Copenhagen: Seal The Deal

The crucial climate change summit to draw up a new plan to tackle global warming that will replace the kyoto protocol beyond 2012 has begun in Copenhagen on Monday. Climate change has been caused over centuries, has consequences that will endure for all time, and our prospects of taming it will be determined in the next 14 days. The representatives of the 192 countries have gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics.This should not be a fight between the rich world and the poor world or between east and west.Climate change affects everyone and must be solved by everyone. The science is complex but the facts are clear. The world needs to take steps to limit temperature rise to 2C, an aim that will require global emissions to peak and begin falling within the next 5-10 years. A bigger rise of 3-4C- the smallest increase we can prudently expect to follow inaction- would parch continents, turning farmland into desert. Half of all species could become extinct, untold millions of people would be displaced, whole nations drowned by sea. The politicians in Copenhagen can and must agree the essential elements of a fair and effective deal and crucially a firm timetable for turning it into a treaty.At the deal's heart must be a settlement between the rich world and the developing world covering how the burden of fighting climate will be divided- and how we will share the newly precious resource: the trillion or so tonnes of carbon that we can emit before the mercury rises to dangerous levels. Rich nations like to point to the arithmetic truth that there can be no solution until developing giants such as India and China take more radical steps than they have so far. Developing countries argue that the rich world is responsible for most of the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere; three-quarters for all carbon dioxide emitted since 1850, causing the bulk of the problem and also that the poorest regions of the world will be hardest hit. But they will increasingly contribute to warming, and must thus pledge meaningful and quantifiable action of their own. Social justice demands that the industrial world dig deep into its pockets and pledges cash to help poorer countries adapt to climate change, and clean technologies to enable them to grow economically without growing their emissions. The architecture of a future treaty must be pinned down- with rigorous multilateral monitoring, fair rewards for protecting forests and credible assessment of "exported emissions" so that the burden can eventually be more equitably shared between those who produce polluting products and those who consume them. The transformation will be costly, but many times less than the bill for bailing out global finance- and far less costly than the consequence of doing nothing. The shift to a low-carbon society holds out the prospect of more opportunity than sacrifice. Already some countries have recognized that embracing the transformation can bring growth, jobs and better quality lives.Last year, for the first time more was invested in renewable forms of energy than producing electricity from fossil fuels.Putting a man on moon or splitting an atom were born of conflict or competition, the coming carbon race must be driven by a collaborative effect to achieve collective salvation.The politicians in Copenhagen have the power to shape history's judgment on this generation: One that saw a challenge and rose to it.or One so stupid that saw calamity and did nothing to avert it. We implore them to make the right choice.