So COP15 was an abject failure. We arrived in Copenhagen to witness the conclusion of the Bali Roadmap, i.e. to get a Post-2012 Climate Deal that would kick in when the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol expires. Instead, we watched aghast while the UNFCCC process spectacularly unravelled amid chaotic scenes, as more than one hundred heads of state and government (commonly abbreviated to “HOGS”…) descended on the Danish capital for the concluding hours of the conference. All we ended up with was the so-called Copenhagen Accord, a non-legally binding political agreement cooked up by a privileged inner-circle of HOGS that included President Obama and his Chinese, Indian, South African, and Brazilian counterparts.
But was it really that bad? A closer look at the text of the Accord reveals something that had never before been articulated at a Conference of the Parties. It effectively interprets for the first time the UNFCCC’s ultimate objective, specifically that preventing “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” means holding the rise in global temperatures to below 2°C [note: the European Union already adopted the 2°C threshold as its official policy target back in 1996].
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