Cope-ing With The Environment

The focus of almost the entire world has been on the capital of Denmark this week (for the first time ever) because our leaders came to the realisation that the Kyoto agreement wasn't really working. Despite this though things have been far less than harmonious. So for entertainment value, and to learn some serious things about how not to conduct diplomacy, I've picked my top three d'oh moments from the summit.

1. Breakdown - It's Monday 14th December, talks have been in play for a week, and things have been going seemingly well. Then all that ends as the least developed countries walk out of the conference, silenced for 24 hours, as they felt their interests were not being recognised. They have a point, after all the Kyoto Agreement was signed by the 'biggest hitters' around and yet little has been done. This started a steady breakdown of negotiations, so that the final agreement, being scrambled together now, will most definitely be a political statement as opposed to a legally binding document. As described by the Lesotho Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosili "To say we're disappointed is indeed an understatement, particularly that after 24 months of hard negotiations and the intensive deliberations of this conference, an agreement could not be reached on a legally-binding regime."
2. Oh Cameron - Since a general election is most definitely in the works at this minute it has reached the stage where The Opposition must mirror, or better, whatever the PM is up to. Unfortunately for Cameron however he couldn't very well head off to Copenhagen in hot pursuit of GB. Therefore, the Conservatives decided that now was the time to announce that they would give 14 councils grants for energy efficient houses. However, while announcing it Cameron decided it would be a good idea to suggest that the message about Climate Change lightened up - "If we make the answer to climate change sound like sitting in a dark room with a big woolly pullover on, with the heating turned down, with our teeth chattering and being miserable, then we're never going to sell it to anybody." So the breakdown of our atmosphere is too miserable for people to worry about. That's not the status of the message that's the problem, it's the status of the people.
3. Protest - Every big conference comes with protest, today that is an accepted principle. However, in the case of Copenhagen the protests have rather overshadowed the summit itself. From The Wave to the protests outside the summit itself the protests have shown that the voice of the people is as strong as and more powerful than that of those leading them. It also showed how revolutionary the summit could have been.

So there you are that's my roundup of the calamity that was the Copenhagen Summit 2009. Whether or not it will have any long lasting effect remains to be seen