We are down to the last week, and tomorrow looks like a big day for the Copenhagen agreement. The world will hear speeches from Hugo Chavez of Venezuelan, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Gordon Brown of England.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Obama is hopeful for a deal (he’s very optimistic these days- this and health care, though he won’t be able to strongarm anybody in Copenhagen… he hasn’t even strongarmed us yet) and I hope he’s right. Three days from now we’ll know.

"It's possible that we will not reach agreement and it's also true that there are many issues to be sorted out," said Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

The big issues:  

1.    Temperature limits

2.    Money

More specifically, Developing nations are trying to get industrialized nations to agree to a 1.5 C temperature rise from 1990 levels, while industrialized countries are going for something more like a 2 C limit- one that African nations say would mean disaster for their continent.
As for the money, there are a lot of numbers being thrown around, but the bottom line is that developing nations want industrialized countries to pay for the issues that climate change is causing in their world- which is the same world.    

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrote in an International Herald Tribune opinion piece on Tuesday that success in Copenhagen demanded that all major economies take decisive action and agree to a system that is transparent and trusted.

"The absolute core benchmark for success is for the first time in history to have an agreement between rich and poor countries on this common challenge," said Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia.

The UN, for their part, is playing peacemaker/ dealmaker, and they are doing a pretty good job. I think any of us dealing with children would simply split the difference at this point, right? The UN is saying that developed countries should cut their emission by more than they have been offering or planning and that developing nations should commit to more limited rises in their own emissions as well as putting billions toward helping nations dealing with the effects of climate change.

The top emitters have all set emissions cut goals recently, but there are other factors to deal with- underlying all of this is the idea of respect and responsibility- the same as anything else. Rich nations like ours have yet to make it known that we are supposed to be taking responsibility- we caused this and we will do what we have to do to do right by the world. No one has said that. Everyone is in negotiation mode, talking about how much everything will cost and looking out for themselves. Even Archbishop Desmond Tutu is getting combative, saying that no deal is better than a bad deal, sort of playing the Joseph Lieberman role from the health care debate.

Archbishop Tutu makes a good point- but the result of making that point should be a good deal, not no deal at all. I look forward to the speeches tomorrow- let them be words that bring unity, not another year of issues.