What can we expect from Copenhagen?

✍ Scribed by Ken Sutherland

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 62 KB
• Volume: 2009
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1365-6937
• DOI: 10.1016/s1365-6937(09)70218-7

✦ Synopsis

K en Sutherland looks at the pros- pects for the next major United Nations meeting on global warming abatement, and considers the chances of a successful outcome. What can you expect from Copenhagen? If you are a tourist visitor then you can expect a great deal, for it is a beautiful city. Perhaps you will not get so much, however, in December of this year when the city will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15), to thrash out the details of an agreement on the action necessary to reduce the rate at which the earth's average atmospheric temperature is growing.

For the last decade or so, the abatement action has centered around the Kyoto Protocol, which was designed to constrain the rate of increase in global greenhouse gas emissions, and if possible to reduce it. Time is running out for the Protocol, which has an effective terminal date of 2012, and the December 2009 meeting is intended to establish a new agreement, already being called Kyoto2, that will take over from, and be considerably stronger than, the original Protocol.