Wednesday, December 23, 2009

A tepid effort to stave off global warming

Humankind’s ability to get together to solve complex problems was on test at Copenhagen. It failed.

Being a climate change skeptic of long standing, I am not easily given to deploring any unsuccessful effort to combat global warming. Yet the lack of a definitive outcome at COP15 (the 12-day UN summit on climate change held at Copenhagen from December 7th thru 18th 2009) was a loss. But not necessarily because it failed to meet it's purported aim of saving planet Earth from a death-by-warming fate.

While the world’s survival may not exactly have hinged on a positive outcome at Copenhagen, the summit nevertheless represented a test of humankind's ability to hammer out solutions to complex problems, many of which are certainly going to crop up in future. It is for this reason that Copenhagen’s failure to produce a definitive outcome is a pity.

Read my detailed opinion on How (not) to save the world in 12 days.