Hot Air in Copenhagen

It sounds harmless enough, the news that the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet in Copenhagen early next month. Another U.N. talking shop, surely, designed mainly to provide a nice expenses-paid junket for the U.N. bureaucrats, representatives of nongovernmental organizations, and world leaders who find these things an attractive diversion from coping with economic problems at home. A total of 20,000 delegates, give or take a few, will be there from 192 nations--so many that Copenhagen can't cope, and many will have to commute for a dozen days from as far away as Sweden, leaving their carbon footprints embedded in the atmosphere.

The goal is to devise a method of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to prevent global warming. At least, that's the stated goal, and the real one of those convinced that warming is an existential threat to the world as we know it--"human survival itself is at risk," according to scientist/activist James Lovelock. So profound is such a belief that the British courts this month accorded believers in climate change all of the rights the law extends to practitioners of any religion. Ruling in a case in which a man claims he was dismissed as "head of sustainability" for a real estate firm because of his ecological beliefs, the court held, "A belief in man-made climate change and the alleged moral imperatives is capable, if genuinely held, of being a -philosophical belief for the purpose of the 2003 Religion and Beliefs Regulations."

But the drive for a replacement for the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, comes not only from the passion of true believers. Others behind the Copenhagen get-together see climate change as a crisis that they cannot let go to waste, a chance to achieve their long-standing goal of transferring trillions in wealth from the rich to the poorer nations. This drive started long before global climate change became the hot issue it now is, and will continue long after the earth starts to cool.

Here is the state of play. The delegates are to consider a 181-page draft that calls for developed countries to pay an "adaptation debt" to developing countries to the tune of somewhere between $70 billion and $150 billion per year, funded perhaps by a 2 percent tax on international financial transactions in the developed countries. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, seemingly unaware that Britain is, er, broke, has generously offered to throw $1.5 billion into the pot, topping Barack Obama's offer of $1.2 billion.The European Union has endorsed the $150 billion figure--but refuses to say how much the 27-nation EU grouping is willing to put up, or how its contribution would be divided among its members. Eastern European members of the EU have rejected a call for an EU contribution of $10 billion. -Germany's Angela Merkel guesses that the EU should contribute 30 percent of needed funds, or close to $50 billion, leaving about $100 billion for other developed nations to cough up. In short, even within this one grouping, there is little agreement on how to pay the bill for meeting emission reduction targets.

There is agreement, however, that the stumbling block to a final treaty--"treaty" is a word not used, perhaps to avoid the need for Senate approval of any deal that President Obama might sign--is the United States. Barack Obama might be popular in Europe as the non-Bush, but on this issue America remains Europe's favorite piñata, as the Guardian's summary of world reaction to the American position makes clear. "We expect American leadership. President Obama has created great expectations around the world. Now we expect [the United States] to contribute," says Andreas Carlgren, Sweden's environment minister, speaking on behalf of the EU presidency. The reluctance of Congress to pass expensive environmental legislation is no excuse adds Connie Hedegaard, the Danish environment minister, "I remind the U.S. that it is not the only country in the world that has to have discussions with its domestic parliament. The expectation out there worldwide and among populations and the young [is for] the U.S. to deliver."

In short, Hedegaard would have Todd Stern, U.S. special envoy for climate change, renege on his promise not to sign any deal that would be "dead on arrival" in Congress. John Bruton, EU ambassador to the United States, enraged Stern by telling the press, "Sometimes the greatest deliberative body in the world [the Senate] acts as though it is the only deliberative body in the world." Proving that his stay in Washington has taught him nothing about how the U.S. system works, Bruton adds, "The world cannot wait on the Senate's timetable." Wanna bet?