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Today is the final day of the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit. And all the negotiators, politicians and diplomats involved once more proved the inability of the political world to find solutions before it’s actually too late.

This morning U.S. President Obama arrived in Copenhagen and urged all sides to set aside foolish claims and preconditions to reach an agreement - even if it may fall short of what was expected or what is needed.

Obama made it clear that the U.S. will work towards a clean energy economy “no matter what happens here in Copenhagen.” Furthermore he reminded delegates that “time for talk is over” and that we’re “running short of time.”

Unfortunately, the Copenhagen summit so far resembles previous climate summits such as the ones in Kyoto and Rio. Since the world community started to acknowledge the necessity to combat climate change and reduce emissions, CO2 emission have soared to unprecedented levels.

Obama also called upon delegates to stick to the formula: mitigation, transparency and financing. At this point, one of the major sticking points seems to be China’s resistance to allow some kind of monitoring. While I agree that it is necessary to make sure an agreement would not only be a set of empty promises, it’s unfair to blame China alone for standing in the way of an agreement. More or less every country involved is making a commitment that in reality is far less impressive than it seems at first sight. Europe and in particular Germany are the most serious about reducing emissions, though even Germany is applying some tricks to make its commitment appear bigger than it really is. Due to the reunification and the eradication of much of eastern Germany’s carbon-intensive industry and mining, the carbon emission in the reference year 1990 were overly high. Russia, which wants to look green by supporting the European Union’s ambitious reduction goals, could in fact further increase its greenhouse gas emissions since the collapse of the Soviet economy has already reduced the country’s emissions by an amount that exceeds Europe’s most ambitious targets.

China is understandably concerned that strict limits would harm its economic growth. Therefore it is most important to support Chinese efforts to increase energy-use efficiency. Significantly cutting the CO2 emissions per unit of GDP is more helpful than trying to convince China to agree to an inflexible limit on emissions.

The bilateral talks between U.S. President Obama and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao apparently did not result in any new commitments from either side. Now it is even more important to make sure no country dares to use China’s reluctance as an excuse to postpone action.

Both China and the United States are in a somewhat similar position. The two countries are the world’s two biggest carbon dioxide emitters, the predominant role of cole in both countries’ energy mix limits their ability to cut emissions drastically. Another parallel is that both couldn’t afford to burden their economies gratuitously.

Therefore, in order to get both countries on the fast track to a clean energy economy, it is vital that the U.S. takes the lead to exemplify that transforming to a more efficient and sustainable economic development saves money, generates jobs and gives birth to entirely new industries.

Whether this happens anytime soon largely depends on if the Obama administration succeeds in convincing the American people of the long-term benefits of a green revolution.

Apart from China and the United States, the biggest contribution to mitigating climate change and reducing CO2 emissions could only come from oil producing countries, most notably Saudi Arabia.

This has two main reasons:

Firstly, approaching the issue of CO2 emissions from the demand side is prone to fail due to politicians’ lack of long-term thinking and their inability to force developing countries to follow their lead. Even a 10% reduction in European and American demand for fossil fuels would not bring down global greenhouse gas emissions, not a bit! The resulting downward pressure on oil & gas prices would instead encourage developing nations to consume even more fossil fuels. Consequently, reducing demand in some parts of the world is not the answer.

Secondly, oil producers such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Russia are the price makers of crude oil. And as everybody knows, demand can only be reduced effectively by higher prices. And the only way to reduce global demand for and consumption of  fossil fuels is to force up their prices.  As British Prime Minister Gordon Brown once said, “Global problems require global solutions.” And the only truly global solution to the problem of unsustainable demand for fossil fuels is to force up prices.

So, my suggestion is to get the suppliers of fossil fuels involved in the global effort to save planet earth and let the market take care of the rest. Only a supply-side approach can immediately and effectively bring down global consumption of fossil fuels.  Hence, it is important to get OPEC on board and convince its members to slow down the pace at which they’re pumping crude oil out of the ground.

Despite the likely disappointing outcome of the climate talks in Copenhagen, a bright spot might be that finally a true milestone could be reached in reducing emissions from deforestation. Industrial nations paying poor countries to preserve their forests as part of a program to offset their CO2 emissions would be real progress. Emissions from deforestation exceed the emissions of the entire transportation sector.If a program to end deforestation is included in the final agreement, this will be the most significant step to counter climate change ever taken since humanity noticed the severity of the problem.

For more on this: Deal to Save Forests Could Be Copenhagen’s Bright Spot

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 12:36 PM and is filed under Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.