After Copenhagen, What Is Business As Usual?

Posted on 21. Dec, 2009 by Ross in Climate Change, Government Policy

Copenhagen was supposed to start the world on a path to fighting climate change, but with the talks largely derided as meaningless what now constitutes business as usual?

The Copenhagen conference descended into diplomatic farce at the 11th hour, with agreements negotiated over weeks, months and years between 192 countries discarded in a meeting between just 5 nations: the USA, China, India, South Africa and Brazil. Jumping straight onto their planes after wrecking the prospect of an international deal on climate change with any substance whatsoever, they left the rest of the world’s shell-shocked leaders struggling to decide whether to ratify an agreement barely worth the paper it was written on.

Emission targets were ignored; a timetable for compliance was disregarded; the REDD scheme against deforestation which had seemed iron-clad was ditched entirely; bunker emissions found no room for agreement. Only the pledge for more climate change aid for developing countries came through unscathed, as did the funding for Climate Innovation Centres for climate change technology transfer.

So with so little progress agreed to, will the world simply carry on polluting the same as before? Will businesses be able to continue chasing economic success without the burden of extra environmental legislation?

Across most of the world, the simple answer is no.

Europe is totally committed to a low-carbon economy, with increasing investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency schemes as well as a mature cap-and-trade scheme which will shortly see the cap begin to shrink.

The USA, for years the most obstructionist country on Earth to international climate change legislation, is aware that the fossil-fuel party needs to end now and is trying to pass climate change legislation at the moment, despite it’s paltry current commitment to carbon reduction targets.

China, the world’s worst polluter of carbon dioxide, may have got the result from Copenhagen that it wanted but it also struggles with massive amounts of domestic pollution, and is now firmly committed to clean up its industry and energy supply.

India is still a slave to rapid economic expansion, but energy supplies are insufficient to meet growing demand and power stations are being built too slowly. Only increased energy efficiency is capable of unlocking the growth which India craves.

Everyone involved in Copenhagen, whether happy or bitter at the outcome of the talks, is also aware that it is only one step on the path to fighting climate change (Obama refers to it as the first step, but unlike the USA most of the rest of the world agreed to Kyoto, so its the second step for nearly everybody else). Targets will become binding over time and more agreement will be found over other climate change schemes, especially as the effects of climate change start to have more and more effect upon all countries involved.

Businesses which grow complacent at the slow rate of legislationary change will continued to be left behind in the long term. Businesses which work to minimise their reliance on resources - not just on energy and carbon, but on water, raw materials or cheap imports - will make themselves more immune to the unpredictable future which lies ahead, as well as having positive immediate benefits such as reducing energy costs through energy efficiency.

Business as usual is no longer business as usual. The new ‘business as usual’ is a greener, cleaner business, no matter what happened in Copenhagen.

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Image of a sleeping Copenhagen delegate from Trinidad and Tobago by UN Climate Change @ Flickr