Copehenhagen Cynicism

The Copenhagen climate talks, like Health Care reform, seem so detailed and nuanced that a casual reading still leaves a lot unclear. In other words, my head spins a bit when I think too much about it.

This is what I understand; There are two big obstacles: compensation and enforcement. First, enforcement. Developing nations (both poor African/Asian nations and growing behomeths, like China and India) want compensation from developed nations. Many of these nations will feel the adverse affects of climate change much more than Western nations. For instance, Bangladesh and the Netherlands are both low-lying nations, nearly below sea-level. But those smart, well-to-do Dutchmen and Dutchwomen have state-of-the-art dykes which will help them cope with rising ocean levels, while Bangladeshis do not. Similarly many African nations will be hit hard by the dry rivers and more frequent droughts that climate change will cause, while Westerners will just have to pay a few cents more on food products at the supermarket. Famine is thankfully not an issue here.

Additionally, developing nations don't want to hinder their growth by agreeing to emissions caps. Which makes sense; the US and Europe were allowed to industrialize and grow to the economic powerhouses they are today (all the while massively polluting the world) without any stringent emissions caps, so why should developing nations have to? And the responsibility of poor, developing nations is to improve the quality of life of their citizens--to give them jobs and cars--not to shackle themselves to any agreements that Western nations never had while they were industrializing. So developed nations should compensate the developing world, it's just a question of how and how much.

Secondly, enforcement is an issue. The only thing tougher than agreeing to emissions caps is actually living up to them. The US or China can boast they'll cut carbon emissions by X%, but there's currently no way to see that they meet their goals. And even if they don't meet their goals, there's not a whole lot the rest of the world can do. The rest of the world can yell at them a bunch and tax their products, but that's not that scary.

So, I'm pretty pessimistic about any major agreements happening in Copenhagen. As Bruce Bueno de Mesquita writes, it's extremely difficult for 170+ disparate nations to agree to anything--even if the health of our planet is at stake. Either the problem will have to become drastically bigger--to the point where we're standing on the cliff's edge--or clean energy will have to become cheaper and more accessible. In other words, the costs of change will have to go down or the felt impact--the fire's breath on our necks--will have to become impossible to ignore. I'm all for multilateralism, but sadly I think that chaos or luxury are the most likely ways to jolt disparate interests into alignment.