According to Carol Browner, the White House environment and climate change adviser, "what is important is that you now have China and India among the world's largest emitters of greenhouse gas emissions agreeing that it is time to do something,"^[1] This is an important change because previously developed nations have not had any targets at all, so even self imposed, non binding ones are a step forward.

1. ^ Suzanne Goldberg, White House Climate Advisor offers hope after Copenhagen, The Guardian, 11/01/10 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/11/copenhagen-emissions-obama-climate

The reality is that they need not have bothered going to the conference to get this, both India and China agreed to the principle of limiting emissions sometime in the future before the conference and they did not shift position during the conference or for the Copenhagen accord.

It cannot be said that Copenhagen was a step backwards, at the worst all sides involved in negotiations got an idea of where the sticking points that need to be resolved are. This means that future conferences can pick up where Copenhagen left off. Copenhagen is only being seen as a disaster as it was portrayed as being the time and place where we would get a wide ranging comprehensive deal rather than being portrayed for what it really was, one more step in the process. After all Copenhagen was COP15 with both COP16 and COP17 already penciled in and negotiations continue to take place between the conferences.

The conference laid the groundwork for the next conference (COP16 in Mexico). "The Copenhagen summit witnessed for the first time that the US was represented at a presidential level during the climate conference and its decision to lower emissions by 17 per cent from the 2005 levels demonstrates a major success of the meeting," said the state minister in the Vice President Office of Tanzania, Dr Batilda Burian. Tanzania considering the conference a success is despite them being an African nation and part of the G77 that will be worst hit by climate change and were calling for much tougher action.^[1]

1. ^ http://www.thecitizen.co.tz/newe.php?id=16428

If this was steps in the right direction then we are not walking fast enough and disaster will catch up with us while we are still ambling along. We know that we need results quickly and that the faster we get a deal the easier it is to reduce the effects of climate change. The later we leave things the faster and more dramatic the cuts have to be.

There have regularly been countries that have been blocking agreements on climate change, most notably the U.S. but also Australia, Canada and Japan have in the past been accusing of wanting to slow down agreements. None of these efforts have worked in the long term and their governments have been slowly brought round.

It is very unlikely that China would continue to block stricter emissions cuts for other country – after all this would be good for its own competitiveness – as it was accused of doing in Copenhagen. Refusing to let developed countries cut their emissions won’t happen again because it occurred because the Chinese were unprepared and had a junior official in the meeting. China did eventually move beyond this and allow the Copenhagen accord to go ahead.

China is usually much more diplomatically astute than it was at Copenhagen, it was caught flat footed and probably won’t be again. At future summits the chances are that they will try to slow down agreements but not stop them all together, will have concessions in reserve to give and will go some way to resolving the main issue the U.S. has with China, that of transparency in their emissions verification.^[1]

1. ^ http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/KL23Ad01.html

It is not just the results of the conference itself that we should be looking at but the results of simply holding the conference as well. The Copenhagen conference energized the environmentalist community, it has created numerous campaigns involving millions of people around the world. More importantly it was a bid media event, newspapers and news programs covered it every day and covered the issues in detail during the run up to the conference itself. This coverage itself is a success because many more people will now have a good idea what the problem is and wish to do something to prevent it. Even in non-democratic countries public opinion makes a difference, especially when it is an issue a dictator can give in on like climate change. Once there is a critical mass of people who support taking action to prevent climate change even if it may mean some damage to the economy then governments will act. In the absence of a leader on the issue it is public opinion that will shift the position of politicians.^[1]

1. ^ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/blogs/bruce-anderson/copenhagen-already-a-success/article1355706/

During the conference it was seen as hopeful that the US Congress would make significant progress in tackling climate change through the climate change bill. There are now however growing concerns that they may not. There are worried that Senator Edward Kennedy’s seat might fall to the republicans thereby reducing the majority in the Senate and certainly threatening healthcare if not the climate bill too. The senate has been stalling over the bill, because of desires to get republicans on board the bill is likely to be watered down a bit. Democrats are reluctant to have another major conflict in congress in the run up to midterm elections. This leaves a relatively small window in which to act; many democrats from industrial and coal producing states won’t want to risk reelection chances by supporting something that is seen as damaging locally while it is possible that the republicans may win the elections making any bill much harder to pass. The republicans are meanwhile pushing for a vote to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.^[1]

1. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/07/us-climate-change-legislation

In order to be adopted the Copenhagen Accord needed to be accepted by consensus within the U.N. as it came from outside the U.N. framework. This did not happen in the conference itself and is still unlikely to happen. During the final sessions of the conference to adopt the accord Cuba, Bolivia, Venezuela and Sudan voted against and Cuba has stated it will continue to reject it. This means that there is a lot of confusion about the legal status of the document, does it have any force? Just for those who signed it? The U.N. is still looking into the matter.

There may yet be difficulties in internationalizing domestic targets – the main potential benefit of the accord – because it has not yet been worked out how it would impact on the two track process that the UN Framework convention is working on. Having developing nations (annex II countries) voluntarily include their emissions is also the first step away from the route taken at Kyoto to have a split between developed and developing worlds in terms of emissions.^[1]

1. ^ http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Copenhagen-Accord-wont-be-a-consensus-decision/articleshow/5421458.cms

A change from the UN system could be a good thing for the negotiations. Jonathan argues "We are not really worried what Chad does. We are not really worried about what Haiti says it is going to do about greenhouse gas emissions. We just hope they recover from the earthquake." The US would also not seek to entirely exclude the UN from the process of negotiations recognising its importance as a forum for the smaller nations.

Some in the US administration have been calling for the UN to be sidelined in future climate change negotiations. Jonathan Pershing, one of the chief US negotiators at Copenhagen is arguing that in the future negotiations should be done by the main polluters, particularly those who created the Copenhagen Accord, but presumably also including other large polluters such as the EU and Japan. He states that "The UN didn't manage the conference that well," and there is no reason to assume that they will do better in the future, many would agree with this but that does not mean that the UN can be sidelined. As Jonathan himself admits "It is impossible to imagine a global agreement in place that doesn't essentially have a global buy-in. There aren't other institutions beside the UN that have that," Pershing said. "But it is also impossible to imagine a negotiation of enormous complexity where you have a table of 192 countries involved in all the detail." Without negotiating with the world where is the legitimacy of the results to come from?

The bigger problem is that the big polluters are the ones who have most to gain from watering down and putting off agreements. If the small nations who are worst hit are to be denied a place at the table then they have one less way to try to persuade developed nations of their needs for strong agreements on action. The US may not be concerned about what the small countries of the world do, but they are certainly concerned and very much affected by what the US does so as they have a stake they should be involved. The Copenhagen conference has equally shown that these small states have very little influence and will be ignored anyway. It is however still best to have them in the room as the main advocates for a tough agreement.^[1]

1. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jan/14/climate-talks-un-sidelined