Paradigm shift or not?

When I set out on this ‘journey’ Iike many others I hoped that we, as the international community, could demonstrate that we could pull together and overcome out differences. Yes mainly – ‘my glass is half full’ and somewhere I trust in the innate goodness of us, the human race.  We came to Copenhagen with the expectation that we would get an agreement and that we would bridge the three key issues:

• Emissions reductions for developed countries;
• Adaptation funding;
• Commitments by the developing countries that are responsible for the fastest growth in GHG emissions – not targets but what we had already seen from China and others about reducing their CO₂ intensity.

From a marine perspective we were also expecting a pragmatic approach to bunker fuels that left the responsibility with IMO via the Conference of the Parties as well as left the IMO with the ‘right’ to develop the approach to regulating GHG emissions in the international bunker fuel area.

A number of us saw the outcome from Copenhagen as setting the stage for the paradigm shift that is barely visible as yet but which energy issues (see Sean’s blog on ‘peak everything’) as well as other emerging challenges with our climate is beginning to push. Paradigm shifts are normal, we have dealt with them many times before. For example the marine industry has in propulsion terms seen the shift from sail to steam to diesel in the last 250 years, just looking at Lloyd's Register rules. But Ian in his blog explained why we resist ‘paradigm shifts’ as humans. But they happen anyway, just think about the growth in mobile communications and systems arena over the last 20 years.

The memory from the last few days has been one of media hype, major political leaders on our television screens, arguments about which texts to use and little focus on the myriads of national negotiators working through the night the last few days to get something there for the final moment (note some political leaders also worked long hours in Bella Centre or in bilateral or multilateral talks). And from a number of us serious concerns that we may miss some vital pieces of the ‘Lego brick’ tower we are constructing because we are now rushing. Although without the pressure to get a ‘deal’ we may not even have started to construct our ‘Lego brick’ tower (I hope it is not going to be like the ‘tower of Babylon’).

So is the outcome setting the stage? and what did we get?

So where are we today, after we have all got some sleep, in terms of the aims outlined above. Well not where we wanted to be, no indication that we may get a paradigm shift and the ‘Lego brick’ tower seems like the ‘tower of Babylon’ to have collapsed at the end. So what we have had is:

• No agreement and hence a political question ‘can we as the human race reach an international agreement across the whole world?’ Be fascinating to see what the ‘Copenhagen Outcome’ will result in and where the discussion goes in Bonn in June and Mexico in December 2010.
• No incentives for us as human to recognise what is happening (note none of the leaders here [in total 119] disagreed with the climate change science)
• No clear signal to business to continue to invest in:
• clean operations and technologies;
• market mechanism to help find the money we need for adaptation.

On the international bunker fuel discussions we got no decision. Although we need to remember that we have the existing Kyoto Protocol (Article 2.2) and we have uncertainty on what regional developments we may see as a potential product of the ‘Copenhagen Outcome’.

On a human level, it has been a fascinating journey. Covering, as I suspected two weeks ago ‘…the whole gamut of emotions and energy from exhaustion to exhilaration. As well as generating not a few headaches (real and virtual) and a large amount of words (spoken, written and images).’ Although I was not envisaging the 27 hours marathon discussion that occurred on Saturday, after we had been told we had a ‘deal’.

I started my blog on day 1 with noting that this meeting came just as all of us were preparing for the festive season (and for some it meant breaking their festive season early to join the throng at Bella Centre). So let me finish by wishing us all a relaxing break from climate negotiations and hope that 2010 will allow us all to finish what we started here in Bella Centre.