Ultimately, was drawn a non-binding agreement at the eleventh hour, after days of bickering and inconclusive discussions and police repression against the demonstrators asking politicians to do something. But it's a deal virtually useless, made only to save face after a night of long negotiations, and avoiding to close with a failure the Copenhagen summit on climate change.
The battle is actually still in progress, with poor nations on a war footing. In practice should be adopted two treaties, one extending Kyoto for developed countries that had signed it, the other for the U.S. that didn't and for developing countries that had not commitments. The goal is to stop the rise in temperature to two degrees, and revise them in 2016 to decide if we should stop it at 1.5 degrees, as many, including poor countries, believe that at 2 degrees, the situation could already be compromised.
The small detail that no one has explained is that the threshold of 2 degrees could be passed the same, if isn't limited now the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, but that's not what they decided. The rich countries should cut 80% of emissions by 2050 and developing countries by 50%. But China and Brazil do not want to accept this constraint unless the rich countries will start to reduce their emissions by 25-40% by 2020. But in reality the commitments made so far by the U.S. and Europe provide only 14-18%. Well in short, nothing concrete has been decided but a generic "sooner or later we'll cut emissions" that means nothing and the commitment to remain within 2 degrees is useless without a binding "how". The problem is that many scientists, even if the news is not much told, think that in the absence of a serious reduction in emissions by 2020 we'll have a 3 degree increase in global temperature. A value that means floods, hurricanes and drought in large parts of the planet and many other unpredictable and disastrous effects.
In fact poor countries were promised 10 billion dollars a year until 2012 and a fund which will reach 100 billion by 2020. Money not only to reduce emissions, but to repair damage due to the greenhouse effect. Damage that rich countries already know will happen. But apparently the damage that others will suffer before us isn't a sufficient reason to take serious measures that would require a radical transformation of our economy based on waste.
The environmental groups are obviously not happy at all and so all the campaigns will continue to push world leaders to sign a real agreement with real constraints in the coming months. For now we continue as in recent decades, doing nothing to stop pollution and deforestation, while time decrease even though, ironically enough, just after Copenhagen snow has fallen on many parts of Europe.
Francesco Defferrari
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