In Copenhagen: skepticism, credulity, hope

Protestors, experts and delegations from 192 countries have descended on Copenhagen to try to come up with a strategies for combating climate change resolution. Developing countries are claiming that emission regulations will create an unfair burden on their development, prompting protests in the streets. And some experts think that the best outcome from Copenhagen would be if nothing gets passed at all. We speak with Tom Burke, founding director of E3G, a non profit consulting firm working on sustainable devlelopment; and Bjørn Lomborg, author of “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming,” about their views on climate change and what they hope will come out of the Copenhagen talks.

The problem that I have with this deal is that it’s essentially following the same failed strategies of the last 18 years. It’s essentially a lot of promises…coming together in Copenhagen and simply making even grander promises is not going to actually do anything for climate. It’s just simply spinning the wheels in the road to nowhere.
— Bjørn Lomborg on the possible futility of finding agreement among 192 countries about climate change

It’s not been the failure Bjørn says it’s been. There have been significant reductions around the world from what would’ve otherwise happened. And they’ve happened precisely because there’s been an international agreement in place. So it’s a bit cavalier to dismiss all of that out of hand and all the things that lots of people in lots of countries have done to reduce emissions.
— Tom Burke