go back to Copenhagen, a little recap of what happended there

I am not trying to be nostalgia here by looking back what is now history. I went to check the Down to Earth issue on Copenhagen, reminded by a friend from Center for Science and Environment in India, where I interned last summer. I even met a co-worker then at the summit, which I'd never expected. I am fond of the sarcastic and still sharp and sober nature of their articles, even thought CSE to me is always romantic and idealistic (they probably won't put it that way).

Most people consider Copenhagen a failure. I think so too. But I also believe failure still means one step toward *success* (in relative terms always, I am a notorious Sophist in Socrates' word I just realize). I came up with a metaphor that descries the individual reflection on COP 15. I am a dandelion seed carrying with me however much enthusiasm, hope and sarcasm (does not appear to you, doesn't it? Well I keep it to myself). The seed was germinated, elevated and bloomed fully right at the beginning of the conference, when negotiations seemed to going and side events panel speakers all exciting about what they have done in the past in fighting climate change. And then it suddenly, but not without weather forecast, got smashed and blown away by the seaside wind in Copenhagen. The bits and pieces went all about. One piece of the new me residing in one of the fuzzy fragments, with my ever-lasting ever-optimistic ever-idealistic seed of hope, landed in a new place, ready to come out again in the spring. Yet it is the practical matters, after all, that keep the romantic me going. Practical matters at present refer to what I have observed and learned from folks all over the world working in the practical field of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Okay, my metaphor stops here for now. Here is what the Down to Earth colleagues portrait what happened during the last two days of the now history COP 15.

At Copenhagen, unfortunately, industrialized countries sabotaged all possibilities of progress. They had something else in mind. When the COP-15 (Conference of Parties) started, negotiators were barely closer to a deal than they had been in Bali.

If anything there had been regression during the last one year of negotiations.

But failure was not an option. One hundred and ten heads of state were flying to Copenhagen to sign a declaration; they could not all return with their pens unused. More than that, the Nobel prize-winning US president had to emerge as a dealmaker. So in the final 48 hours, negotiators—who had laboured for years for a comprehensive deal—were brushed aside; heads of state, ministers and their top advisers took over.

Leaders started making deals in secret, in the middle of the night, in backrooms, on the fly. Carrots were offered; sticks were wielded. In the end, industrialized countries, with the last-minute complicity of India and China, penned an alarmingly weak deal—the so-called Copenhagen Accord—that appears designed to undermine the negotiations to date. Certain basic rules seem to have been changed forever. Under the captaincy of the US, historical responsibility of the developed world in creating the climate crisis has been erased. The differentiation between rich and poor countries is gone. The rich world does not want to reduce emissions, but is trying hard to stunt the development of the poor world.

The Copenhagen Accord was not officially endorsed. A few developing countries vocally opposed the document and the drafting process. But the accord—rather than any of the documents drafted through two years of multilateral negotiations—emerged as Copenhagen’s only substantive outcome. It could well become the new starting point for future negotiations. This will be disastrous for the developing world.