I admire this guy for taking matters in to his one hands and wasting no time. Just wanted to find out general opinion 
what do you guys think.
Copenhagen, Denmark - Delegates at the U.N. Climate Change Conference are “running short on time” to reach agreement on a deal, U.S. President Barack Obama told them Friday.
“There is no time to waste,” he said. “Now I believe it’s the time for the nations and the people of the world to come behind a common purpose. We are ready to get this done today, but there has to be movement on all sides.”
I’m not sure what the question is. Personally though, I hope there’s no deal. I see this as a wealth distribution deal that will further hurt the economies in the developed world at a time where we don’t need further hurt. And all for naught, in my opinion.
Well, I certainly agree that “there has to be movement on all sides”. However, every side would prefer that the majority of the movement come from the other sides. Nor is there anything unreasonable about that. Heads of state are elected to uphold their country’s interests, and that’s what their doing. The result is that there won’t be any deal, not from Copenhagen and not from any other conference in the foreseeable future. There are too many competing interests at stake, not only competing nations and groups of nations, but also competition inside each nation between corporations, activist groups, and everyone else. Corporations in particular will always oppose any meaningful action to reduce emissions. The corporate model simply cannot tackle a situation like global warming, in which action for short-term profit is guaranteed to cause long-term catastrophe. The corporate model is only designed to seek short-term profit and is not flexible enough to change for this situation.
So in the long term, I believe that humans will continue burning fossil fuel and the planet will continue to heat up and the ice caps will continue to melt. Southern Florida and New Orleans and the Maldives and the coast of Bangladesh will go under. Other parts of the planet will turn into desert. Many ski resorts will go out of business. And then life will go on.
I’m indifferent, and will agree with whatever solution inconveniences me the least.
I’m not a scientist, but I do know that the atmosphere on this rock is given to rapid and pronounced changes. And I also know that the last 20,000 years or so of humanity is an anomally in hundreds of millions of years of bilology. Based on that:
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I have no doubt the climate is changing and we may experience dramatic climate changes at any time in the next 5,000 years.
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I believe Humans have affected the climate in a relatively small way, similar to how kicking a couple waves back into the ocean delays erosion of the beach.
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Humanity DOES need to come together to accept and address the issue. We need to work on contingency plans to help us to adapt to a number of different change scenarios. But what we need to not waste our time and effort on is preventing the impending change. We will either roll with it or effectively perish.
I think it’s real and what we’re doing exacerbates th natural temperature shifts of the planet. Legislation can get it done, but I think that this is going to be a problem solved by technology. Good legislation can and will help, but the legislation should be designed to foster innovation and technology.
We spend so much on researching it and proving it, because, frankly, there are many people that don’t think it’s occurring or doubt it altogether. It’s hard to address a problem when only one side thinks it even exists.
I see it as a money-grabbing attempt by some nations. Why are we promising to contribute to a 100-billion a year fund ? Last I checked our finances were already in shambles.
Moved MPSIMS --> Great Debates.
Aw c’mon Twicks. At least it would have stayed on track in The Pit or IMHO.
Canada is not a particularly green nation, I’ll give you that, but we are a tiny drop in the bucket thanks to our low population. I don’t want to see Canadian politicians shooting off our own foot by promising to hobble our economic engine (Alberta oil and gas) when the big polluters, the US, China, and India still aren’t willing to make any real changes. I thought it was very interesting when Secretary of State Clinton brought a proposal that was demanding transparency of China - it sounds like the politicians might finally be starting to talk about real issues, instead of continued political posturing.
Alberta’s oil sands are booming, however Ontario’s GDP is almost 3 times that of Alberta’s.
China is no doubt leery of agreeing to independent verification of CO2 emissions, in fear of that then leading to other environmental checks, and then human rights issues.
Ontario’s GDP per capita is lower than Alberta’s. Can we agree that we’re both right, and get back to criticizing the US and China? 
And India. Don’t forget India! 
I’ve given up hope of the world uniting to prevent a 2 degree increase in global temperature. I don’t allow myself to get depressed but I’m glad I have no children.
I think that the planet is getting warmer and that humans are a contributing factor, but by no means the sole cause and that anyone that says we are, is an outright liar.
I think it’s a good idea to lessen the impact we have on the planet but that no matter what we do, the planet will do what the planet will do, regardless of our tiny efforts.
I think that crippling economies to ‘save the planet’ will do more harm than good. If you can’t save yourself, what motivation do you have to give a damn about the planet? Bottom line is, you have to walk before you can run.
I think that Copenhagen is a lie, I think the attendees are fools and frauds and I think the entire meeting could have saved tons and tons of greenhouse gas emissions if they had held the ‘summit’ on the internet via telepresence instead of flying thousands of people all over the world, printing tens of thousands of daily events programs just to create phony headlines for what will amount to meaningless chatter and not one honest move toward a better climate.
I think Al Gore is a jackass.
I think that we are already contributing to China’s ‘green efforts’ in leaps and bounds every single day they hold all of our debt and we buy all of their products and that the “100 billion dollar fund” is theft right out of your pocket and mine and that any one of the elected officials that should vote to spend even one cent on it ought to be run out of town on a rail.
Why the ambivalence.
Seems like everyone is already talking about how things will have to wait until the next meeting in Mexico next year. This one seems like a dud.
What annoys me the most is that, when the sceptics are finally, unequivocally proven wrong in the future you just know they will just change their arguments to ‘well, we couldn’t have done anything anyway’.
Or on the other hand, when there is broad acceptance that “hey you were right after all”, they will be throwing ticker tape parades for them.
:rolleyes: It’ll never happen. No side will ever claim victory in this. It’s almost like the right-to-lifers versus abortionists.