, in which tribes make their way over various terrains to an uncertain land. Out front, and to the sides, were the little groups of activists and NGOs; some pathfinding in distant hills, some wailing and beating themselves and others with thorn branches, some praying loudly and piously, some shouting to the others to catch up, some predicting doom with an unacknowledged pleasure.
Next, more compact, came the scientists and experts, reviewing, measuring, arguing, publishing, conferencing, debating how far there was to go and when anyone might get there, if ever. Spread out, clamorous, worried, loud and quarrelsome rode the governments: a few theocrats, many democrats, a dozen demagogues, a thousand bureaucrats, a glint of kleptocrats, some only travelling by the narrow ridges of the moral high ground, others only going where the grass was soft and easy.
And all of them, in some way tied to the masses of humanity following behind. And these to be seen in every direction, running, dawdling, farting, complaining, rebelling, starving, talking about Simon Cowell and Christmas No 1s, opining that you can’t have global warming and snow at the same time, opining that there probably is something in this climate change business.
The picture isn’t complete without that most biblical of elements, the wicked messengers, the acne’d rightwingers, sauve-qui-peut nationalists and contrarian blog-boys wheedling and protesting and telling the multitudes that, really, the whole journey isn’t necessary, and it’s much nicer here, and those great clouds probably aren’t clouds and, even if they are, don’t presage storms. They can’t make you go, you know.
Looking at Copenhagen as a panorama of humanity as it is right now, then getting the agreement that some people wanted and expected, was just too ambitious. The people were too far behind the politicians and the politicians too far behind the scientists. Meanwhile, some of the activists had disappeared from common view, while the “sceptics” were very much present.
But we needed Copenhagen to tell us that this was all true. So it was a map of where we really are, and who needs to be convinced, and of what. It had the great polluters and up-and-coming polluters — who between them are almost the whole problem — agreeing what the danger was and what, pretty specifically, needed to be done, even if they couldn’t get round to the business of enshrining it all in an (anyway dubiously enforceable) international law. It told the old post-1945 West that the moment of multipolarity had really arrived, and it told the Chinese and Indians that, at just this moment, their own responsibilities had hugely increased. Up till now the United States had become the global hate figure but from now on the world view and international actions of China are as liable to be the subject of criticism and protest as those of the Americans. China is no longer a leader of the downtrodden, but a member of the governing elite.
Copenhagen told us that international action on climate change will not be achieved by attempting to get an impossible consensus among all states, but by very specific understandings reached by the main actors. If that sounds harsh to small states, then the realities of unprevented global warming will probably be far harsher.
After Copenhagen the wise business model is green. Who is going to prefer to put their money into dirty technology, when the global search is on for the green kind? After Copenhagen, no one can say that they didn’t know there was a debate about climate change, even if they then choose to ignore it. After Copenhagen no one half-sensible can come out with the glib explanation that it’s all the fault of the Yanks (Barack Obama is the best president to do global business with that some of us are likely to see for a while), or that we don’t understand the Chinese, or that the problem is the timidity of the politicians, or that we are somehow absolved. After Copenhagen, we know better where we stand.
Obviously (isn’t it obvious, if you are willing to think about it for five minutes?) we now have to do much, much better. The next big meeting is in Mexico next year. By then, hopefully, we will have congressional agreement to President Obama’s emission reductions, we will have had a chance to reach a deal with China over verification of climate change measures, and with other developing polluters over legal limits.
Hopefully, too, the EU will maintain its leading role in volunteering reductions, despite the lack of a legal requirement. Hopefully we will have learnt how to conduct such a meeting in a way that gets the job done. Hopefully we will accomplish all this some time before Tuvalu becomes Toodle-oo.
The original article appeared in The Times, 22,11. 2009