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Climate Summit: History Was Not Made
After two years of intense negotiations by 193 countries, what is abundantly clear is the enormous divide between the rich and poor countries. Poor countries want deep cuts in emissions by the industrialised world, and the latter continue to resist significant cuts and legally binding targets.
Despite the enormous pressures, high expectations and last minute efforts by 128 heads of state, all that emerged is a vague agreement of sorts called the "Copenhagen Accord".
Greenpeace staff and supporters hold a candlelight vigil with posters reading "Freedom from Climate Injustice" outside a prison in Copenhagen in this undated handout. REUTERS/Christian Slund/Greenpeace/Handout "Sealing the deal" on a new climate treaty has been postponed for at least a year.
Speaking of divides, civil society largely calls Copenhagen an utter disaster. It is a failure that "condemned millions of the world's poorest people to hunger, suffering and loss of life", said Nnimmo Bassey, chair of Friends of the Earth International. On the other hand, U.S. President Barack Obama argued that a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough" had been made at press conference in the Bella Centre just before midnight Friday. "All major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action to confront the threat of climate change," he said.
Evidently, world leaders hadn't been paying much attention to the previous 15 years of climate treaty negotiations.
"Heads of state are now fully engaged," agreed Robert Orr, U.N. assistant secretary general for policy planning, speaking at a press conference. "Copenhagen was the first time leaders were using the climate vocabulary."
"This has put climate on the map for leaders and leaders on the map for climate," he said.
Orr also said the gap between politics and science is finally beginning to close.
The hour is late for waking up to the reality of climate change. Two new scientific studies suggest that climate feedbacks will make the two-degree C target unlikely to be achieved without "going negative" - meaning not only does the world have to go carbon-free in the coming decades, carbon will need to be removed from the atmosphere to lower concentrations to perhaps 350 ppm from today's 389 ppm.
It was late last night in the final hours of the meeting when the U.S. president announced that India, South Africa, China and Brazil had agreed to a backroom agreement called the Copenhagen Accord.
However, since it only involved five out of the 193 countries whose officials had spent a long two weeks in Copenhagen, some delegates were visibly upset they'd not been involved previously and the meeting continued all night. By Saturday afternoon, confusion remained over the accord's legal status, and half a dozen nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bolivia, declined to support it.
In the end, the accord has no legal standing under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and participating countries merely "note" its existence and express their support or not.
Friday night, Obama acknowledged that this was just one step on a long road to meet the apolitical targets of climate science. He insisted the Copenhagen Accord is an important first step because countries agreed to deep long-term cuts in emissions with the goal of holding the increase in global temperatures below two degrees C.
Developing countries also agreed to take both voluntary action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to increase those actions if financial support was provided. And there was agreement that rich countries must mobilise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to help developing countries protect their forests, adapt to climate change and reduce their emissions.
They also agreed to work towards a legally binding treaty to be concluded by the end of next year in Mexico.
"The U.S. is not legally bound by anything that took place here in Copenhagen," Obama was careful to point out.
Domestically, the United States is a divided country, and a long way from making binding commitments on climate.
Not an hour after Obama's opening speech to the plenary Friday morning, several Republican members of Congress and the Senate held a press conference in the Bella Centre denying climate change was caused by emissions of fossil fuels and saying the science of the International Panel on Climate Change and dozens of scientific academies around the world was suspect.
None of the U.S. politicians are scientists and all hail from regions with powerful fossil fuel or automotive interests.
"We have lost many things along the way," said Dessima Williams of Grenada, spokesperson for the 43-member Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), regarding their reluctant acceptance of the accord. "We have lost a vigourous commitment to stabilising global temperatures at 1.5 C."
"We believe this is critical to the survival of our member states," Williams said in a final plenary session Saturday.
Women were also hoping for gender-sensitive text to acknowledge the reality that women are by far the most impacted by climate change, said Ana Rojas of Energia, an International Network of Gender and Sustainable Energy based in the Netherlands.
Only a third of the delegates attending the conference this year are women, which can make it more difficult for equal representation of women and men's views in relation to climate change.
"We need a shared vision of gender in a final agreement. And not just concerning adaptation but also mitigation and financing," Rojas told TerraViva.
While acknowledging that the accord represents some progress, it fell far short of the "fair, ambitious and legally binding agreement" that civil society had advocated. Outside the meetings, 1,800 protesters and media spokespersons were arrested on the suspicion they might do something illegal, in what civil society called attempts by the Danish government to suppress legitimate opposition and free speech.
The use of "tear gas, pepper spray, mass cages, baton charges and mass preemptive arrests sets a precedent dangerous not only for Denmark, but for the future of the world," said Tadzio Müller of Climate Justice Action, an international network of environmental and social justice groups.
