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A bid to save face, not the planet

Nirmal Ghosh
In the end - though world leaders had flown into the Danish capital expecting to ink more than a document littered with square brackets to mark points of contention - the Copenhagen Accord seemed more about saving face than about saving the planet.***
THE positive spin of politicians from Washington, Beijing, New Delhi, Jakarta and elsewhere seeks to impart a rosy glow to the non-binding Copenhagen climate change deal struck at the last minute last Saturday.
Indeed, sifting through the debris of Copenhagen, it is possible to find some bright spots.
The voice of alternative energy, long a neglected stepchild of governments and shut out by big-spending fossil fuel and automotive giants, is finally being heard --and it can grow only louder.
The voice of civil society, though somewhat muted in Copenhagen, has also grown bigger on environmental issues. In the run-up to Mexico late next year, when the world community will make another attempt to reach an effective and binding agreement on curbing greenhouse gases, civil society will consolidate further and
demand accountability.
And the hype surrounding the week-long Copenhagen climate change conference did thrust environmental issues onto the mainstream agenda across the world.
But it is difficult to find anything more positive to say about Copenhagen. The unwieldy, chaotic summit, roundly criticised by many of the leaders who attended it, resembled a road accident in slow motion, with the small car of hope and good intentions slamming into a wall of short-sighted and self-centred politics.
In the end -- though world leaders had flown into the Danish capital expecting to ink more than a document littered with square brackets to mark points of contention - the Copenhagen Accord seemed more about saving face than about saving the planet.
Copenhagen was supposed to be "Hopenhagen” -- a defining moment when the world was expected to rise to an existen -tial challenge. It turned out otherwise, with
countries hunkered down at base camp, drawing up plausible plans to climb the mountain but not venturing out of the tent.
Yet, the outcome should not have come as a surprise. That United States President Barack Obama had his hands tied by the absence of enabling domestic legislation was well known. That people who do not live in sub-Saharan Africa or on small islands or along vulnerable coasts can rarely grasp the consequences of global wanning is an unfortunate reality.
By and large, people act in reaction to circumstances that they can relate to -- and they need to experience something directly before they can truly relate to it.
The threat of climate change is a slow-onset disaster which will be experienced first by the poor in poor countries, then by the younger generation in general, and finally by the generations that follow.
Can today's generation grasp the nature of the threat and act on it adequately enough to avert it?
"How old will you be in 2050?" read some of the banners and stickers brandished by young activists in Copenhagen as they waited for their elders to rescue the planet.
Inside the conference venue, the elders were floundering, as competing groups worked independently of one another.
Thev bickered over issues that indeed are
critical - poverty in developing countries and the historic responsibility of rich nations for the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. But in the greater scheme of things, they side-stepped the larger reality that we share but one planet.
Reflecting the acrimony that dogged the talks, Mr Lumumba Stanislaus Di-aping of Sudan called the draft accord "the single most disturbing document" in the history of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
"It is a suicide pact for Africa.' said Mr Diaping. who is chair of the Group of 77 developingcountries.
In June next year. Germany will host a meeting of environment ministers in Bonn to follow up on Copenhagen. The next opportunity to do the right thing will be at the climate summit to be held in Mexico City in December.
’We will have to build on Copenhagen," Dr. Rajendra Pachauri. chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told India's NDTV channel last Saturday.
"We will have to make sure the accord moves quickly towards the status of a legally binding agreement and therefore I think the task for die global community is cut out."
CTbe Strarts Times (Singapore) All ngbts reserved Reonnted bv arrancement with Asia News Network