copenhagen climage conference

Reduce your own carbon emissions, and express your concerns about climate to your legislators.

The Copenhagen Conference brought progress in protecting the world's forests.

Emission Reductions

As for the most difficult issue, carbon emission targets, that subject was essentially tabled. China and India’s proposal of using carbon intensity (carbon emissions per GDP output), which has not been entered into the international arena, may offer an equitable way forward for many nations. Creative thinking is needed to set goals for the first several years after the Kyoto agreement's expiration in 2012. Meanwhile, to achieve progress within nations, two of the main governmental financial instruments—subsidies and tax structures—must be repurposed to catapult progress in all nations. In the U.S., President Obama must employ the full strength of his administrative prerogatives, given congressional intransigence.

The most disturbing aspect of the Copenhagen Climate Conference is the bitter feeling that many participants left with. Global consensus around a framework for solving the climate-change problem is still shaky and halting. All parties—governments, civil society, business, and international organizations—must be at the table to make this project work, and venue and accommodation capacity must be addressed in preparation for the upcoming 2010 talks in Mexico City.

Global governance is in its infancy. To endure the coming climate, achieve the clean-energy transformation, and preserve the world’s forests, international agreements must ultimately realign the rules of commerce, financial incentives, and institutions. We have much to learn from the European Union of 27 nations concerning which powers to centralize versus which are to be retained by sovereign nations. But the 2009 UN Copenhagen Climate Conference is a step—halting, lurching, for sure—toward the enhanced global governance we need to achieve a sustainable solution to the climate-change crisis. Essential principles and measures towards that goal have begun to take shape.

Paul R. Epstein, MD, MPH is associate director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA.