The Copenhagen Outcome-The labour of The Mountain
The climate change summit meeting of world leaders predictably failed to produce any significant results. Even the die-hard optimists were not looking for any meaningful outcome in the absence of any firm commitment on the part of the developed world who are the villain of the piece. The event was associated with a lop of hoopla and hectic parleys among the leaders of various countries. What was the agenda before it? It consisted of issues like cut in greenhouse gas emission particularly by the developed world, providing financial support for mitigation and adaptation to climate change by the developing countries, a carbon trading system which would effectively take care of the forest resources of the world.
In the course of the marathon deliberations for last 12 days which were marked by anger, frustration and demonstrations by the environmental groups. It is tragedy that when the world is already reeling under the devastating effects of global warming caused by reckless discharge of carbon, these worthy leaders have just displayed hypocritical concerns on this issue. They preferred grandstanding rather than committing themselves to set of meaningful actions which are absolutely necessary to save the Mother Earth from an impending catastrophe. The simple truth is lost on them that if ever any such catastrophe happens it would leave fewer survivors and cut across poor and rich, communism and capitalism!
The outcome has particularly and with good reasons left the developing the world fuming as in the current scenario the countries located in the low-lying areas of the world are faced with extinction with the rising waters of the sea. Maldives is one of such countries which faces a grim threat.
The intransigence on the part of the USA and other developed countries once again came to the fore. These countries are not simply not willing to climb down from their predetermined position on cuts in their respective emission levels and most unfairly expect the poor countries to do their bit in reducing emission when they have pressing developmental issues to deal with poverty and deprivation which afflict a large part of their populace.
Finally it would be appropriate to ask ourselves what have we got from this much-hyped mega event ? It has hopelessly failed to address the main issue which was extracting a firm and binding commitment from the most polluting countries to cut down on greenhouse gas emission substantially and compensating the poor nations in the form of financial assistance so that these countries have access to green and clean technologies to carry out their developmental activities. And what we have got is a toothless deal entered among Brazil, South Africa, India and China which is of a non-binding nature and the conference has just taken note of it. There was no consensus and the problem is left to lie where it was!
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