A dark north European December morning, under the warm, yellow glow of street lights, a silent snow fell on the stream of cyclists hurrying to work, study and shop. It was - 1 degree C, but that never stopped a people determined to be fit, happy and ready for a warmer Earth.
About a
third of all commuters in Copenhagen use a cycle. It isn’t very hard. Almost every road has a clearly marked cycle lane, and cyclists get preference over motorised traffic. These energetic commutes keeps their endorphins charged, and makes the inhabitants of the capital of the Kingdom of Denmark kinder and gentler than most. Some surveys say they are among the happiest people on earth (the Bhutanese might dispute that).
This gentle, accommodating nature made this supremely organised, confident city of two million the perfect host for COP15, the 15th Conference of Parties, official name for the climate summit, where the representatives of 193 countries gathered to discuss how the inexorable warming of the planet could be slowed.
In keeping with the open nature of the Danes and the new, democratic age of humans, Copenhagen also invited thousands of representatives of civil society and business to join in the deliberations. So, ministers pushed past economists pushed past CEOs pushed past student activists pushed past rag-pickers pushed past nutcases.
It was thrilling to see the diverse stakeholders in Earth’s climate-change debate gather under one roof, the transparent roof of the Bella Centre, a former garbage dump, now a convention centre cleanly powered by a giant, lazily spinning windmill.
As the 12 days wore on, the thrill increasingly turned into frustration. It was obvious these thousands of voices could not find a harmony. Copenhagen quickly degenerated into a discordant orchestra of competing notes, clashing tunes and a grim, almost farcical finale pushed through by a handful of powerful nations — including India — that the poorest refused to accept.
Copenhagen mirrored the planet’s attitude to climate change: Enthusiastic and energetic; long on promise, short on delivery.
This was the year when the science finally seemed to line up behind the prophecies of doom. The scientists told us if the world could not hold the rise in its temperature to 2 degrees C or less (1.5 degree C if we really want to save the small island nations) by 2050, we could say goodbye to entire cities, species, crops and generations.
The changes came quicker than we expected, though not everyone was convinced these were not cyclical changes the Earth has seen before in roughly six million years of human evolution. Climate-change doubters still think the world will correct itself. The climate-change doomsayers — including a clear majority of scientists — say it may already be too late.
If we cannot do better next year in Mexico than we did at Copenhagen, we may see, science warned us, a temperature rise of up to 6.4 degrees C this century. Let’s not talk about what might then happen — though I could recommend some movies.
In India, we saw an erratic monsoon of prolonged dry days and devastating downpours. We saw wheat and rice yields falter. We saw fisherfolk reporting how fish catches were dropping because of rising water temperatures. We saw some bird, animal and plant species, that like the cold, move north as the Himalayan foothills warmed. The science hasn’t yet woven together these straws in the sub-continental winds into a discernible picture, but it seems apparent something disturbing has started.
It isn’t that we can’t stop global warming.
It will cost 1 per cent of economic output to convert the world to a low-carbon economy. It cost about 5 per cent to save it from economic collapse.
The world has the money, it has the technology, and it has the talent.
As Copenhagen taught us, that isn’t enough.