What comes next?

The news is breaking as I write this that a deal has been struck in Copenhagen. While none of us has seen the details yet, the comments being made from involved US officials don’t sound too promising.

White House Announces ‘Meaningful’ Climate Deal:

The United States, China, India and South Africa have reached a “meaningful agreement” at the Copenhagen climate change conference, an Obama administration official said.

“It’s not sufficient to combat the threat of climate change, but it’s an important first step,” the official said. “No country is entirely satisfied with each element, but this is a meaningful and historic step forward and a foundation from which to make progress.”

“Developed and developing countries have now agreed to listing their national actions and commitments, a finance mechanism, to set a mitigation target of two degrees celsius, and to provide information on the implementation of their actions through national communications, with provisions for international consultations and analysis under clearly defined guidelines,” the official said.

…

After delivering the speech to a plenary session of 119 world leaders, Mr. Obama met privately with China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in an hourlong session that a White House official described as “constructive.”

However, in a day of high brinkmanship and seesawing expectations, Mr. Wen did not attend two smaller, impromptu meetings that Mr. Obama and United States officials conducted with the leaders of other world powers, an apparent snub that infuriated administration officials and their European counterparts and added more uncertainty to the proceedings. At 7 p.m. Copenhagen time, Mr. Obama and Mr. Wen met again, joined by Prime Minister Mammoghan Singh of India and President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil.

…

“I don’t know how you have an international agreement where you don’t share information and ensure we are meeting our commitments,” he said. “That doesn’t make sense. That would be a hollow victory.”

…

In speaking to the plenary session, Mr. Obama stressed the urgency of reaching a climate accord, no matter how “imperfect” it might have to be.

“We are running short on time,” he warned. “And at this point, the question is whether we will move forward together, or split apart. Whether we prefer posturing to action.

“We can again choose delay, falling back into the same divisions that have stood in the way of action for years,” he said.

If this is an agreement that truly is “not sufficient to combat the threat of climate change”, then I fear it could do more harm than good. This assessment will sound pessimistic to some; I prefer to call it brutally objective.

If we don’t get CO2 emissions on path to “combat the threat of climate change” now, then why should anyone think that re-fighting the same fights (one in each country, plus international dust ups) all over again in a few years will be any easier? The only way I could see that happening would be if we experience a “climate 9/11″, some event strongly linked to climate change that is so awful and long-lived it galvanizes support among politicians and voters for much more meaningful action.[1] And if we wait long for that to happen, then we’ve very likely squandered so much time that any mitigation effort would have to be so rapid that it would be far more expensive than doing anything now. In addition, we would also be facing much higher adaptation costs (building flood walls around cities, caring for climate refugees, etc.).

There is still a chance, of course, that we could have a half-measure in Copenhagen and then a much better agreement in Mexico City in 2010 without the “benefit” of a Climate 9/11, but who believes it could happen?

I would actually prefer to see Copenhagen end with nothing more than a promise to hold a COP 15.5 meeting in Berlin or Toronto or wherever in six months, with even more pressure on everyone involved, pressure that a weak agreement in Copenhagen would relieve at least somewhat.

But the details will be coming out very soon. So we’re about to take the next step in this process, one way or another…

[1] Don’t ask me what a Climate 9/11 would be. Any example I’ve thought of–a major city being swamped by hurricanes, an continent gripped by a heat wave that caused over 30,000 deaths–already happened (New Orleans; Europe in 2003), and it made precisely zero difference. You have to resort to bad science fiction to get much worse than that, so you’ll have to come up with your own examples.