After a vast array of scientific evidence that humans are the cause of climate change (through the burning of fossil fuels- coal, oil and gas), nations from all over the world met in Bali, in 2007 in an attempt to come to a global agreement to tackle climate change.
The conference culminated in the adoption of the Bali Road Map and the Bali Action Plan, which chartered the course for a new negotiating process designed to tackle climate change, with the aim of being completed by 2009.
This is what COP15 is all about.
On the 7th December 2009, 192 countries will take part in 2 weeks of talks in Copenhagen to establish and follow a new global agreement on climate change, because if global temperatures rise above 2C, the world in the way we know it, will irreversibly change forever. Climate change affects every natural process from rainfall, sea levels and water availability, to the way that plants grow and how animals survive.
The only way this change can be slowed down and eventually halted is through global CO2 emission cuts, which will have to peak and decline within the next 15-20 years. Industrialised nations will have to set targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in order to mitigate the worst effects of climate change, and developing nations like China, India and Brazil will also be asked to reduce their emissions.
One of the large issues with these reductions are that these developing countries, like Brazil, China and India are experiencing pretty amazing growth rates and cutting their emissions down, would mean also limiting their development. Seeing as us Westerners have been able to develop and pollute to our hearts’ content, you may be able to see why these up and coming nations are reluctant to halt expansion.
However, in the same sense that they want to develop, we all need the world to continue at temperatures below 2C so that we and our future generations have enough water, land and food to live off.
To be updated further
