The run-up to Copenhagen

Contrary to the usual topic of the blog this article will be the starting point of a small cycle of posts dealing with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from the 7th to the 18th of December 2009 which I will attend as part of the delegation of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations. I hope to share some first-hand impressions here that are both fun and informative. The first short posting will deal with the climate change agenda of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations.

There are only seven days left until the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen starts. The conference itself was prepared for months and months through preliminary meetings within and without the UN framework. All this preparation will culminate in a 12-day conference of tremendous symbolical importance in mid-December, but that's also about it. Barely anyone is still counting on an ambitious post-Kyoto agreement in Copenhagen. US-President Barack Obama will be at the conference in it's early days, stopping by on his way to pick up the Nobel Peace Price in Norway. No other head of state will be there during the same period, and some newspapers already joke that President Obama is combining the Copenhagen and Norway trips in order to save kerosene, as Americas contribution to cutting CO2 emissions.

I will attend the COP15 talks as observer in the delegation of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations on the 14th and 15th of December. A high workload in December and a very limited travel budget unfortunately make a longer stay impossible. Nevertheless we are determined to make the best out of the stay, meeting with other NGO delegations and getting a first hand impression of the process. Chances to really influence the talks are close to zero anyway. 

The Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations is advocating a more concerted and ambitious approach to climate change mitigation. The principle of Intergenerational Justice is only observed when future generations have at least the same chances to satisfy their needs as previous generations. In terms of climate change this would mean that we have to pass our climate system and the environment down to our ancestors in a shape that allows them to sustain an equal level of wellbeing that we are enjoying in our lifetime. In practice this is of course nearly impossible. After all we have already brought the absorption capacities of earth's atmosphere close to collapse which makes the maintenance of today's lifestyle impossible - at least on a fossil energy basis - if we do not want to destroy our planet. But, since future generations will bear the brunt of negative climate change consequences it is at least our duty, as the generations living today, to minimize the damages for future generations. The growing tendency of some scientists to enforce adaptation over mitigation as the "cheaper" alternative is directly violating these duties.

In a nutshell, adaptation says that we should adapt to the consequences of climate change by building higher and better dams against rising sea-levels and ultimately leave areas that become uninhabitable due to climate change. There are two catches though: first, only rich countries have the resources at hand to adapt to climate change and secondly, we will eventually reach a threshold of climate change, at which adaptation becomes impossible. At this point, future generations will pay the bill for our negligence. This means that environments that have been home to humans for centuries will become uninhabitable and people living there for generations will be turned to homeless refugees. We argue that the loss of the place one calls home cannot be calculated economically like any other commodity. This is why the advocates of an adaptation approach are wrong when they want to make us believe that it is the cheaper alternative. We see adaptation as a short sighted strategy, disadvantageous both for the poorest people living today as well as for future generations. Therefore the FRFG is advocating a strategy to combat consequences of climate change that focuses on mitigation over adaptation.