Copenhagen: the challenge ahead

Copenhagen failed dismally to set firm targets either for greenhouse gas reductions and the aid offered to poorer countries to counter the impact of climate change was minimal. Scarcely anything was achieved other than most states accepting that the global temperature increase must be kept below 2ºC.

As world leaders try to minimise the scale of the failure we have to remember that this was the biggest ever attempt to respond to the potential disaster of climate change and it needed to have resulted in:

• Radical and legally-binding decreases in climate gas emissions, starting with the industrialised states where 40% cuts by 2020 are the absolute minimum required.

• Agreement to limit temperature increases to a world average of just 1ºC.

• Aid of at least $100 billion a year from 2011 to start preparing for the impact on the poorer countries of the South of climate changes that are already likely.

These were the minimum requirements for two main reasons. One is that poorer states have very limited capabilities for combating the impact of climate change and the second is that the recent modelling of climate change demonstrates repeatedly that its impact is asymmetric.

What is crucial here is that an average increase of 2ºC world-wide is likely to mean a much smaller increase for most of the oceans, apart from the Arctic, but very much larger increases for most of Central and South America, much of Africa and the Middle East and large parts of South and South-East Asia.

Anticipated temperature increases above 6ºC for Amazonia will mean the destruction of the world’s largest rain forests, with massive additional releases of carbon. Similar increases for the Arctic and near-Arctic will mean loss of icecaps leading to substantial sea level rises flooding heavily populated coastal cities in the tropics and inundating of some of the most fertile croplands in the world’s great river deltas. Release of carbon from thawing Arctic permafrost vegetation will accelerate greatly if there is a 6ºC rise, making matters even worse.

Copenhagen failed because of a lack of international leadership, determined efforts of trans-national corporations to denigrate the science of climate change and a world-wide failure to recognise that radical action is required in the next five years to prevent catastrophes in the coming decades.

How can it all be turned round? The widespread recognition that Copenhagen failed is a start, as is the changing attitude of the United States – a McCain administration would have had little truck with the whole process. The spotlight on climate change provided by Copenhagen was also hugely welcome, and there was always the risk that a partial success might have lulled too many people into a false sense of security by covering up what really needs to be done.

The Copenhagen outcome shows the political state of the world as it really is, and this reality must form the basis for what is going to have to be a sustained and concerted effort to make up for lost time. The first decade of this century was largely lost but the second decade offers more hope. The physical evidence of climate change is increasing by the year, growing numbers of younger activists are determined not to see the future ruined, and in think tanks and civil society groups across the world new ideas and approached are being developed.

The blinkered political realities of Copenhagen may be discouraging but they remind us of how great the task is and we are beginning to get a clear idea of what has to be done. We have now to work intensively to make the second decade of this century the period of real change when we move decisively towards an idea of genuine security that is rooted in emancipation and environmental sustainability.