Copenhagen Accord dismissed as political farce

The deadline for signatories of the 'Copenhagen Accord' to announce their emissions reduction goals expired on the weekend. Somehow it didn't come as a surprise that none of the participating countries made considerable efforts to commit to noteworthy reductions of their greenhouse gas emissions. Copenhagen clearly failed to achieve what it set out to do: to come up with a real global solution for tackling climate change as a sucsessor to the Kyoto Protocol. The Copenhagen Accord, hastily drafted on the last day of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in December 2009, is not legally binding and has, against any last hopes, seen no further commitments by any of the supporting countries to reduce their greenhouse gases beyond what was initially announced. And with the deadline passed we're all of the hook, aren't we?

The supporting nations of the Accord include the big emitters like the US, China and India, among others. To contain the damage of global warming and effect temperature increases of no more than 2 degrees, industrialised countries must reduce their total emissions output by an average of 40% until 2020. Developing nations like China and India must lower emissions by 15%-30% relative to their growth.

However, current reduction claims are far behind what's necessary and as the trend goes, a warming of at least 3 degrees can be expected - the results of which will be devastating. In this sense, the Copenhagen Accord can be dismissed as a PR-Instrument rather than a real effort to counter dangerous climate change.

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