The God Species_ How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans - Mark Lynas [124]
I will discuss how regulating all the boundaries together might work internationally in the next and final chapter. But for now, let the lessons of the ozone layer be seen clearly in how they relate to climate change first and foremost. Most crucially, there is no need to wait for new energy technologies before forging strong international agreements—these technologies either already exist or will appear when they are needed. There are plenty of substitutes for carbon, but there is no substitute for political leadership. The pressure of regulation is essential to drive the technical innovation that will help us avoid the worst of global warming. And finally: The true prize is not incremental percentage cuts in emissions, but—as with CFCs—the elimination of fossil fuel use altogether from the entire world economy. Nothing less will do the job.
EPILOGUE
MANAGING THE PLANET
“All the great laws of society are laws of nature.”
—Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man, 1791
THE COPENHAGEN DEBACLE
It was early December 2009, and I was stuck in a large conference hall on the outskirts of Denmark’s capital city, Copenhagen. Outside it was snowing, and hundreds of people were lining up to gain admittance. Inside, tens of thousands more bustled around the central hall, the general hubbub punctuated now and then by the shrill cries of campaigners tirelessly advocating their various climate-related causes. As to the progress of the all-important negotiations, there was no news. At that moment, with just a few hours to go, it looked as if the 2009 Copenhagen climate change conference, the much-hyped and much heralded COP15 of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, would fail.
It is difficult, in retrospect, to convey the physical and emotional intensity of the experience. Following months of dire warnings about how this was the last chance to save humanity from runaway climate change, here we all were—on the brink. None of us had slept properly for at least a week. Every night negotiations dragged on into the small hours, and most national representatives were now visibly exhausted. A few scientists—vastly outnumbered by delegates, journalists, and lobbyists—pottered around, talking to anyone who would listen and offering graphs of likely future temperature change resulting from the outcome of the negotiations. Their calculations suggested that the world bequeathed by the national pledges currently on the table at Copenhagen would warm by four degrees, perhaps more. We all knew what this meant. It meant planetary-scale destruction and perhaps a mortal threat to civilization.
Much of the hothouse atmosphere at the negotiations arose because everyone knew how desperately important they were. Copenhagen was more than just another attempt at furthering global environmental governance. Here was humanity, meeting together in all our cultural and political diversity, trying to decide how to keep the planet’s temperature within tolerable bounds. It was an awesome prospect, the human species pooling its collective intelligence in an effort to protect its only home. The only problem was, it wasn’t working. We couldn’t agree on anything. No one was prepared to give an inch in their well-rehearsed positions.
By a strange quirk of fortune, I was one of only fifty or so people who witnessed firsthand what really happened at the climax of Copenhagen—because I was in the room where the all-important final-hours heads of state negotiations were being conducted. I was not there as a journalist or campaigner: All of these were banished behind crowd-control barriers at the end of the corridor. Instead I was present in my