Eight days from now, a meeting that will either begin to slow down or will allow the continuing destruction of our planet—its people, cities, farms, mountains, vegetation and its animals—will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The December 7 to 18 United Nations Climate Change Conference is where world leaders will take or reject their opportunity to set the foundations of how mankind will face climate change as a united global community.

This is a political gathering. And those who have been studying the climate-change phenomenon and the devastations it has been causing are hoping—and praying—that the leaders of our world will come to unite behind a new, strong, legally binding agreement that will replace the Kyoto Protocol. The new treaty must boldly address the challenges caused by climate change.

Copenhagen must be better than Kyoto, which, after the protocol was initially adopted on December 11, 1997, in Kyoto, Japan (hence its name) entered into force on February 16, 2005. As of November 2009,187 states have signed and ratified the protocol. But the United States like a few other countries have not, despite its being a signatory of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change aimed to arrest the emission of pollutants into the atmosphere which is the biggest manmade contribution to the processes that cause climate change.

World monitoring equipment see that the earth is hotter today, climate change greater, and global emissions of greenhouse gases are 25 percent more than in 1990.

For a decade now, climate-change scientists have determined and reported more credibly on the dangers mankind faces if there is no unity among men in mitigating climate change and its hazards.

The incoming president of COP15, which is the handy name for the Copenhagen UN Conference on Climate Change, is the Danish Minister for Climate and Energy Connie Hedegaard. She has eloquently warned that the conference must not fail—or else.

“Failure is not an option!” says a report by Michael von Bulow. Mankind will be placed in greater jeopardy from the climate and the weather. And the failure will not only be that of a bunch of officials convening in Denmark but “the whole global democratic system” failing “to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century,” she said.

Many people have been doubtful the UN conference will yield any positive results. There are even scientists who up to now are not convinced that there is a climate change problem, and those who agree climate change is a serious threat but are not convinced that man-made greenhouse gas emissions are substantially responsible.

“If the whole world comes to Copenhagen and leaves without making the needed political agreement, then I think it’s a failure that is not just about climate. Then it’s the whole global democratic system not being able to deliver results in one of the defining challenges of our century. And that is and should not be a possibility. It’s not an option,” Connie Hedegaard said to the cop15.dk interviewer.

“If we don’t deliver in Copenhagen, then I cannot see when again you can build up a similar pressure on all the governments of this world to deliver. So I think we should be very, very cautious not to miss the opportunity,” says Hedegaard, adding that “it would be irresponsible not to use the momentum now.”

World Wildlife Fund, (WWF) which is among the planet’s most avid supporter of radically reducing the greenhouse gas emissions, offers following analysis of the climate change situation.

Most nations agree on the need to keep warming below 2°C. And they agree, in theory at least, that the world needs to establish an emissions trajectory for the coming decades to ensure stabilized concentrations of greenhouse gases in the air at a level low enough to achieve that.

No more ad hoc deals: Copenhagen must be based on a rigorous scientific assessment of what needs to be done to prevent climatic disaster.

What needs to happen there

Current climate science suggests that we should not emit more than about 1,400 billion tons of CO2 equivalent between 2000 and 2050 if we are to give the world a chance of staying below 2ºC of global warming.

That will require reducing global emissions to at least 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Global emissions will need to peak around 2015 and then to start FALLING sharply.

Even so, we will almost certainly require negative emissions after 2050 to get atmospheric CO2 concentrations down to acceptable levels. That is, we will need to suck CO2 out of the air—by planting forests or by other technological means.

WWF’s climate vision for 2050

We live on an island and frequently witness nature’s fury with cyclones, storms and tidal surges. The sea washes away our houses, land and cattle. When it retreats, our land is highly saline and useless for cultivating crops. Things are changing fast. We tell ourselves: “I have already lost two homes and now I fear for my third. We are completely helpless due to lack of advance warning. We can’t even collect our belongings and move to safer places.”

The targets for 2050 must involve all industrialized countries. But they will also need to involve all other major emitters.

Certainly, the highest-emitting countries that collectively produce 80 percent of the world’s emissions need to be involved as soon as possible. By then, however, we should expect the world to be embracing a future of zero carbon emissions using clean energy technologies out of choice rather than “burden sharing.”

We will have kicked the carbon habit in the same way that 20th century industrialized countries decided to banish killer coal smogs.

Action must be taken in industrialized countries (and the USA needs to rejoin a global climate framework) and should also involve newly industrialized countries like Malaysia, the Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia and Singapore, and emerging economies such as China, Brazil, Indonesia, India, South Africa and Mexico.

News in the past three days appears to boost Hedegaard’s optimism. The United States and China have made proposals showing the advent this season before Christmas of a willingness of the leaders of these two countries to cooperate with the rest of mankind on climate change.
JENNIFER B. RADER