Thusday: The View from the Sideline

With NGO access to the Belle Center strictly restricted today, we were on our own to find something to do. In the morning, we went to Klimaforum, the official civil society counterpart to the UN conference, where we sat in on a discussion of the effects of climate change on migration. The discussion was disappointingly dogmatic in its assumption that boarders are inherently unjust (it was hosted by a group with the stated goal of eliminating all national borders.) The issues raised were compelling though. Desertification, flooding, and rises of sea-level will displace millions of people as climate change advances, and without some plan to deal with these "climate refugees," widespread suffering and even death will result. The real tragedy is that those effected will come disproportionately from impoverished countries.



After lunch, I headed to the Forum, a venue which the City of Copenhagen has opened to NGOs in compensation for the restricted access to the conference itself. The speeches ongoing at the Belle Center were projected onto several large screens in a large gymnasium with a thousand or so chairs set up in rows. Only 40 or so of the chairs were filled. I couldn't help but think that the venue was sorry solace for being barred from the conference itself.



That aside, I did catch a few interesting speeches. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke about his country's goals for reducing carbon emissions, ominously referring to their nuclear plans. I also caught a panel of US senators speaking about the possibilities for a climate bill in the senate. The argument boiled down once again to the idea that American domestic politics are limiting the extent to which negotiations can proceed, and that developing countries need to make further concessions before an agreement can be reached. The senators reaffirmed the US's refusal to take leadership on this issue, arguing that action could not be "unilateral." Personally, I'm becoming increasingly frustrated by these arguments given the scale and certainty of the problem of climate change, the opportunities I see for the United State to take on the leadership role it's so loath to accept, and the callousness demonstrated in the face of the drastic effects that will be felt around the world.

Perhaps the most moving appeal for action I have heard this week had been made by Mohamed Nasheed, President of the island nation of the Maldives. His speech calling for an aggressive agreement that would save his homeland from nearly complete submersion was so poignant that it drew applause through the hallways of the Belle Center yesterday. Without substantial action, his daughter's children may never see their homeland because their homeland will not exist. Along side plea for action such as Nasheed's, the US position is coming to be seen more and more as not just callous and indifferent, but malicious and immoral.

So where do negotiations actually stand at the end of the next-to-last of the conference? Nobody knows, really. The BBC has alternately reported today that the "Copenhagen climate deal [is] in doubt" and that a "Climate deal looks close, but may not halt warming." One thing that's certain is that the negotiations are continuing forward along two tracks, one of which includes the Kyoto Protocol framework. In the end though, whether or not an agreement is reached may not matter. As the second article above points out, the mitigation proposals currently on the table could allow the earth to warm by some 3°C, which, according to scientist, poses significant threats to human welfare.