The Cophenhagen Conundrum- by Simon Moore

“Copenhagen”, it is the buzz word of every pseudo-environmentalist over the last six months and as the time grows nearer (COP15 begins December 7th) we are seeing more media coverage from every corner of the globe, and from these corners we are seeing conflicting statements of intentions.

Let us make it abundantly clear or at least the clearest that international politics and policy can ever be. The aim of COP 15 is to create a treaty to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. In an ideal world this would be a simple matter of getting 187 world leaders into a room with a large bottle of Valium and a crate of aged whiskey and five hours later reaching a consensus to do the right thing (reduce emissions by 40 percent before 2020).

Unfortunately we are living in a completely different age. Before COP15 even gets started, there is a meeting to prepare for the meeting two years before the official meeting. I am getting a sneaky suspicion that climate change is a conspiracy theory based around world leaders holiday plans.

In 1997 there was Kyoto; apparently someone just had a craving for Sushi, then the Bali Road Map trip in 2007 which was surely proposed by an avid surfer in the Icelandic cabinet. Now Obama is really keen to get some cross country skiing in so we are all heading over to Denmark. You may or may not know this but everyone has decided for a bit of Catalonian R & R in Barcelona for a few days in November, then we will finally get on to discussing the draft negotiating text which was written up sometime last year by an undersecretary while everyone was enjoying the sun and sand in Mykonos.

Did I forget to mention the delegates are all currently in Thailand for the pre meeting for the final pre meeting before the meeting? Anyway you get my point, and here’s another one, they all took air transport to these meetings so ironically the carbon footprints of the delegates who are supposed to start making some headwind are the largest of all.

So after all this international travel we would hope something substantial (or sustainable :-P) would come out of it. Hopefully we can get another amazing treaty like Kyoto, because that worked fantastically, I mean Kyoto really changed the way we all slowly and systematically destroyed our environment, (you realised like that was totally like sarcastic right?) So instead of wasting time arguing let us sit down and reasonably evaluate what is best for everyone involved. The African nations want increased monetary input; the more developed countries wish to see such funds used correctly.

Canada wants to prove that they are legitimately concerned about climate change after failing to live up to the Kyoto protocol. New Zealand want to ensure they can continue dominating world rugby, Australia want New Zealand to focus a little more because they make us look silly (which we are).

So we all have different interests, and the only natural solution is compromise, where has this process taken us before? To the Kyoto protocol which did help in promoting awareness, then to Bali which also let the masses know that something was wrong and we were going to embark on fixing it. So we sit down again and work out a compromise and then all go home satisfied that international diplomacy is well oiled and operational .

There is just one tiny niggling little problem when it comes to climate change, there can be no compromise. There are two options:

1. Make some harsh decisions, people suffer but we move towards a long term future of sustainable living and shared environmental opulence or,

2. The world gets wiped out and we feel pretty stupid, especially Steve Fielding.

What we need is a little less jet-setting, a little less drafting, pre-meetings and time brackets and a little more common-sense and some action.

Only one country seems to have truly realised how this should all go down, The Republic of Maldives. Check them out. Pretty rad.

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