{"id":336579,"date":"2010-02-18T18:45:22","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T23:45:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenrightnow.com\/?p=9229"},"modified":"2010-02-18T18:45:22","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T23:45:22","slug":"promises-made-in-copenhagen-shouldn%e2%80%99t-stay-in-copenhagen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/336579","title":{"rendered":"Promises made in Copenhagen shouldn\u2019t stay in Copenhagen"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Barbara Kessler<\/a>
\nGreen Right Now<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the Copenhagen Climate Conference ended in mid-December, it was widely decried by climate activists as embarrassingly inconclusive, at best, and a failure at worst (you can’t get much worse than that).<\/p>\n

And yet, there were plenty of voices, including that of President Obama, urging everyone to hold tight and pointing out that alliances had been formed and the world’s major polluters had stepped up, however tentatively. They had issued hard numbers, a percentages by which they would try to rollback greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

And that’s what it’s all about, reeling in those emissions. So despite the chaos, the under-achieving, the low-ball aspirations, the feinting and ducking, the world’s leading nations, including previously absent U.S., stepped up to the plate. You could say they hit a series of ground balls, but at least they took the bat.<\/p>\n

These nations were asked to officially record their promises by signing the Copenhagen Accord by the end of January. This follow-up event was anti-climatic and received less media attention.<\/p>\n

But the end result was that the emissions targets were documented and recorded for posterity — and hopefully for prosperity. (That’s what everyone seems to forget, that we need to forgo the pollution so we and future generations can live long and prosper, not so we can have higher electric bills.)<\/p>\n

\"photo-jschmidt\"<\/p>\n

NRDC International Climate Policy Director, Jake Schmidt<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Anyway. This week, in his blog<\/a>, Jake Schmidt, director of the NRDC’s International Climate Policy, writes that 60 countries have firmed up their pledges in the final document; including the top 12 carbon-emitting nations.<\/p>\n

Schmidt and the NRDC have put together a table of these commitments<\/a> to emphasize that world leaders are somewhat\u00a0 (actually literally) on a page.<\/p>\n

“These countries are the \u201cbig players\u201d which almost single-handedly hold the key to solving global warming.\u00a0 The steps they take are critical.\u00a0 So let me repeat: countries representing over 80% of the world\u2019s emissions have just committed to steps to reduce their global warming pollution.<\/strong> As I\u2019ve discussed here<\/a>, this is a huge shift from where we were just 2 years ago (and even 6 months ago).\u00a0 That is something to build upon since the key to solving global warming is whether or not key countries are committing to take action.”<\/p>\n

But Schmidt knows that “commitments” and “action” can wave at each other over a large chasm. He says environmentalists must just get out there and start proving that reducing GHGs can create jobs and won’t wreck the economy.<\/p>\n

Then we’ll see our government follow along.<\/p>\n

(Stay tuned for more hopeful musings by another blogger, who says that this leadership by the public is already happening — especially in the business sector.)<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2010 Green Right Now | Distributed by GRN Network<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Barbara Kessler Green Right Now When the Copenhagen Climate Conference ended in mid-December, it was widely decried by climate activists as embarrassingly inconclusive, at best, and a failure at worst (you can’t get much worse than that). And yet, there were plenty of voices, including that of President Obama, urging everyone to hold tight […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6460,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-336579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6460"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}