Clearly, the Copenhagen meeting is heavily freighted with expectations. December is the UN's self-imposed deadline for reaching an international agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. No small task, given the host of complex and difficult issues that have to be resolved in order to reach a deal: emissions reductions and timetables for industrial countries; the role and responsibilities of fast growing developing countries; and financial assistance totaling billions of dollars annually from industrial countries to help developing countries control their emissions and combat climate change.
The two-year deadline was set at the UN's Bali climate meeting in 2007. Working against a deadline can focus the mind on the task at hand, but the two-year window has now closed to a scant four months, with much yet to be done. Time is running out, and while the goal in Copenhagen remains a final deal, it may be elusive -- and possibly self-defeating -- if Copenhagen is oversold as a be-all and end-all negotiation (the countdown clock contributes to that impression), and it fails to deliver.
"One of the things I really worry about for the end of the year is the expectations," said Sarah Ladislaw, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There will be a day after Copenhagen and climate change will still be an important issue. I think what you will have out of Copenhagen is a framework [for an agreement]. There will still be key [unresolved] questions going forward no matter what you get in Copenhagen."
Rob Bradley, a climate policy expert at the World Resources Institute, said he is optimistic there will be "significant movement" in Copenhagen. But we're not going to see things really wrapped up. Few, if any of these meetings are definitive in the sense that they leave nothing else to discuss. It's not a binary discussion of do we get a deal or don't we. It's how far down that pathway can we get in Copenhagen."
It's important to remember, Bradley said, that Kyoto, "which everyone would agree was a monumentally significant meeting, resulted in a treaty which then took a further four years of negotiations to figure out what it meant."
The risk coming out of Copenhagen is that the commentary either from the media in general or the major constituencies will be that it was a failure, Bradley said. "That would be awful and, to my mind, the height of irresponsibility unless they think it would help us get something better. We need to realize that failure and success are not going to be absolutes in this process."
There are other clocks worth mentioning in the context of climate change. The US Census Bureau's US Population Clock is currently at more than 307 million, with a net gain of one person every 11 seconds; and a world population clock is currently at well over 6.7 billion and climbing. More people, of course, means greater demand for energy and food and dwellings -- and increasing emissions of greenhouse gases unless the international community at Copenhagen or thereafter can agree on measures to curb those emissions.
The "Doomsday Clock" was established in 1947 and maintained by the board of directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The Doomsday Clock conveys how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction -- figuratively depicted as minutes to midnight. The clock initially represented the threat of global nuclear war, but was expanded in recent years to include threats posed by biological weapons, the misuse of bioengineering and climate change.
The clock stood the closest to midnight -- two minutes -- in 1953, when the US and Soviet Union tested hydrogen bombs. It was furthest from midnight in 1991 -- 17 minutes -- when the Cold War ended and the US and Russia began making deep cuts in their nuclear arsenals.
The clock was last reset in 2007 -- from seven minutes to five minutes to midnight. "The world stands at the brink of a second nuclear age," the Bulletin said. "The United States and Russia remain ready to stage a nuclear attack within minutes, North Korea conducts a nuclear test and many in the international community worry that Iran plans to acquire the Bomb."
And, added to the Bulletin's catalogue of human folly: "Climate change also presents a dire challenge to humanity."
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