"The world is facing tragic crises of leadership [on climate change]," said Greenpeace's international executive director, Kumi Naidoo.
The accord represents a "major concession to climate polluting industries, especially in the fossil fuel sector", Naidoo said. "Averting climate chaos has just gotten a whole lot harder."
38 Comments so far
Show AllThose living on the islands of the world had better begin building arks, now that they know how little their lives matter to the "big guys."
Wrong. History was made: we have decided to scuttle the planet.
But the purpose of this world being to prove the harm in it,
if we reach the ultimate conclusion of deceit and darkness
before a second worldwide flood, then surely all things
will turn toward the good. Then this be the best planet ever.
I know, all Christians around think that God blesses with
wealth most, those with inner goodness the most, and
the purpose of this world is to develop an inner good
feeling that you are exceptional and good.
But truth is stranger the such fiction, that’s what I always say.
What if we offered the excrement people, I mean, lobbyists, triple what they're getting from their petrochemical bosses to just stop and go home? Could we afford to buy back our elected representatives? 693 billion for War. Nothing for Life.
No, you have to give an attitude adjustment to our self-absorbed majority
who fund all elections and hire paid actor politicians to maintain their
worldwide plunder.
They being most all with some wealth, who feel deserving of more wealth,
who even after their land has become an ocean floor will strive to hoard
even more wealth.
you speak of deals with devils
if you bid the highest,
then you go lowest
This, and the failed heath care plan have opened my eyes to the real B. Obama. Just another corporatist democrat. Hillary would've been no different. I also have been educated on the absolute corruption that exists within the U.S. Senate. Unbelievable. I wish this was all a bad dream, but it isn't. We got sucker-punched in the 2008 election. Chump change we can believe in. Peace.
But none here "got sucker-punched" by brand Obama,
so tell us how it happened? Bad history has a habit
of repeating itself, so "Were here to help you beautiful you."
First you state self-evident facts we all are well aware of, then you welcome us to join a group without giving us the slightest clue as to the standards upheld by the group, what they are willing to fight for and die for.
First disclose the root cause and solution of global warming as you see it, could be your locked in darkness, could be you have not a conviction to break free of all that relative darkness.
Indeed, we want to know more before contacting the fellow personally. It's too easy to set up a website or other Web-based contact point with information for visitors, and I have wonder why they haven't done so.
CAPITALISM ---- DEMOCRACY AMONG THE RICH
Take the Honduras coup dictatorship for example, where the dozen richest families voted secretly to exile the elected President. For he was destroying the democratic order among the rich, namely that no one may rule but the rich.
And the order most high is that the rich of one nation shall not harm the freedom, power and autonomy of the rich who rule another nation. For though the U.S. State Department has stated that Zelaya should now be allowed to sit as a powerless President until his term expires in January, as it would best serve U.S. propaganda purposes, not to be say the Honduras rich nobility.
Must teach a listen to those who would violate democracy for the rich you see,
even now that Zelaya has asked to leave Honduras to be free,
imprisoned in the Brazilian Embassy for years to come it may be.
Another way for cons to infiltrate and destroy the Dems could be to join progressive sites and post inane idiocy like I do.
That’s no fun, but take the three times I was terminated by
Huffington Post, now that is great satisfaction and most fun.
First it was mentioning that Empire USA has the world’s largest
oil reserves in Venezuela scheduled for invasion. Second time
it was the 20 self-evident facts that established the coup
dictatorship in Honduras as CIA all the way. Third was one
little fact, a study showing that the major cause of illness
in America was our average diet being 50% fat.
The climate change deniers, their media and political spokespersons along with all the malevolent internet trolls are condemning the island countries to extinction under mounting sea levels. Their smug satisfaction in conspiracy theories that allow them to change nothing about their over-consuming and destructive way of life, and nothing more. I guess it's no problem for them as they also care not for the waterboarding torture of detainees.
It's sick sick world, with the complacent, apathetic, self-absorbed and ignorant condemning the struggling wretched of the earth to genocide. In a more just world, such people would be charged with these crimes against humanity.
But Copenhagen did some good. It shattered the illusion of Obama amongst Europeans and the rest of the world. The clock has turned back to Seattle and maybe a stronger movement will come out of this.
Sorry Alabama John. I got sucker-punched because I chose to believe in Obama. I'm only speaking for myself and not others on this blog.
Most of us regulars here at CommonDreams but no blind faith
in words, so tell us what its like? Tell us how it feels?
For if our burden is to help you people out of darkness,
surely we need to know something about how a
pretense of good can lock people in darkness.
For most here never experienced anything good from government,
and are not so fool as to think anything good will come out of paid
actor politicians using a pretense of good to smoke screen hide our
make believe government.
