The Climate Change Examiner is the place for the latest on the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
15,000 delegates, 5,000 journalists and dozens of world leaders have decended on Copenhagen, Denmark for the UN Climate Change Conference (COP15). Decisions will be made that could shape the world in the decades to come.
There is a lot going with the various press conferences, proposals, protests and more. Underscoring the importance of the event, President Barack Obama will attend next week. Will an agreement be reached? What form will it take?
The ultimate goal is to establish rules and limits on carbon emissions for all nations but it is not without controversy. The recent Climategate scandal is serving as a backdrop and causing doubt in many people’s minds.
Faced with the reality that many nations are unwilling to commit to an agreement, world leaders said yesterday that a global climate change treaty will not become reality next month. Heads of state, assembled in Singapore for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), said the United Nations Climate Conference (COP 15) in Copenhagen, Denmark will instead be used to further the discussion about global warming.
Two years of labor going into the COP 15 conference will be for naught and at best could yield a political agreement but not a legally binding treaty. A large gap between developing nations and richer countries continues to prevent an agreement.
Developing nations including India, Brazil and China have insisted on billions of dollars in international aid and said that any goals should be just that and not requirements. Nations like the United States however have been reluctant to agree to any deal that did not require all nations to legally comply with emissions restrictions.
