New Clarity For Climate Change in Copenhagen

As the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen approaches, the pressure to organize legislation is felt in most all of the world’s countries. This pressure comes from a need to end an ongoing two-year negotiation process over the commitment of industrial and developing nations to lowering carbon emissions. The main goal – establishment of a replacement for Kyoto Treaty.

However, only a few weeks from the beginning of conference, December 7^th2009, the countries are still struggling with little to no success to come up with a permanent legislation that would be represented at the conference. “It is physically impossible to finalize all the details of a treaty in Copenhagen” said the secretary-general of the UN climate change secretariat Yvo de Boer in the article UN climate chief: No final, global warming treaty in 2009, “but the principles of a deal must be settled.”

De Boer states that, given the current lack of political and financial agreement in countries, the new goal of the conference is to reach an agreement on, what he calls, the Four Political Essentials:

1. How much are the industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases?

2. How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions?

3. How is the help needed by developing countries to engage in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change going to be financed?

4. How is that money going to be managed?

These four essentials are meant to bring, what the article calls, ‘clarity’ on the climate issues, especially to the financially struggling business world.

“If Copenhagen can deliver on those four points,” says Yvo de Boer in the above mentioned article, “I’d be happy”.

So perhaps this December will not bring us much anticipated new treaty, but clarity might be what is most needed at this time… Clarity to truly understand the key role that we, as individuals or nations, play in the future of our planet.

And it only gets better from there.