Lookin' GOOD, Unka 'Bomb! Since NOTHING took place in COP15, you're certainly NOT LEGALLY BOUND by it. What facile mirrorspeak (though you LOOK MAHVELOUS!)! But are you sure you're smarter than a Bush?
ATLANTIS
Where to start when so many do not believe that it even existed? For me it started over 50 years ago when in high school and being interested in ancient history; past the Romans, past the Greeks, Egyptians, past what is considered “written” and documented history. Did not answer questions for me and so the public library in San Francisco, CA. was my best friend. There I discovered Edgar Cayce who was called The Sleeping Prophet. That was it for me I was hooked and have been a member of the ARE (Association for Research and Enlightenment) for over 40 years. That is my background on Atlantis; this has answered many of the questions that I had about so many things.
What brings this to mind is that he predicted that Atlantis would rise again and that the first indicator would be around the Caribbean Sea and he said to expect it in “68 or 69” and I have looked for it since and then the other day when looking through huffpo there was an article and video about some ruins found under water in the Caribbean and it made me profoundly sad because this looks like the real deal and so his other predictions stock just rose by 1000% and that does not bode well for humankind and whatever other life will go down with it.
What happened to Atlantis? They destroyed themselves, not once, but three times!!! 50,000 Bc, 28,000 BC and 10,000 BC. The Biblical Flood is at 28,000 BC and at that time the continent was broken up into 5 islands and the one that is in the Caribbean is where the city was that Plato described. There is so much more that could be said but this is enough as we are acting as they did when they destroyed the world as they knew it then. The Caribbean, Sargasso Sea all parts of it for it did stretch from Gibraltar to the Caribbean. There is nothing new under the sun so Solomon said and it looks like he is right. Tony
Not to argue the point as true or false, but the dates in the Old Testament
are accurate according to modern scholars of history. The exodus of the
Hebrews from Egypt and Babylon taking all the Hebrews into exile for example.
For Scripture states that about 2,000 years after creation came Noah’s
flood, and 2,000 years later came the cross. According to this earth is
6,000 years old.
Again not a point to argue, as common horse-sense is not our burden to
prove, either you have it or you don’t.
For the purpose of this world is to prove the harm in allowing those born
with the best ability to achieve to hoard all the wealth and power.
"Horse sense";what a quaint term to tell me that I dont know whereof I speak.Read the Bible every day and know it was written by man.If it is taken literally all the way through that leaves over 3 quarters of the human race out of any chance for whatever comes after this life.Tony
Even though the Bible claims over 100 times that it was written by God, you call it a liar by stating "it was written by man."
Even thought the Bible claims that all of humanity was created by God and that God never shows favoritism, you call it a liar by stating it, "leaves out 3 quarters of the human race..."
Now, how can you keep telling us the Bible is such fiction,
and expect us to believe you, "Read the Bible every day..."?
I have no problem with The Creator;it is the book I talk about and its interpretation and the fact that even God says, in the book, that the Jews are his "chosen people" and that the gentiles would serve them.Is reincarnation mentioned in the bible?No,but there has to be a way to forgive sin or most all go to hell and The Creator does not wish that any soul should perish.Tony
"Not an hour after Obama's opening speech to the plenary Friday morning, several (As Usual the Usual Suspects) REPUBLICAN members of Congress and the Senate held a Press Conference in the Bella Centre -denying- climate change was caused by emissions of fossil fuels and saying the science of the International Panel on Climate Change and dozens of scientific academies around the world was suspect. (Yes indeed, all Scientists are SOCIALIST LEFTIST COMMIE LIARS and Science is ALL A LIE... if it doesn't Totally Agree with the right-wing neocon POLITICAL opinion of the ignorant terrorist religious fanatic Republicans!) NONE of (these Republican) U.S. Politicians are scientists and ALL hail from regions with powerful fossil fuel or automotive interests."
Utterly depraved and totally corrupt unsalvageable bastards, loudly braying insanely in your face, the REPUBLICAN PARTY must be Destroyed. It is now The Major Ostacle to a better- and living- world.
The Democrats are at least not denialists, and they are all such milquetoasts that they will fall in line with the wishes of the people... if they didn't have to kowtow to the Republican NeoCon Corpo-Fascist power structure instead. And if... as the right-wing-noisemakers, teabag-brainers and rabid-right Republicans call him for propaganda purposes... Obama is a 'socialist' (what a laugh), maybe people will see that we badly need to move even farther left. Well, at least people will think we have a 'socialist' president and the sun still comes up in the morning.
