Copenhagen Summit: Will it be a turning point in carbon reductions?

As a result of intense lobbying around the world with leaders of nations including the political and government leaders of major countries emitting carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, industry leaders, scientists and others, it is reported, the UN's chief climate negotiator Yvo de Boer and UN’s IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri are hopeful that some landmark commitments will be made at the Copenhagen Summit on climate change. We can have some hopes, as they say, because the United States, China and India have announced their readiness to cut emissions, though initially they were reluctant for any commitment. The latest to join in for a committed reduction in greenhouse gases is South Africa, making its first quantifiable target on emissions.

Earlier, USA was the topmost emitter of greenhouse gases that has come down to the second position as the Peoples Republic of China is now on top of the table, but the US still continues on top of a list as the top per capita carbon emitter. Russia is third on the list followed by India, as the fourth largest carbon emitter. The newly emerging fast growing economies like India and China depend largely on coal and fossil fuels for all their energy needs including electricity, clean sources like nuclear power stations, hydro-electric projects, wind energy, solar energy and other clean technologies accounting for a very minor percentage of their total energy production. The worst emitters are their coal-fired thermal power plants that depend on low-grade coal that emits more harmful gases, soot and suspended particles. Many of these power plants are very old and rely on old technologies that produce less energy and more pollutants. If this is the case with China and India which are economically well of compared to other developing countries, the lesser developed countries are still far worse technologically and they together emit the major bulk of the harmful emissions.

Practical, technological and financial constraints make it difficult for developing countries to reduce carbon emissions unless they want to shut down their power plants, factories, and stop running their transport systems including automobiles which are all depending on technologies and machinery that are many decades old when no one seriously talked about greenhouse gases or climate change. If they shut down such sources of gas emissions, their entire populations will suffer economically and in many other ways. In fact these countries started development projects in the last few decades, and their total emissions of harmful pollutants may work out to less than 10 percent of the total atmospheric greenhouse gases, because, most countries including European countries and USA were burning fossil fuels right from the times of the industrial revolution, adding most of the atmospheric pollutants present in the atmosphere now.

Everyone talking about climate change knows this, they also know that it is difficult to reduce emissions immediately and if immediate action is not taken the world will become incapable of sustaining life in the next few decades. Even the deadlines they talk about and the target they fix like for 2020 and 2050 will be too late as already many countries are suffering from severe droughts, floods, untimely rainy seasons, hurricanes and typhoons, and rising sea levels.

Even in the Copenhagen summit, not much is going to happen, as no country is ready to commit to legally binding agreements. Though UN's Yvo de Boer told reporters on the eve of the summit that offers of finance for clean technology for poor countries were also coming through and talks were progressing on a long term vision of massive carbon cuts by 2050, it may be clearly understood that no country has made any firm and binding commitment to help poor countries, excepting the promise by USA to provide US$10 billion and the European Union US$100 billion, every year after 2012. Considering the enormity of the work to be done and the cost of building new projects, this offer of financial help, to be spread over all developing countries in the world, is not even enough to construct one plant each in each country. Only talks are going on and 2050 is when nobody will be around to talk any climate change or offer help to anyone because, global warming does not wait for anyone and it is accelerating right at this moment, and worsening day by day.

The main points the Copenhagen summit will discuss include targets to control greenhouse gas emissions particularly by developed countries, financial support for adapting measures to reduce emissions by developing countries and a ‘carbon trading scheme aimed at ending the destruction of the world's forests by 2030’, as the UN representatives and other organizers of the summit point out.

Delegates from 192 countries are meeting in Copenhagen, with some 100 world leaders and 15,000 delegates taking part in the discussions. The leaders who promised to attend include US President Barack Obama, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen and the head of the UN's panel of climate experts Rajendra Pachauri will be addressing the opening session.

In a survey by Globescan, 64% of people surveyed were of the opinion that global warming a very serious problem, up by 20% from a decade ago. It is a positive indication that more people are concerned now. Also, there are reports that 56 newspapers in 45 countries will be publishing in 20 languages a jointly written same editorial on Monday warning that climate change will ‘ravage our planet’ unless action is agreed upon at Copenhagen. "At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world," the editorial says. Also, many thousands of environmental activists marched in London, and other cities of UK and European countries on Saturday and protests are planned in Copenhagen, and around the world, on 12 December to encourage delegates to reach the strongest possible deal for cutting emissions. These underline the importance of agreements will be made at Copenhagen because it will replace the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 on climate change as the targets set at Kyoto will be running out in 2012.

The fast rate at which the glaciers in Antarctica, the north pole and nearby areas, like Iceland and Greenland, and the Himalayan glaciers melt, as many recent surveys and researches conclude, will submerge many small island countries and even big cities on seashores. The indications are already there in many places as flooding at the time of high tides and receding coastlines in countries like India, for example, many villages in coastal Orissa have vanished under the advancing sea.