Missed opportunity. The Copenhagen Climate Conference has come and gone. Some argue it was a success; others are disappointed. Those arguing for success point to the fact that the Kyoto Protocol does not include developing nations; the Copenhagen Accord does. However, it’s non-binding and has not been well received by developing nations that feel they were suckered by the more prominent and powerful nations in attendance. What the case, the resulting document is the Copenhagen Accord.
The Copenhagen Accord is a whopping 2.5 pages in length and originally “brokered” by the US, China, Brazil, South Africa and India. So far, only 25 out of the 194 nations in attendance have signed it or roughly 13%.
High on rhetoric and low in substance, the Accord targets keeping global temperatures from rising 2 degrees Celsius by 2050 in order “to stave off the worst effects of global climate change“. It also promised that “rich countries” will provide funding to “poor countries” to help them combat climate change through 2020 “by providing developing countries $10 Billion a year from 2010 to 2012 with a goal of raising that to $100 Billion a year by 2020 to finance their action to adapt to climate change and develop green technologies“. Yet, the Accord doesn’t address how either of those goals will be met.
Powerful and influential nations, people and corporations have historically thrown money at problems with little success. More often than not, money turns out to be man-made much like the carbon emissions from a coal plant. In this case, if the money is ever distributed, it would most likely pad the bank accounts of those developing nations’ ruling class and do little for the people suffering the affects of climate change.
New York Times columnist, best selling author of Hot, Flat and Crowded, and self-described green hawk, Thomas Friedman, who was in attendance at Copenhagen, described the end result as an “unprecedented breakdown” not an “unprecedented breakthrough”. Watch his interview with Rachel Maddow below (he makes a lot of sense).
Friedman makes an interesting point to act on: Actions speak louder than accords. If America acts with legislation and through corporate, community and personal environmental-responsibility, then the world will follow.
For the last several years, proponents of clean energy, environmental activists and others have looked toward Copenhagen as the time and place to begin a new path to a sustainable energy future. The Climate Conference, which came on the heels of many climate reports that exhibited a changing world and an uncertain future for the planet’s most vulnerable peoples, was a failure. Rather than displaying how humanity can come together to fight common issues; participants were further marginalized by the undeniable and binary gap between rich and poor, influential and dispensable.
The time is ours to move passed the Copenhagen Climate Conference and act. Energy-efficiency is a real and venerable means to successfully realizing the influence all consumers hold in a world dominated by money and power. If consumers, rich and poor, have the option to affordably and pragmatically reduce their energy consumption, especially wasted energy or vampire energy loss, the US could reduce $10 Billion in annual energy costs. Extrapolated on a global scale, there are hundreds of billions of dollars to be found by eliminating vampire power. Coincidentally, if the US eliminated all of its vampire power in electronics, there would be enough money saved to fund the annual obligation to developing nations called for in the Copenhagen Accord.
Happy Holidays from Vampire Labs …
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Tags: climate change, COP15, Copenhagen, Copenhagen Accord, Copenhagen Climate Conference, developing nations, eco charger, Flat and Crowded, Hot, Kyoto Protocol, Rachel Maddow, sustainable energy, Thomas Friedman, UN Climate Conference, vampire labs, Vampire Proof
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