It is hard to feel optimistic about solving the climate crisis these days. The media’s take on the Copenhagen international climate treaty negotiations is that they were an absolute failure. Their reporting on the federal climate bill is similarly macabre. Acc stuck somewhere between incompetence, cowardice, and straight-out corruption.
On the other hand, think tanks of ideologies continue releasing highly ideological analyses that are hard to believe. Nonetheless, somewhere between the mainstream media’s alarmism and the think tanks’ platitudes there is a grain of truth about the extremely challenging times ahead of us.
Overblown Expectations:
In the months leading to COP 15, the United Nations’ conference on the climate crisis, hopes were high for the world to finally get a fair, ambitious, and binding treaty by the end of the year. Unfortunately, these hopes were unfounded for two main reasons: there just hadn’t been enough time to iron out disagreements between disagreeing countries and the United States -once again- showed up empty handed without a domestic climate mitigation policy (I’d recommend checking out the #SenateHate hasthag on Twitter to learn more about the inadequacy of our legislative bodies).
Few reporters in the mainstream media and members of the NGO community bothered to understand whether it would actually be feasible to get a treaty signed in Copenhagen. Had they looked past the surface, they would not have defined success in Copenhagen as a signed, sealed, and delivered global climate treaty. Instead, they would have written that the initial treaty schedule was set at COP 13, two years ago in Bali, and agreed upon by all member nations as part of the Bali Roadmap. Unfortunately our former president had little respect for the climate and even less for international agreements and proceeded to block all progress the negotiating text. The stalemate finally ended with President Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009, giving international negotiators less than 12 months to hash out all disagreements (and there are some tough ones in there), plug in all target numbers, and prepare a text ready to be signed by all heads of state.
The second main problem with the “Copenhagen Treaty” illusion was that, without congressional action, the United States negotiating team lacked the mandate to negotiate on details. President Obama was clear about the framework he wanted to establish, but couldn’t commit to any details making the likelihood of a treaty being signed in Copenhagen a little below zero.
The Copenhagen Accord:
The low expectations that I had going in still were still too high for what ended up emerging from Copenghagen. The Copenhagen Accord was a massive failure of process and barely managed to moved the conversation forward.
By the time world leaders arrived in Copenhagen on the final days of the two-week long negotiations, the whole text had reverted to being bracketed. ‘Bracketed text’ is United Nations lingo for parts that are still lacking consensus and it was a chilling sight to see these parts increase with every passing day. On Youth and Future Generations day young people wore bright orange t-shirts saying “Don’t Bracket our Future” on the back and “How old will you be in 2050?” on the front.
When the heads of state finally arrived, they had to start negotiating themselves – something that heads of state haven’t done since 1919 when they personally negotiated the Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI. Unfortunately the two weeks of intense negotiations opened up too many wounds for the heads of state to resolve all conflicts. When Obama finally arrived, he used his organizing skills to put pressure on other leaders and managed to make something out of nothing at the last minute.
While inadequate to deal with the magnitude of the problem they were tasked to solve, the Copenhagen Accord is a small step forward. The final text is simply a list of emission reduction commitments from any willing nation and a list of points outlining the global community’s commitment to continue addressing the issue.
The outcome wasn’t necessarily bad, but once again, the main problem was with the process. Check out this video of Tom Smith, produced by the UK Youth Climate Coalition, expressing the frustrations of international youth with the negotiations.
As Tom mentions, one good thing that did emerge from Copenhagen was a more united and organized youth climate movement. Contrary to our negotiating (and older) counterparts, young people from across the globe joined to speak as one voice for the need of all peoples to have a right to a stable climate and a similar standard of living. Australian youth raised funds for their Pacific Islander peers to attend while UK youth helped Kenyans. U.S. youth established partnerships and organized joined events with their Kenyan and Chinese counterparts. Youth of almost every nation attended and participated in Canadian and Indigenous youth protests against the tar sands. As I mentioned in many of my dispatches, the keyword among young people was ‘Solidarity’. The keywords for negotiators were “what will I get?”.
Coming back to Washington D.C. after an extremely inspiring and frustrating 2 weeks in Copenhagen was tough. With young leaders from across the world (as shown in the video to the right) waiting on the United States to put some binding commitments on the table, the Senate was taking its sweet time in addressing the crisis. Every bill has been stalling in the Senate because, just like international negotiators, ConservaDems and Republicans have been trying to squeeze everything they can get for their constituents and their corporate owners at the expense of the general good.
With healthcare legislation finally in conference it’s a matter of time before the Senate takes on climate, and when they do we better be ready. It will be up to us, young people, to push our Senators to change their catchphrases from ‘what will I get’ to ‘Solidarity’, and join us in working towards a fair and safe world.