After Copenhagen

Copenhagen ended effectively on December 18 and the gavel came down the morning of the 19th. Give everybody 48 hours or so to get home, get through jet lag and wake up to look at the agreement that they all made with their advisors and other important folks on Monday and, you guessed it, Tuesday rolls around and it is the time to start complaining. The wire feeds are flooded with different countries complaining about this or that part of the agreement- nothing surprising, really, as something that takes 193 signatures from around the globe and has to be in consensus is going to be watered down, and anything that gets countries as disparate as the U.S. and the Bahamas, or Australia and Sri Lanka, or even China and say, Jamaica to sign their names to it has got to be full of concessions and compromises, not passion.

Such is the way of consensus. But before I get into what everyone says is wrong with the agreement, let me ask you to take a deep breath and think- every country in the United Nations signed a climate change summit agreement- everyone. They agreed on something. It is the first time that has ever happened and there is no precedent. That is to be celebrated, Obama-driven or no.

First up, South Africa. Disappointing and unacceptable is the way they describe the outcome of the climate talks- so you immediately know they are exaggerating. If it were truly unacceptable, they wouldn’t sign on, right? Totally not what they wanted and far below global expectations and not going to have much of an effect and not at all even close to what they think needs to actually happen? Sure- that makes sense. I’m not psyched about the actual result either.

South Africa affixes bruised trust and a flawed process to the outcome that is so undesirable- makes sense also- those are the same complaints I heard when I did high school conflict resolution. Nobody trusts each other and everybody has an issue with the way the decision is made. Fair enough. , told reporters her government had considered walking out of the meeting but decided against it after consulting other African countries."We are not defending this, as I have indicated, for us it is not acceptable, it is definitely not acceptable. Our president consulted ... and the feeling by Africa was it was not a good idea to walk out," said Buyelwa Sonjica, minister of environmental affairs in South Africa.

So Africa in general doesn’t like the deal and almost decided to walk out. Sounds like a lot of huffing and puffing to me. Walk out if it’s unacceptable- that would get people to sit down at the table. Tell everyone to go stuff it with trying to get at your natural resources- don’t let China have your metals or Europe have your water. Do something drastic or the stronger industrialized countries will push through what they want just like they always have.

For their part, Sweden described the summit as a “disaster” and “great failure,” according to Reuters.

"Ministers are going to meet today to discuss, of course, how to proceed after this disaster we really had in Copenhagen," Swedish Environment Minister and current EU president Andreas Carlgren.  

"I expect us to discuss both how to continue ... but also elaborate on possibilities for alternate ways to work now, because it was a really great failure and we have to learn from that."

It’s not a failure, everyone. It isn’t close to what we need, but it did accomplish one thing- letting us all know that we need to do better.