{"id":776,"date":"2011-09-21T05:24:48","date_gmt":"2011-09-21T05:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/?p=776"},"modified":"2011-09-21T05:24:48","modified_gmt":"2011-09-21T05:24:48","slug":"we-will-figure-it-out-next-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/2011\/09\/we-will-figure-it-out-next-year\/","title":{"rendered":"We Will Figure it out Next Year"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fact that the countries of the world come together every year for the Conference of the Parties (COP) to discuss and debate climate change is progress by itself. It is impressive that every year almost every nation sends delegate to this conference to confront together one of the largest challenges of our time in a peaceful manner. However, discussion is only the first step, and it seems that the global community is having a difficult time moving on to step two which is to take action. This struggle is reflected in most of the agreements that the COP comes to by the end of each conference. They restate what they agree on: climate change is occurring, and every nation needs to take some degree of responsibility for it. Then, when it is time to make a concrete commitment, countries shy away. The problem is that the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun Agreement are simply that, agreements. It is in countries\u2019 long-term interests to abide by the agreements, but they are not truly bound to them. Each year, the agreements that are made do not hurt climate negotiations, but classifying them as positive steps is too radical. Nations have established that they can voice their opinions about climate change, now they need to take sweeping actions to mitigate climate change because the clock is ticking.<\/p>\n

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WWF's visual description of COP 15<\/p><\/div>
\nIn the Copenhagen Accord, countries recognized that \u201cthe increase in global temperatures should be below two degrees\u201d to prevent climate change from having disastrous effects (Copenhagen Accord, 1). Further, they say that they will take action to mitigate climate change and put efforts towards adaptation because climate change is currently happening. In theory, the world\u2019s problems have been solved; however, in reality nothing could be further from the truth. In the Climate Action Centre\u2019s <\/a>description of the conference they said that the Accord was not \u201cfair, ambitious, [or] legally-binding,\u201d and countless others have echoed this sentiment. The words do nothing if they are not carried out. There is no time to say that we can deal with this problem next year, yet that is what continues to happen.<\/p>\n

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Delegates at COP 16<\/p><\/div>
\nIn the blink of an eye, next year rolls around, and the COP at Cancun <\/a>takes place. Again, the parties come to an agreement. But again, for the most part it is just talk. It does discuss the role of developing nations more in depth than prior meetings which is an important step. Additionally, \u201cprogress was made on several issues, such as finance and adaptation, [but] emission reduction pledges by individual counties did not change, and no global target was set\u201d (Chen Claudine et al, 1). It is necessary for global emission to decrease radically in order to avoid dangerous anthropogenic warming, but nations refuse to commit to numbers which will help the global community achieve this goal. Although nations might be more successful in the short term due to this decision, in the long run, everyone is going to be in danger.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, neither of these conferences have had outstanding impacts on climate negotiations. Different interests of nations prevent agreement, and thus greatly reduce the possibility of slowing climate change. Looking forward, we can hope that stronger, legally-binding agreements will come to fruition in Durban, South Africa in November 2011, but predictions of the outcomes do not seem promising. Cooperation and sacrifice will be the keys to creating a comprehensive agreement which requires nations to abide by stringent emissions guidelines, but the question is, can the world today pull this off?<\/p>\n

Work Cited:<\/p>\n

Chen, Claudine, Bill Hare, Markus Hagemann, Nikias Hohne, Sara Moltmann, Michiel
\nSchaeffer, \u201cCancun Climate Talks- Keeping Options Open to Close the Gap.\u201d 10 January 2011. http:\/\/www.climateactiontracker.org\/briefing_paper_cancun.pdf.
\nClimate Action Centre. \u201cA Climate Con – Analysis of the \u2018Copenhagen Accord.\u2019\u201d Last Modified
\nDecember 21, 2009. http:\/\/www.climateactioncentre.org\/climatecon.
\nUNFCCC. \u201cCopenhagen Accord.\u201d December 18, 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fact that the countries of the world come together every year for the Conference of the Parties (COP) to discuss and debate climate change is progress by itself. It is impressive that every year almost every nation sends delegate to this conference to confront together one of the largest challenges of our time in a peaceful manner. However, discussion is only the first step, and it seems that the global community is having a difficult time moving on to step two which is to take action. This struggle is reflected in most of the agreements that the COP comes to by the end of each conference. They restate what they agree on: climate change is occurring, and every nation needs to take some degree of responsibility for it. Then, when it is time to make a concrete commitment, countries shy away. The problem is that the Copenhagen Accord and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":853,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19448],"tags":[34335,34239,34322,1301,34329,2624,34319],"class_list":["post-776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change-2","tag-actions","tag-anna-mcginn","tag-cancun-agreement","tag-climate-change","tag-cop-15","tag-cop16","tag-copenhagen-accord"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/853"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/cop17durban\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}