And why weren't these REPUBLICAN ASSHOLES so squalidly contaminating Bella Center... Republicans who needed SO BADLY to stick their Dicks into the Copenhagen Climate Summit and 'mess her up good' that they made a special overseas trip at US-taxpayer expense... immediately tasered, batoned, gassed and imprisoned for life as they should have been, instead of the Civil Society folks outside the Bella Center? - "The use of tear gas, pepper spray, mass cages, baton charges and mass preemptive arrests sets a precedent dangerous not only for Denmark (???- if this is Denmark, then how much worse would be the US?), but for the future of the world, said Tadzio Müller of Climate Justice Action, an international network of environmental and social justice groups."
After the glorious destruction of the Republican Party, then comes the turn of the Democratic Party. But alas, I dream a nigh impossible dream. The Fascists have all the marbles. And they will kill anyone trying to get some. Thus we trudge into their Metropolises, their killing machines, so they will deign to allow us to live one more day. And we humbly beg them to excuse us for living. Until the end of life on Earth. (www.planetextiction.com)
So what? There was no agreement, what limited "agreement" there was is non-binding. It was just another photo-op and PR stunt for Obama and the USA. All this about the bad ol Republicans is irrelevant. 90% or more of Ds are just as corrupt.
fv there is only one party in america! you need to understand that! its all
about the money nothing else. these bluedog dems. are republicans its not about
party its about money and power! we as americans are stuck on labels from politics to
blue jeans. try a independent or the green party if their even allowed on the
ballot in your state. this will make a difference. this and a revolution!
Jeevee
Tell us, please, HOW WE DESTROY THE REPUBLICRATS AND START OVER WITH HONEST, TRUTHFUL THIRD PARTIES?
The Copenhagen conference was simply used as a photo-op and PR stunt for the USA and other rich contries. There was never any legally binding agreement "on the table" to begin with. The phony, limited agreement that was penned, is utter non-sense.
This is not history, it is business as usual
Another goal, perhaps just as important for Empire USA, was to destroy the ability of all the poor nations to organize against those rich and powerful. Divide and enslave by requiring “structural adjustments” if loans are to be had, and except the cap and trade gambling scam or suffer the consciences.
disaster economics gone global, disguised in green
Is anyone surprised?
The problem will not be solved by the mindset that caused it, and in any event the people attending that conference were, for the greater part, representatives of the short-term vested interests in pollution.
Foxes debating how best to protect the hens.
"The U.S. is not legally bound by anything that took place here in Copenhagen," Obama was careful to point out."
Since NOTHING took place at Copenhagen, then the US is not legally bound to DO nothing?
All the world had hope that Obama would agree to cut emissions by 40% before 2020, instead 4% was all he would commit to. This was the major cause of such a disaster in Copenhagen.
So like all of the brainwash coming at us on climate change by mass media, this article mentions not a word about how this failure by Obama destroyed any hope of a binding agreement, and warps all of reality by stating,
“Obama argued that a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough" had been made.”
Come now, it was a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough."
It was
"the first time leaders were using the climate vocabulary."
Historic!
Nothing serious will be done until a few more "hottest year ever" years happen, and the Arctic Ice is completely gone one Summer.
This will happen within the next decade.
Then, even the corporate execs will start to worry that their heavily fortified gated communities/mansions will be overrun by starving/enraged masses once worldwide agriculture is disrupted.
The Pentagon is already studying how bad the coming climate change will affect "national security"...
Its hot, its cold
the climate will unfold
showing human arrogance and hypocrisy
in Kyoto and Copenhagen
big leaders they did not repent
our progeny's future they spent
mr obama, such a a smooth talker
convincing himself for another nobel
in petrodollars and euros too
fancy rhetoric they spew
its wet, its dry
not sure if we should laugh or cry
This quote from an article by Tamara Pearson on Venezuelanalysis.com sums it up:
"The United Nations Climate Summit in Copenhagen, from 7-18 December and with delegations from 193 countries, ended with a U.S led, non-legally binding, “agreement” called the Copenhagen Accord. The accord was initially discussed among around 25 countries, then amongst U.S president Barack Obama and the leaders of China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. Obama then presented it late on the evening of December 18, as a “final” document.
Venezuelan representative Claudia Salerno Caldera described the US-brokered deal as a "coup" against the UN.
She said they had agreed at the start of the summit that, “the chair wasn’t going to write documents, wasn’t going to negotiate, the presidents weren’t going to write anything” but this wasn’t what happened.
Salerno said that they had divided the summit into two groups, and the 25 countries had worked together on an upper, separate floor, while the other countries worked separately and “transparently”.
Cuban ex-president Fidel Castro said that after that, the Danish government offered the, “conference’s plenary hall to US President Obama for a meeting where only he and a selected group of guests, 16 in all, had the exclusive right to speak.”
I guess the Honduras coup was just a practice match for Obama.