Hot air hits Denmark

All the ‘good’ people of planet earth are feverishly excited – just like little kids on Christmas Eve – with the much talked about and highly revered Copenhagen climate change conference finally underway.
These 'good' folk are adamant – along with internationally-respected climatologists such as Robyn Malcolm, Lucy Lawless, Keisha Castle Hughes and other scientific luminaries like Stephen Tindall, Cliff Curtis, Peter Gordon and Rhys Darby – that all the world’s environmental problems will be suddenly be resolved at the conclusion of this momentous talkfest.
But as the great Daryl Kerrigan – the wise and understated patriarch from the movie ‘The Castle’ – was fond of saying when unrealistic expectations were expressed: “They’re dreaming”!
Copenhagen – or as the purists like to call it – COP15 (short for the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), will be nothing more than a two-week talkfest involving politicians and officials from 192 countries.
For starters with more than 15,000 people officially attending the conference — that’s not counting the protesters and activists who have also travelled to the Danish capital and expected to make their presence felt outside the Bella convention centre – it will have produced a carbon footprint bigger than an African nation.
That is not just cynical hype – it is actually a fact. The U.N. estimates the 12-day conference will create 40,584 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, roughly the same amount as the carbon emissions of Morocco in 2006. Talk about global warming . . . the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference will produce a lot of hot air and not a lot else!
Mind you, facts are not often an important ingredient in the climate change debate – witnessed by the huge efforts from climate change supporters to dismiss the climate-gate email storm which blew up on the eve of Copenhagen.
The goal of Copenhagen is to come up with an agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with what some scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst climate change projections: melting ice sheets, rising sea levels, expanding desertification, widespread drought, famine and species extinction.
Fat chance! Theoretically, a Copenhagen treaty will either replace or extend the current Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012. But such a deal almost certainly won’t be agreed to over the next fortnight. Vast gaps remain between rich, rapidly developing and poor countries on what an agreement should look like.
The first few days of the convention will be dominated by bureaucratic negotiations. The talks will not peak until the final two days, when about 100 national leaders are expected to take over. Those attending include Australia’s Kevin Rudd, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and US President Barack Obama – along with John Key.
Key only decided to go very late in the piece. He always said it was going to be nothing more than a talkfest. But once the rock star of world politics –Barack Obama – signed up to go (and Lucy, Keisha, Robyn et el demanded he attend), the former money trader’s inner politician kicked in and saw a good photo opportunity. After all in political terms; green is the new black!
You can’t blame key or any of the other politicians attending for wanting to cash in on the opportunity to extend their political livers.
However, let’s hope one real outcome from Copenhagen is the ability for climate change to be debated rationally and sensibly.
At the moment we have on the two sides of the argument screaming at each other and any real objectivity is being lost.
But there is probably more chance of peace breaking out in the middle east, Mrs Woods trusting Tiger again or a binding agreement coming out of Copenhagen – than the two sides of the climate change argument encouraging open and emotive-free debate on the issue!