After a very promising first day, the second day was marked mostly with discussions from world leaders to (allegedly) kick start an agreement prior to the Copenhagen Summit in December. I’ll get back to that in a minute, but before a piece of news that caught my eye:
Airlines are set to cut their carbon emissions by 50% by 2050. That’s a long way to go 2050 isn’t it? Who’s to say what the industry will be like in 41 years? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good initiative but it’s almost as if there is no room for research an development in the industry to come up with a revolutionary system that would allow planes (or whichever equivalent may be invented) to fly of purely green fuel. I’m a bit biased towards aviation I must say, the carbon footprint that a single return translatlantic flight slaps in your face compared to everything else is staggering. Sure planes are convenient and bizzarely way cheaper than they used to be (flying was always a luxury for businessmen until the advent of low cost airlines…) but I’ve always hoped for a better way to travel to one day come up. Zeppelins would be fun if they weren’t so slow 😉
As I was saying earlier the major event today was the meeting of world leaders in New York City. While some people feel quite optimistic about the outcome of the talks, from what I’ve read so far it feels rather bittersweet.
On the one hand it’s obvious World leaders are coming to realise the importance to tackle Climate Change, but on the other it seems safeguarding their economic growth is somehow more important than making sure we definitely won’t end up with a destabilised climate. Much was expected from China, and sure enough they announced a pledge to tackle their emissions. However, they weren’t very specific about how they intend to do so. “A significant margin” was the best they could give. Now I’m not going to dwell too long on China because, well let’s just say it’s not my favourite country, but they do have the potential to improve themselves to the eyes of the world. I can’t help but think that if their targets were that significant they would have announced them instead of beating around the bush.
Obama was a little disappointing too. His speech certainly wasn’t well received by everyone. With the Waxman-Markey bill still in the hands of the US Senate, Obama can’t just claim the USA will reduce their emissions by X. I suppose it’s a little unfair, it’s quite probable that he is in a frustrating situation having to juggle between the Healthcare reforms he’s trying to introduce, the US foreign policy and the Climate bill, there’s much to think about for him. Still, there are many promising initiatives being carried out independently throughout the US so it’s not like everything’s at a standstill. But with government’s backing it would progress even more rapidly so let’s hope the deadlock untangles itself soon there.
The surprise came from Sarkozy, usually not the man with the brightest ideas, who called for leaders to meet up again in November before the summit and even going as far as calling the current route “a path to failure”.
Personally I’m hoping this issue will bring out the best in World leaders. I certainly wasn’t expecting Gordon Brown to commit to go to Copenhagen himself for instance. So who knows what else can happen.
Finally I’d like to close this entry with a partnership between cop15 and Google. The first is on YouTube and calls to “Raise your voice”. Something I might just try to take part in. The second on Google Earth which shows you overlays on the planet of climate projections (you will need the Google Earth plugin, though I’ve not quite managed to get it to work yet so be warned)