Citola Blog
Debate, Not Just Words, Needed in Copenhagen
The countdown to Copenhagen continues – ever more loudly. More than half the world’s leaders (more than 100 of the 180-plus heads of state and government invited have accepted) will be in Denmark for the biggest talking shop in world politics.
We hope it’s more than just a talking shop, of course, as climate change really matters. Unlike the G20 summits, where the civil servants work out what’s going to be announced at the end of the meetings before they even take place, there’s a chance of some real debate here.
The participants seem to be taking it seriously – witness the attitude of the Saudi Arabian government to the leaked emails that indicate data unfavourable to climate-change advocates may have been suppressed.
Our attitude is to welcome the advent of business into the climate-change arena. Business people are creative, productive, and the clever ones understand that the only sustainable business model embraces good corporate citizenship. By that, we mean an enlightened policy on employment and environmental issues.
But there’s always a dark side. We’re very much in favour of carbon trading, as you’d expect. But the industry is new, and is open to abuse. Witness the unfortunate tax fraud that appears to have occurred in Denmark.
One of the issues that we hope will be discussed and moved forward in Copenhagen is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The CDM is a system whereby emission reduction or removal projects can gain Certified Emission Reduction (CER) credits. These CERs can be traded, sold, and used by industrialized countries to meet a part of their emission reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol. The CDM’s objective of attracting private investors into low-carbon projects in developing countries while reducing carbon emissions is exactly what’s needed. Yet according to reports from the Copenhagen event’s organisers, investor demand is falling off.
We hope to see this issue examined and re-designed so that it works in ecological and business terms.
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