Columnist Jamala Rogers
Copenhagen was the choice site for a summit on the environment. Dubbed “Europe’s Most Green City,” it has made a genuine commitment to preserving the environment with a host of green policies, redevelopment and attitude re-adjustment. The city has paid serious attention to energy efficiency, land use, air and water quality, and transportation needs.
Copenhagen is well on its way to achieving its goal to be the world’s first carbon-neutral city by 2025. The city already has one of the world’s best recycling programs, with 90 per cent of all construction waste recycled and 75 per cent of all household garbage used for heating. The city shows off its retrofitted, energy-efficient old buildings. It is more than halfway to its goal to provide organic food to all of the city’s public institutions. Six out of 10 residents ride a bike daily and so the streets are appropriately planned. It is a beacon in the environmental wastelands.
The folks in Copenhagen must have been aghast last month when 140 private jets and 1,200 limousines full of conferees rumbled into their green space for the U.N. environmental summit. Perhaps it was symbolic of how resolute the participants would be about making the necessary changes at home to curb global warming and other ecological destruction.
We know that there was some history to countries coming together to discuss the environmental crises. The Kyoto Protocol was initiated and adopted in 1997, and finally implemented in 2005. The protocol focused on reducing a variety of greenhouse gases; it has been signed and ratified by 187 nations – with one glaring exception.
Neither Presidents Clinton nor Bush signed the protocol. That’s right, not even Vice-President Al “Green” Gore had any impact in pushing one of the world’s biggest polluters to do the right thing.
That’s why there was a sliver of optimism that President Obama was actually going to attend the Copenhagen Summit. However, the consensus seems to be that his lack of commitment to specific outcomes was a disappointment to the assembled world leaders, as well as environmental groups back in the U.S. Obama ended up in an undisclosed meeting with his fellow big polluter – China – to work out some preliminary agreements about how the two would reduce emissions.
Another example of how committed countries were to the process was that a secret agreement between the wealthy nations was leaked. The deal would allow the countries to pollute nearly twice as much as poorer countries by 2050. In response to the backroom deal, many African observers staged a protest inside the conference venue.
There were already low expectations of the summit because any agreements would not be binding. Still, the U.S. missed another opportunity to show some leadership on the world stage and to bring back some synergy to tackle the environment concerns here at home.