Copenhagen Accord & A war of morality!!!!

There is no end; end is just a beginning for another chapter. Finally the Copenhagen summit or COP15 ended. But the summit dint ended the political dilemma of global warming or called in a macro sense climate change. Rather it also started a new war of morality. Everyone accepts that the end of Copenhagen was a disaster. The world has agreed on these important Copenhagen accords which are to be operational immediately.
1. Emphasize on strong political will to urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capability. To achieve the ultimate objective of the convention to stabilize greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, by recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degree C, on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance long term cooperative action to combat climate change.
2. Enhance action and international cooperation is urgently required to ensure the implementation of the convention by enabling and supporting the implementation of adaptation actions aimed at reducing vulnerability and building resilience in developing countries, especially in those that are particularly vulnerable, especially least developed countries, small island developing states and Africa.
3. Annex 1 parties commit to implement individually or jointly the quantified economy wide emissions target for 2020.
4. Recognize the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removal of greenhouse gas emission by forests and to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilization of financial resources from developed countries.

These are 4 out of 12 accords signed in the summit. From the first look it looks a complete disaster for two reason, one no clear proposed action, two it looks like a proposal rather than a dictating action plan. The whole attention has been diverted from reducing the GHG emission at the source, to providing a sink for the emitted GHG.

The two important issues with all these efforts:

1. Though it is recognized that the scientific and technical measure should be taken to avoid the climate change, why there is no serious and determined effort to reduce the emission of GHG at the source? Why overemphasis has been given to developing carbon sinks? Why REDD is given so much importance?

For economic development, contribution of industry is vital. For industry it requires land and natural resources. All developed countries completely utilized their land to build industry by sacrificing the natural resources. So technically speaking the option they have is to use technology to reduce the emission they produce. How far it is acceptable to offset the emission by providing a carbon sink at some corner in the world at the expense of some other countries economic development? Providing an incentive against the deforestation, will it increase the leaving standards of the millions of jobless people in those countries? If we are using a capital market model to deal with the carbon emission reduction, then why not imposing strict carbon cap on the industries be implemented on a global scale. Let these industry decide on which is more economical, whether to reduce the emission at the source or to offset it by investing in CDM in some other part of the world. The economic model should be similar to that of taxation. Government should impose carbon tax on all the industry. In taxation, interest and donations will reduce tax burden, but is there any tax credit? Similarly industry should buy carbon credit only from the country for which it is paying the tax in the form of carbon tax.

2. The second most important issue is the moral war that has started. Every country want to have a green earth, but at the expense of some others economy. If you have followed the news of what happened inside the summit you will understand what this moral war I’m talking about.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/22/copenhagen-climate-change-mark-lynas

This is just one of the links to what actually happened inside the summit. As per the internal news its china who dint agreed to get to the conclusion of any sort. To quote the article “Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: china wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame.” But what did china official say about this?
As per them china has committed to reduce carbon emission by around 1.5 million tons of CO2 by 2020. In response the US has offered only 17% of 2005 level which technically is equivalent to only 4% of 1990 level, where as Kyoto protocol demanded 15% of 1990 level.
If china really wanted to contribute on climate change, why it dint forced the west to commit on something more sensible with its massive political and economic power. If the west wanted to contribute on the climate change is their response sufficient enough?
Everyone wants to show that they want to lead this climate change, but only in words. Its such a global phenomenon that, one country cannot do any good to the change in global temperature. It should be a collective effort as agreed in Copenhagen Accord. But then why there is no macro picture to handle the climate change?
Global warming or climate change is a anti nature activity, if we dint solve this problem, probably we are forcing the nature to take corrective action forgetting the price we would be paying for that. If there is no collective action there will going to be a collective distraction.
Hope world leader to take strong collective action as well as let’s pledge to take action at individual level to combat climate change.