The road to the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen was not easy, according to climate experts. But in light of the limited negotiations between nations during the summit, future paths may now be even more obscured.
On Tuesday evening, two panels of Copenhagen attendees spoke to over 50 people at the George Sherman Union about their expectations and experiences at the conference.
The panels, part of Sustainability@BU’s efforts, featured Boston University faculty members and students who were sponsored by the BU Office of the Provost and the BU Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study for the Longer-Range Future to attend the conference.
Pardee Center Director and internationl relations professor Adil Najam moderated both panels. Najam encouraged panelists to discuss their opinions and experiences with each other, rather than follow a traditional question-and-answer format.
The first panel was titled “The Road to Copenhagen,” while the second maintained a focus on “The Road from Copenhagen.”
Many of the panelists said that they held low expectations going into the conference, including finance professor Nalin Kulatilaka.
“I was skeptical about what nation states and the political process could do about it,” he said during the first panel. “I feel that having all the countries involved adds a lot of noise.”
Kulatilaka said historically, the type of diplomacy employed by the Copenhagen conference has not garnered necessary large-scale results.
College of Arts and Sciences senior and panelist Nickole Laines said she felt that certain countries didn’t come to the conference prepared to negotiate.
“I didn’t expect much,” she said.
Laines said she was surprised that issues of adaptability and not prevention were at the forefront of the conference. She also said she felt that the U.S. needed to set goals for itself independent of other nations at the conference, including other large greenhouse gas emitters like China and India.
School of Law graduate student Adam Peltz, also a panel member, said he felt the late appearances of President Barack Obama and other top politicians were a hindrance to the conference.
“Because they came at the end, it was inevitable that nothing would be done until the very end,” he said.”
Peltz said he thought Obama’s lack of definite U.S. climate change agreement at the summit sent a negative message to representatives of other nations.
“No one believed Obama, basically,” he said.
Peltz also discussed the Copenhagen “circus,” referring to the mass amount of civilians and protesters inside and outside of the Copenhagen Bella Center during the conference.
He said that the attendees greatly surpassed the capacity of the Bella Center and consequently made it difficult for politicians to negotiate.
“It was certainly an abject lesson in how not to run a conference,” he said.
Geography and environment professor Cutler Cleveland spoke of another hitch in conference negotiations: the discovery of incorrect statistics reported as facts in climate change data used.
“I think that, at least in the United States, it will slow progress,” he said.
Cleveland added, however, that he felt the errors were scientifically insignificant, and that the rest of the climate change data was gathered accurately.
“So what?” Cleveland said of the mistakes. “These were two relatively minor facts.”
Post-doctoral research assistant Miquel Muñoz and geography and environment graduate student Andrew Morgan both stressed the urgency of the climate change situation. Muñoz and Morgan said that the world has about five years to reduce warming to an increase of two degrees Celsius per year in order to contain the climate change.
“We still might not hit two degrees Celsius,” Morgan said. “If we’re really going to get something accomplished, [Copenhagen] is not the place for so many people to be.”
At the close of the discussion, most of the panelists said they agreed that the outlook is grim.
“I’m concerned and cynical at this point,” said international relations graduate student Tom Nagle.
School of Management senior lecturer Kristen McCormack said she attended the panel discussion with her class and was impressed by the experiences shared by the panelists.
“Their comments gave you a sense of what it was really like to be there,” she said. “I was surprised by the consistent mention of adaptability.”
SMG sophomore Rebecca Farmer said she particularly enjoyed hearing Cutler speak, as well as the general format of the discussion.
“I think that’s so important to have a dialogue between students and faculty,” she said.
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