Copenhagen is Like A Bad Relationship…
The Copenhagen climate talks are like a bad relationship. First, it’s all euphoria then it’s all, “oh God, she hates me.”
Today, as the talks begin, we’re euphoric.
Let’s review.
U.S. President Barack Obama has committed to going to the end of the conference on Dec. 18, rather than on Dec. 9. This untethering of the conference from his trip to Oslo on Dec. 7 to accept the Nobel Peace Price suggests a new seriousness about the talks that we haven’t yet seen from Obama.
It’s not just a matter of Obama being in Scandanavia and swinging by the talks anymore.
Another euphoric piece of news came this weekend from the U.N. Environment Program, which concluded that the gap between the strongest proposed emissions cuts and what is necessary to keep warming under 2 degree celsius is only about 2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases.
The Associated Press story (via the Copenhagen summit site) has this optimistic quote:
For those who claim a deal in Copenhagen is impossible, they are simply wrong,” said UNEP director Achim Steiner. “We are within a few gigatons of having a deal. The gap has narrowed significantly.
In other words, it’s a tall glass but it’s full of juice.
But wait. Surely, there’s a big emotional crash around the corner, the “Why is she so mean to me?” moment.
The potential heartbreakers are everywhere and The New York Times’ Tom Zeller, Jr., has helpfully laid them out for us.
Oddly though, Zeller leaves out the affair of the purloined emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, which, we’ve argued, will be a sort of disembodied conference delegate in Copenhagen.
The problem is less the emails than some of the unsettled questions and debates within the scientific community. The debates don’t undermine the central claim that humans are warming the planet but they do give skeptics like Sen. James Inhofe an opening to continue with their obstructionist behavior.
