Democracy is preventing a climate change deal at Copenhagen

Following warnings that the Copenhagen summit would be the last chance to save the world from the disastrous effects of climate change it seems that negotiations have stalled before they have even started.

There were high hopes too. Leaders around the world have been proclaiming that Cop15 would be an historic moment. A chance for differences to be cast aside in order to secure stability for the world’s poorest people facing the additional hardship of unpredictable weather patterns. But these hopes have gone the way of Kenya’s worst drought affected regions – dried up into nothing. With so much supposedly at stake and so little time, why can’t a deal be reached in Copenhagen?

The simple and unsurprising answer is money. But this only explains a small part of the obstacles to securing a legally binding agreement. In order to take mitigative and adaptive steps against climate change huge amounts of money will have to change hands, and of course nobody likes to part with money. Especially when times are already hard. The recession that has affected so many of the world’s most powerful economies has ensured that environmental problems are pushed down the agenda.

As things are now, we are told, the world is heading for unprecedented disaster. Unless we limit the average temperature rise to 2C we will experience more severe weather events such as droughts and floods, which will lead to more disease, hunger and mass migration. With such stark warnings then, why can’t a deal be reached? Surely money spent now will do a lot to mitigate worse consequences down the line. Unfortunately it seems that short-term prosperity is of greater importance than long-term solutions.

Research has shown that a government’s popularity rating positively correlates with with the economic prosperity they provide for their citizens. This isn’t particularly surprising, but when we consider that prosperity is inextricably linked to the use of fossil fuels we can get an idea of the sort of terrain that negotiators will have to traverse in Copenhagen. In our modern democracies if we feel that a government has failed in its obligation to provide us with financial stability we vote them out and replace them with a government that we believe will do a better job. So a governent wishing to hold onto power (and what government doesn’t) must ensure that they create a prosperous society.

This triumvirate of popularity, pollution and prosperity is nowhere more apparent than in the US. America has the world’s largest economy and until recently was the world’s biggest polluter, now second to China. Much of the pessimism about the possibility of a treaty being agreed in Copenhagen comes from America’s ambivalence about climate change. They were, notoriously, the only country not to ratify the Kyoto protocol and are now calling for a ‘political agreement’ in Copenhagen rather than a legally binding treaty. Political agreements, however, cannot be enforced in the same way as binding contracts can.

In the US, president Obama is experiencing low popularity ratings due to the recession and rising unemployment. In November 2010 America will have its mid-term elections which explains the difficulties the US senate is experiencing in passing the Climate Bill needed for the country to engage in effective and meaningful talks in Copenhagen. Politicians on both side of the house are all too aware that voting for costly climate policies in already difficult economic times will damage their popularity. This could be why a political agreement seems so appealing; it will probably be less damaging to popularity than a legal treaty.

Some would argue that political agreements are better than nothing. And of course this is true. An agreement is progress, but the vagueness and complacency it promotes is damaging the possibility of meaningful action and does an abhorrent disservice to those around the world who are currently facing the worst effects of climate change. While those in the world’s poorest nations are struggling to survive in the face of irregular weather patterns, we in the richer nations are concerned that the lifestyle we are used to will be jeopardized by costly climate actions.

As the environmental historian Joachim Radkau puts it, environmental policy must be given “the chance to enforce the long-term demands of the common good against shortsighted, selfish interests”.