Let’s Get Serious

The Copenhagen Agenda is unwieldy and littered with areas of dispute :-

http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca7/eng/inf02.pdf

http://unfccc.int/documentation/documents/advanced_search/items/3594.php?rec=j&priref=600005444#beg

http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2009/09/29/the-copenhagen-climate-conference-the-negotiating-text-needs-a-lot-of-negotiation/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/28/copenhagen-climate-text

It still looks like there are certain national “alternative” views about the Climate Change Science, despite the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 :-

http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/ar4-wg3.htm

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-spm.pdf

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-ts.pdf

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf

Do you think all the negotiators have actually read the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report ? And do you think they understood it if they did ?

My worry is that Copenhagen will be the conference that rubberstamps Carbon Trading.

From my point of view, pricing Carbon will not help to cut Carbon.

Carbon Energy underpins all the major economies. If you price Carbon Energy, then everything else becomes more expensive too. And then Carbon Energy will become relatively cheap again, so there will be no major, long-term reduction in the use of Carbon Energy.

Unless it gets rationed.

In which case, why bother trying to price Carbon out of existence in the first place ? Why not just push for Carbon Rationing from the outset ?