Real Negotiations Begin in Copenhagen

Everyone’s going gaga over the arrival in Copenhagen of the Prince of Wales, who is really the Prince of England, who really has no power except the influence media and celebrity worship afford him. Yep, things keep getting weirder in Copenhagen, or maybe we’re just better equipped to witness the weirdness and paying more attention to climate change these days.

Charles’ message to Copenhagen negotiators was in fact that the eyes of the world are watching (so haha, now you know how it feels.) After a week-and-a-half of non-governmental shenanigans (and more than a thousand arrests), the real power brokers arrived in Copenhagen today to a princely lecture about the key role forest preservation must play in staving off total climate chaos.

Meanwhile, yet another leaked document (really you’d think these guys would learn to stop writing down their secret plans), shows that plans to pay poor countries not to cut down their forests have been chopped full of loopholes. That means large-scale deforestation will likely continue unabated, releasing stored carbon and making yesterday’s relatively ambitious new draft goals pretty much unreachable.

A sense of forced optimism is still wafting over the airwaves from Copenhagen. “Maybe the real leaders will be more progressive than their minions,” seems to be the hopeful philosophy of many environmentalists about the proceedings. Maybe now that it’s do or die, the real leaders will get a real deal done.

What’s strange is that with the liveability of the planet (for humans and many other species) on the line, all the real negotiations are crammed into three days. It’s like we’re so addicted to high drama we’ve turned the planet into a three-day Hollywood movie shoot.

Will they beat the odds, get a deal done and save humanity? Or will they waste three days arguing and leave us vulnerable to the political meteorite scheduled for impact when they jet home Friday night? Stay tuned.

This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2009.