Time for inspiring speeches

That picture is how much of carbon is emitted by a single American in a week!

Most websites on energy and environment these days have only one topic – Copenhagen. No wonder with thousands of journalists and bloggers having descended on the city! Protests, secret drafts, and speeches! Great inspiring speeches! The latest ‘brilliant speech’ comes from Nobelist Obama!

It is undoubtedly true that development rarely takes root without security; it is also true that security does not exist where human beings do not have access to enough food, or clean water, or the medicine they need to survive. It does not exist where children cannot aspire to a decent education or a job that supports a family. The absence of hope can rot a society from within.

And that is why helping farmers feed their own people — or nations educate their children and care for the sick — is not mere charity. It is also why the world must come together to confront climate change. There is little scientific dispute that if we do nothing, we will face more drought, famine and mass displacement that will fuel more conflict for decades… our common security hangs in the balance.

And yet all that US offers is a 17 percent cut of its 2005 emissions by 2020, which translates to a mere 3 percent cut of its 1990 levels (which is what Kyoto Protocol had sought). There is something doubly insensitive about a country that has been historically the biggest contributor to the present carbon pile up in the atmosphere, refusing to mend, and instead insisting that any action it takes will be only if some others do the same. Of course, China and India refusing to accept legally binding targets but insisting on domestic voluntary targets does hint of doubts in achieving the same! Why else should one be wary of scrutiny?

Meanwhile, there was some silver lining from UK. The European Union has proposed cutting its carbon emissions 30 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 if other developed countries reduce their carbon emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. But Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said that the European Union should proceed with its 30 percent reductions targets regardless of what other developed countries are prepared to do right now.

When Barack Obama visits Copenhagen this week for the United Nations Framework Convention, awaiting him is a ton of CO2!

The actual 27-foot cube of CO2, an installation by Alfio Bonanno and Christophe Cornubert, is representation of the amount of carbon dioxide emitted each month by the average person in an industrialized country, or in the case of the United States, every two weeks.

Supported by Millennium ART, the curator of UN conferences over the past several years, the project also has plans to install additional cubes in iconic locations all over the globe during the conference.

Wow! Awesome! But finally, that may be all that will come out of the talks. Inspiring speech, awesome artwork, shrill voices as nations wrangle for their piece of the atmosphere.