I am writing from Copenhagen, the site of the 15th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. If one were to judge by outward appearances, the prospects look dim for a meaningful global agreement by the end of the week.
First, most conference participants have been put through an experience that seems designed to convince them that global warming may not be such a bad idea after all: a registration system that requires waiting in long lines in freezing temperatures. (Wait times commonly reported this week vary from one hour for China’s negotiator to 8 hours for other participants, such as prominent NGO leaders. Even 9 or 10 hours.)
Second, there has been little convergence of positions. The views expressed here cover the same fantastically and unbridgeably wide range as they did at the time of the Kyoto meeting 12 years ago. At one end of the spectrum, developing countries are still asking for reparations – African delegations boycotted Monday’s meetings; and demonstrators are still very confused about who they should be trying to persuade and how. At the other end of the spectrum, the climate change deniers are also represented here. Recent opinion polls show that the percentage of skeptics among the fickle American public has risen very recently, even though the scientific evidence for anthropogenic warming continues to mount. (For some reason, many find it easier to deny science than to make any of the less indefensible arguments available to critics: that global warming wouldn’t be all bad, or that cutting emissions enough to prevent it would be too expensive, or that the U.N. is not a competent instrument, or that geo-engineering would be a cheaper approach.)