Copenhagen: Plan B

With international diplomatic conferences, the deal is you figure everything out beforehand at meetings and phone calls and negotiations, then you show up at the conference itself, shake hands and drink some beer, sign some forms and give the thumbs up to the cameras. The Copenhagen summit was a little different, in that some of the details were being left to the conference itself, but there was still the expectation that most of the agreement would be worked out during the lead-up summits.

Well, it’s not happening. With just a handful of negotiation days still to go before the Copenhagen summit, all of the major players are balking. The U.S. continues to have a silent voice, sort of just sitting there and listening to everyone else bicker. The EU, consistently a leader in the process, is now stalled out with some internal debate about the particulars of what they will commit to. The major divide- about money- still keeps poor and rich nations separated with the flags of responsibility and commitment. Once again, this conference is starting to sound a whole lot like a marriage of the nations of the world.

The best case scenario is for the U.S. to pass a climate change bill before the Copenhagen summit so that we can offer a baseline to industrialized nations for emissions cuts and money to developing nations. It looks like the chances of the U.S. Congress passing anything about climate change before the beginning of December to be very low- anything would be a rush-job at this point and not have time for the kind of review it really needs. And anyway, Congress just doesn’t move that fast… even with Democrat majority in both houses…

So that brings us to what Reuters is reporting as Plan B: In essence, it’s plan A but takes longer. The world will sit and wait while the U.S. passes our climate change legislation, then we will bring our commitments and financial offerings to either Bonn in the spring or the next UN climate change meeting next winter. Right.

So, same thing but next year.

It looks like Plan B is going to be the way. The other option would be for the U.S. to actually not pass any kind of legislation at all and let the rest of the world fend for itself- which may happen if the Blue Dog Democrats somehow wrestle a timely coup on the Democrat majority in Congress.

Is waiting a year to pass the meaningful legislation a problem? Well, if it means that we will do something meaningful and everyone will be on board, no, it’s not a problem. If it means we’ll just be in this same position next year, well, then it’s probably not much good for anyone. We should just deal with it now- sort of like the loan modifications that are keeping people who signed on to bad loans in their homes- they won’t have the money years from now either so it’s a bit like delaying the truth.
Hopefully the delayed truth in this case will be strong, effective climate change action.