My two cents

I don't normally comment on world events, or politics, or business, but on this occasion I think I will indulge myself.

The Copenhagen Climate Change summit has ended. Depending on who you listen to it was the first step to solving climate change, a betrayal of the poor and powerless third world countries, a qualified success, or an unmitigated disaster.

First, a few words from our sponsor: CLIMATE CHANGE!

Climate change is real. It is having real observable effects on the physical world on which we live. It is largely (although probably not entirely) caused by human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels, and destruction of natural carbon sinks (i.e. forests). And it is going to get much worse during the next century.

I never did have hope for the Copenhagen conference. I did not predict that it would end in shambles the way it did, with the US and a few allies hijacking it and ramming through a non-binding resolution just to have something to point to back home. Of course, if the Chinese hadn't been so obstructionist the US wouldn't have had to circumvent the process and the poor countries in order to reach a "deal".

I thought they would reach a deal acceptable to the delegates and it would have been announced with great fanfare, and then everyone would have gone home and ignored it. Instead we got a non-binding deal put together behind closed doors by a few of the richest countries that has no targets or means of verification which everyone will go home and ignore.

The US goal of 18 percent reduction over 2005 emission levels is a joke to begin with. It isn't nearly enough. It would take a forty or fifty percent reduction over 1990 levels to significantly slow or halt climate change. And that kind of change just isn't in the cards. Business has no intention of spending the kind of money that would take. Consumers have no intentions of accepting restrictions on the kinds of transport they use, or the size of their houses, or the number of energy guzzling toys they want. Countries have no intention of giving up competitive advantage that cheap energy gives them.

The upshot of all of this is that climate change will continue to accelerate. Within many of our lifetimes we will see sea levels rise, coastlines swamped, hundreds of millions of refugees, fleeing the devastation, massive storms, dust bowls, floods, and water shortages. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will ride, Pestilence, War, Famine and Death. They will not be responding to a celestial trumpet, but to a man-made disaster. I don't predict how bad it will get before it ends, but I wouldn't want to be living on this earth by the end of this current century. It will probably only end with the collapse of modern high technology civilization, at which time the earth may be able to begin to heal itself.