Clean air starts at home
Copenhagen failure shows futility of bombastic climate control conferences
Why did the climate control conference in Copenhagen fail? Had this conference been held a year ago, the answer would have been clear: US President George W. Bush.
All participants would clearly see that the president prompted the conference’s failure after heading there for a few hours just before it ended, delivering an aggressive speech against developing countries, huddling with the Chinese while disregarding all other parties, failing to pledge significant financial aid, and making do with a shallow and non-binding final document.
However, it was not the conservative Bush who did all of the above, but rather, current US President Barack Obama, the progressive democrat. Obama was the one who landed in Copenhagen with a facial expression conveying a sense of angry skepticism, presented a broad series of demands to developing countries, made blatant threats, and quickly headed back to the frozen Washington.
However, is Obama to blame for the conference’s failure? Perhaps when it comes to etiquette, but not to the essence. Even if he had prepared his listeners in advance for the demands he included in his speech and in his talks with the leaders of India, Brazil, South Africa, and China it is doubtful whether they would be willing to accept them.
Especially in respect to the Chinese, there is no chance of adopting Obama’s demand for “transparency” in regards to curbing greenhouse gas emissions. China’s leadership avoids transparency like the plague.
Useless document
Monitoring greenhouse gas emissions on the national level is a highly complex process. In Israel, the Central Bureau of Statistics has been doing it since 2005 by relying on a wide array of data. Yet the final result, even in a small country such as Israel, is far from being accurate. The state comptroller made note of this in a special report: “The data used by the Central Bureau of Statistics are not insufficient for the purpose of effective monitoring...”If this is the case in the tiny Israel, we can only imagine the situation in the giant, split, underdeveloped China, which is far from adopting Western standards and fears for its sovereignty. The American scientists who prepared Obama’s speech understood this well, hence demanding that the Chinese agree to external monitoring and objective verification of the numbers it presents in respect to greenhouse gases.
Although China is the world’s number one polluter, its leadership firmly rejected Obama’s transparency and verification demands. The US president was forced to make do with quickly signing an American-Chinese agreement for appearances’ sake that looked like a press release drafted by a rookie PR consultant; this document does not obligate any party to reach any target and does not force any state to agree to any kind of examination.
The conclusion of the failure of the largest climate control conference in history is not that we can end the battle against pollution, but rather, that it would be better to put an end to attempts to secure a binding international convention via bombastic conferences.
Each state should do what’s best for its own citizens and adopt environmental steps that best serve current and future generations of its local citizens, and this will be enough to save the whole planet. Clean air starts at home, not at international conferences.
