After a week and a half of back-and-forth negotiations, presentations and protests, the next three days will be the most critical for the COP15 United Nations Climate Conference in Copenhagen. But even as top leaders fly in to hammer out a deal, the chances of producing an effective treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are dwindling.
Whatever minimal progress was achieved last week came to a halt when delegates from 130 developing nations staged a walkout over certain proposals. Most of these countries were hoping to simply extend the treaty drawn up in Kyoto in 1997, which is set to expire in 2012.
The prior treaty placed more of the burden of reducing emissions on developed nations like the U.S. and members of the European Union. Not surprisingly, they strongly object to new drafts requiring them to commit to sharp reduction targets. Sure, developed countries are offering up financial aid to help them maintain growth while converting to cleaner energy -- but it's not enough, they say.
It's extremely unlikely that this hurdle will be overcome in the three remaining days of the conference -- a fact that's so apparent, many are now referring to the summit as "Constipagen." China, the U.S., India and the European Union have all expressed different wants and aren't budging. Many are upset that the U.S. won't up its offer to reduce emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels.
The lack of progress is even more disappointing in the context of the U.S.'s climate change momentum observed last week. Unexpectedly, the Environmental Protection Agency declared greenhouse gases a threat to human health, placing their reduction under the jurisdiction of the executive branch. After President Obama was expected to show up without any climate legislation to show off, this was a promising sign that America was going to meaningfully contribute to the proceedings. Now, depending on what Obama pulls off during his visit to the Danish capital on Dec. 18, it might look like the U.S. was all talk.
An agreement of some sort probably will result from the climate talks -- it would be unwise for leaders to return home completely empty handed -- but whatever it is probably won't have teeth. Already, leaders like former vice president Al Gore, who spoke in Copenhagen yesterday, are looking ahead to a follow-up conference, dubbed COP16, that could take place in June or July of 2010, an enormously expensive endeavor.
Failure to produce a solid treaty now could also spell doom for the climate legislation pending in the U.S. Senate. The Kerry-Boxer bill, which would establish a carbon cap-and-trade system and set emissions reduction targets, has been bound up in Congress for months, with the opposition digging in its heels just enough to get it postponed till spring. One of the strongest arguments in favor of the bill is that the U.S. needs to follow the world's lead in combating global warming. If the global community doesn't ratify a treaty, the bill will lose its urgency.
On a local level, compounded failures in Copenhagen and Congress, could hurt companies with business models based around carbon management and cap-and-trade. Carbon accounting companies like Carbonetworks, Kleiner Perkins-backed Hara, Enviance and others have been keeping a close eye on both these outcomes, hoping that emissions quotas will drive more businesses to track their carbon output. Picarro, a recently-rebranded startup that makes a system to measure greenhouse gas content in the atmosphere could also be in trouble if governments and businesses have no impetus to cut down on their emissions.
It's unlikely that any of these companies will go out of business -- their clients still have financial and marketing incentives to reduce their emissions. And Picarro just scored a contract to supply the Chinese with monitoring systems, even though no aggressive legislation has been passed there. There could, however, be fewer successful entrants into the space.
Here are more photos from Copenhagen:
Riot-ready police have been dispatched to control increasingly aggressive protesters.
Al Gore took the stage on Tuesday, throwing out the jarring statistic that if global warming continues at its current rate, the polar ice caps will be gone by 2014.
The Yes Men, the group responsible for elaborate pranks on authority figures, also showed up in Denmark, this time pretending to be the Canadian delegation, and shocking attendees with a proposal to steeply reduce its carbon emissions. Here's a video of the Yes Men explaining their latest shenanigans: