Just a quick reflection on the prospects of a deal in Copenhagen. A Sunday afternoon is a perfect time to recap the positions of the different countries and conjecture how likely it is for them to find a converging position.
What will happen if they don't? Kyoto comes to an end in 2012 but if there is no agreement on a new treaty there is in principle no reason why countries wouldn't agree to extend the validity of Kyoto, particularly to enable the continuation of CDM and carbon trading. Developing countries would vastly favour this outcome (particularly because it lets them off the hook re emission reductions), but realistically they are aware that climate change is serious, and they realise they need to participate in curbing emissions at home and turning to low-carbon technologies to continue their economic development.
China and Brazil are two examples of developing economies with a high degree of scientific awareness of climate change issues. In particular Brazil - they pioneered some global warming prediction models that have been widely used in the scientific community. The Chinese also, contrary to popular belief, do not need convincing that global warming is happening, and if they appear irresponsible to the world by building one coal fired power station after another every single week it is more to do with the fact that they believe that the onus is on the countries with the largest cumulative share of carbon emissions (read US and UK) to bear the burden of the cost of climate change mitigation.
The problem with this logic is that the centre of gravity of where the culprits are located coincides with the centre of gravity of debt in the world. The United States can ill afford to fund China's path to decarbonisation, let alone the United Kingdom (even less now that it is not a world power as it was in the times that it used to be a hugely pollutant industrial pioneer) and if China cannot show some flexibility on this, especially in view of its huge trade surplus and foreign reserves north of $2.2 trillion then it is difficult to find a point of convergence.
The technology transfer advocated by developing countries (and spearheaded by India) for which the US, EU and Japan are supposed to foot the bill is widely expected to range anywhere between the low hundreds of billions of dollars to $1 trillion. This is less than 45% China's foreign reserves (and with an annual trade surplus of $300bn they will soon catch up), and although I am not suggesting that China ought to foot the bill for the entire global warming mitigation process (although it could afford to), there would be an objective case to suggest that it contributed, rather other western countries, who are almost on the brink of default or very seriously crippled by massive debt.
I think that Obama has already given the game away by announcing he will only show up for a photo-shoot. He knows that there will be no historic deal so he won't miss the party. It is a real shame, especially since the public expects so much from this meeting and so many delegates are going to travel there to trumpet their concerns. Copenhagen will simply be a declaration of intentions and it's only in 2010 when the real work must begin.
Brunella