The Comment Factory

Wilson Dizard reports from Copenhagen:

Before drowning herself, a babbling and delusional Ophelia hands out flowers to her fellow characters, each one a puzzling symbolic gesture. In his wisdom, Shakespeare left the stage direction out of this scene, so who receives which flower remains a matter of artistic interpretation.

This opaque part of Hamlet parallels the provisions in Copenhagen Accord, signed Friday in Denmark.  The agreement promises the developing world billions of dollars per annum by 2020, but doesn’t specify who receives how much or which rich countries cut the checks. Even a deal to defeat deforestation got the ax in the end.

A three page draft leaked Friday night had the nerve to define developed countries’ emissions reduction targets as “x” and “y” variables. With no set deadline for drafting a formal, binding agreement or a commitment to cut global emissions in half by 2050, the text of the COP15 agreement seems like an insoluble algebra problem. Unlike most math equations, however, failure to find the right answer carries mortal consequences for millions.

Despite the disappointing outcome, the conference wasn’t a complete disaster. For the first time, developing countries, which are the least responsible for climate change but face its worst effects, got to air their grievances and call for compensation from the carbon intensive economies of the Global North. Ultimately, the richest nations relented, with the U.S. announcing it intends to pay part of the Copenhagen Climate Fund, which provides the developing world with $100 billion a year starting in 2020. The money goes towards climate change adaptation and carbon emissions mitigation efforts.

With carbon reduction goals still unclear, the Copenhagen Climate Fund stands as the most concrete success of the COP15 negotiations. According to the draft, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) shall establish the Fund to “support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing countries related to mitigation…adaptation, capacity building, technology development and transfer.” Though a far cry from the “climate justice” demonstrators demanded outside the Bella Center, the Fund shows developed countries recognize their responsibilities to those most vulnerable to climate change.

That said, the rich world’s motivations for backing the Fund are hardly charitable. The Pentagon has already identified climate change as “threat multiplier.” By threatening food and water supplies, a warmer world undermines the stability of cooperative regimes, like Pakistan’s, central to U.S. strategy. Retired four star Marine General Anthony Zinni puts the American position in stark words. “We will pay for this one way or another,” General Zinni says of climate change. “Either we take an economic hit of some kind, or we pay the price later in military terms. And that will cost human lives.”

With demanding this money, developing countries don’t seem to understand what they’re getting into. The $100 billion dollars are guaranteed to make poor countries’ economies and societies even more beholden to rich ones. Under the terms of the agreement, satellites will monitor developing countries’ sovereign but regulated right to emit carbon dioxide. In addition to observing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the world cannot countenance the corrupt misuse of Fund money, so stringent, space-based verification is essential to ensure it gets spent as it should. Ironically, the developing world’s success in securing these billions of dollars signs away their right to independent development.

But relinquishing a measure of sovereignty is crucial to stopping climate change. In a world where turning on a light switch has mortal meaning for strangers on another continent, ensuring a healthy future for humanity trumps vain claims to sovereignty, whether they come from wealthy countries or their impoverished neighbors. However, given the fervor with which developing nations have demanded the rich, industrialized countries’ pay back their “climate debt,” it doesn’t appear that they’ve thought through the consequences of their request. Like Ophelia, they’re leaping without looking. But with climate change happening in the here and now, the tragedy is that they don’t have a choice.